Pelion, with all its woods (1/2)
Pelion, with all its woods.
a March-Stalkers Mighty extra
Proud of their strength, and more than mortal size
The gods they challenge, and affect the skies:
Heaved on Olympus tottering Ossa stood;
On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood.
Homer’s Odyssey, trans. Alexander Pope. (Book IX.)
Written for the Sabriel mini-bang, 2012. Artwork by machidieles.
Word Count: 10800.
Pairings: Gabriel/Sam, background Dean/Castiel.
Genre: Slashy pre-slash.
Rating: Mature.
Beta: kototyph
Warnings: Slight elements of PTSD. Hints (without details) at intersexual characteristics.
Spoilers: None (AU).
Summary: If you haven’t read the main story:
The Winchesters live in a small, very isolated town in the middle of the barren monster-ridden marches, which has very little contact with the outside world. The second-worst of the monsters that inhabit their lands are the demons. The very worst are also the most newly arrived, and they are the angels. Dean and Sam have both buried the memories of the silent boy with black wings whom Dean had used to play with as a child, years before any other human every saw an angel. But when Castiel returns to bring an end to the war, and the familiar pedlar Gabriel turns out to have been an angel all along, things get messy - and not only for them.
The hunters, including Sam and Dean, turn on Gabriel and lock him up in the barn; Castiel is shot out of the sky and almost dies before Dean and Sam find him; and finally, Dean has to help the archangel escape and make a wary ally of him, to save Castiel’s life.
Sam has, in the course of the main story, been turned into a dog by tripping an old curse, and has fled the land with Gabriel and Castiel to avoid a kill-or-be-killed situation with the other hunters. Together they’ve just come up with a solution: the curse can’t be lifted, but it can be transmuted, so that Sam is now a skinwalker.
And now that you’ve read the main story, or the summary:
This story is told from Sam’s perspective, while he is out in the wide world with Gabriel, Castiel, Gwen, Rachel, and the other angels. Sam returns to consciousness, human-shaped again after a month on four feet, with Gabriel at his bedside. Gabriel’s fumbling attempts to soothe the pain of transformation tumble them hard and fast towards emotions and vulnerabilities that neither is ready to deal with.
AO3 link.
… Pain.
That was a good starting point for consciousness.
Actually, come to think of it, it was a shitty starting point. Pain hurt.
At least it was definite, though. No mistakes here. That was pain alright.
Sam’s toenails hurt.
Weird. He took a moment to ponder this imponderable. Then another, just to be sure. He concluded, carefully, that he was pretty sure his earwax hurt too. He’d never really thought about his earwax. Maybe it was feeling left out?
Another rough wave of pain snarled its way out from the centre of him, trampling with vicious claws over his gut and liver and up through his throat to the clench of his jaw and fists and legs. He heard the sound it tore from his mouth, ragged and inhuman.
… No. Not inhuman. That was the whole point. That was why they’d done this.
Pain.
Did that mean they’d pulled it off?
“Shit,” he heard himself mutter, stupidly weak. The press of strong thick tongue against the inside of blunt teeth, the hiss of the sibilant over dry lips, the sharp dextrous click of the final consonant. Human-shaped.
How about that.
Then something inside his belly tried to twist itself out of shape, and he lost all his limbs to a fit of desperate trembling.
“Rise and shine, sparkles!” he heard, stupidly chirpy, dim and distant through the pain. “The sun is green, the grass is shining, and Sam has opposable thumbs again!”
Sam felt something that he vaguely remembered as his hand twitch and clutch loosely at the air inside it. “I hate you,” he mumbled, or meant to, but he wasn’t quite sure how to make his tongue obey him again.
There was a chuckle by his ear, low and rich. “That’s what all the ladies say the morning after. Don’t be a cliché, Sammy.”
Huh.
That was an answer. Sam had said something, with his actual mouth, and Gabriel had replied.
Sam laughed with the shock of it, hoarse and rasping; and the movement set off another wave of agony, just because he’d needed that. All the muscles in his torso seized and yanked at once, like they were trying to twist the rest of him into another shape. The laugh struggled to turn itself into a scream, but there was no breath for it to ride, and it collapsed into gasps.
“Maybe we made a mistake,” Gabriel drawled, and Sam was on the edge of panic when his brain caught up with the delighted tease in the angel’s voice, and what the hell? “I mean, kid, you look like shit. Maybe we got some siren or barrow wight in the mix.”
“Gabriel,” Sam croaked out in a plea. He was so thirsty, and his body was twisting itself up from the inside, and Gabriel was right there and he couldn’t reach him, and Sam was so very far from home.
“Right here, kiddo,” came the reply, a little bit softer.
Sam groped blindly in the direction of that voice. His wrist was caught in a gentle, inexorable grip, hot as a furnace (or was Sam just that cold?) and slippery with sweat. Although, come to think of it, maybe the sweat was Sam’s too. There were creeping prickles all over his skin, sending hot and cold shivers all over him.
His hand was returned firmly to lie on his own chest, and the warm touch retreated.
“Yeah, don’t even try.” Not unsympathetic, but smug and comfortable and happy, and - it grated. “Just lie there and take it for a bit. It’ll pass.”
Like it was just a little pain. Like Gabriel thought it wasn’t ripping Sam apart from the inside.
(Dean wouldn’t have let go. Dean would have given him hell for hand-holding, but Dean would have stayed right there the whole time. Probably wouldn’t have eaten or slept either, the idiot, until Sam would have had to tell him to just leave Sam the hell alone already because he couldn’t sleep with Dean hovering right over him all the time like some kind of obsessive owl. Sam’s anchor, or his foundation, or something. Always there. But Dean was a long way away now.)
What if they had made a mistake?
Panic clawed dustily at the inside of his throat, and his jaw seized up and skewed itself viciously, teeth sliding and grating over bone. His backbone writhed, and arched against the bed.
“Hurts,” was all he could choke out, begging.
“Yeah, we know that. You knew that, remember? This whole thing is heaping Pelion on Ossa of unnatural shit, it ain’t meant to go down easy.” And then, brighter and more incongruous against the wringing of Sam’s lungs in his chest, “Hey, what do you get if you cross a sasquatch with a werewolf?”
“Shut up,” Sam snarled, a high edge of terror creeping through at the edges. (And all he could think of was Gabriel’s hands, a pathetic desperate fixation: the damage they’d fixed to Castiel’s wing, the cool wash of sensation that had driven away the pain after he’d startled at Sam’s touch that one time and flung him into a tree, the brush of two fingers that could draw Sam into a dreamscape and give him speech, the warm touch on the back of his neck that said “Hey, I know you’re here, I haven’t forgotten that you’re you, I know this sucks” when everyone else was talking over and around him.) “Gabriel, hurts. Wrong. It’s wrong. Please.” His hand groped, sluggish and pathetically weak, at the folds of the sheet. “Help.”
There was a moment of sickening silence. Sam’s hands and feet ached viciously, trying to twist themselves back into paws, and any minute now those muscles were going to prove themselves stronger than the joints and pop one or two of his toes out of place, and Sam couldn’t stop them. Every time he thought about them they just screwed themselves up further.
Don’t screw with the supernatural, boy. You never know what it’ll make of you once it gets into your blood, but sure as hellfrost it won’t be kind.
Shit. What would Bobby say now?
“Sam,” he heard, quieter and a bit rough. “You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong. I’ve been keeping an eye out good and sharp. Trust me, yeah?”
Something snagged and tore against his tongue, and he felt his mouth fill up with blood.
“Please,” he choked uselessly.
“Hey. Hey,” Gabriel bit out, and then his hand was blessedly cool on Sam’s forearm, setting off a little cascade of hypersensitive pinpricks as it slid over the hairs. “Stop fighting it, you stubborn thick-headed excuse for a human-shaped object. You’re fine, you hear me? Just - just stop trying to tear yourself apart.”
And he wasn’t actually doing anything - Sam knew what angel healing felt like now, and this wasn’t it, it was just a hand on an arm - but for some reason just that little touch took a bit of the edge off, like his body wasn’t on the verge of tearing itself to pieces.
“Fuck off,” he mumbled, and felt something warm and wet well out of the side of his mouth and slide mockingly down his chin.
A dry thumb caught it and rubbed it off, rough and calloused against his skin. Then it froze, like it had been caught doing something highly suspicious, and pulled away.
“Sorry,” Gabriel said, all casual. “I know blood’s the hot new thing in the fashionable set just now, but it was really clashing with your pale and sweaty vibe.”
Like Sam was some shy little damsel who’d go crying to his mother if someone touched him without permission.
He growled something indistinguishable and twisted his arm around clumsily, grabbing for Gabriel’s hand. It retreated a bit, hesitated just long enough for Sam to latch onto it, then curled up like a self-conscious spider as Sam tugged it higher.
“Uh,” Gabriel put in intelligently.
Sam ignored him, and planted his prize firmly just above the top of the sheet, in the centre of Sam’s chest.
“Um. Okay,” Gabriel tried. The fingers squirmed slightly between Sam’s palm and the sweat-slick skin of his breastbone. “You want me to..?”
“Stop it,” Sam breathed. “Better when you touch.”
“Gorgeous sweaty young men naked in bed begging me to touch them? This is some kind of a trap, isn’t it?” Gabriel snapped back.
The curved shells of his fingernails slid half an inch as the loose fist opened a little way. It hovered for a minute, like Gabriel was looking for something, and Sam tried to blink his eyes open to focus on him (or, you know, to glare). The world was a blur of too many colours, and Sam had to squeeze his eyes shut again with a moan as another savage spasm tore through his abdomen.
This one lasted far too long. It took him in its teeth and shook him like a rat, until Sam could feel his head thrashing on the pillow. It was too much, and his body was tired and treacherous and wrung-out. Every muscle was spasming with exhaustion and fierce confusion, and Sam couldn’t even spare the energy to care when he felt tears welling hard and fast from his eyes.
“Sam.” Nails were digging sharp into his chest, and a palm pressing down hot and flat, pinning him to the bed. “You’re doing this to yourself, you useless lump. Come on, you can out-last your sodding brother in a spat, you’re more bull-headed than this. Let go of it.” Then there was a muttered “Fuck,” and, wonder of wonders, that blessed coolness rippling out from the touch, soothing rebellious muscles in its slipstream.
Sam sucked a breath into battered lungs and sobbed it out again, shaking with reaction and relief. The pain was still there, a niggling background throb, gnawing at joints and muscles that were suddenly back to their old shape, but without the savagery of a body trying to remodel itself by main force.
A fingernail flicked his nose. “This is why you lot shouldn’t be trusted with brains,” Gabriel decided. His other hand stayed where it was on Sam’s chest, like it thought it might be noticed if it moved. “You were doing just fine when you were out. Switch on consciousness, and what do you do? Decide you dislocated everything overnight and try to pull yourself out of shape again.”
Sam curled up his fingers into an experimental fist, then spread them out again. No clenching muscles, just twinges and protestations against the stupidly unfamiliar action. He felt a tentative, delighted little wave of triumph, forced his eyes open and grinned at the blur of Gabriel. It felt weak, but he meant it.
“Your bedside manner sucks,” he mumbled around a heavy and bitten tongue.
Gabriel’s teeth flashed white in the mess of colour that was the world. “Go easy on me, sir,” he purred, lewd with that extra edge of bravado that Sam was starting to think meant Gabriel was feeling way out of his depth. “It’s my first time.”
Gabriel had always seemed like he could do anything, before. Do anything, be or say anything, and do it with swagger and charm. Just like, a few short years ago, Sam had been convinced that Bobby knew everything, that there was nothing he couldn’t solve. Sam had revelled in Gabriel’s laughter at the Roadhouse so many times, basked in the brightness of his grin, tried to catch the trick of his ready wit so that Sam could be like that too.
But Bobby hadn’t been able to lift Sam’s curse; and Gabriel had been lying all that time, playing human to save his own life and because he hadn’t had the courage to go home.
Usually it was easy to forget that Gabriel had lived all of his adult life effectively alone, with no one to care for but a horse. Sometimes, though, it kind of forced itself on your notice. But, hey, Sam was mostly used to Dean, so who was he to talk?
“Wouldn’t have guessed,” Sam mumbled, and captured Gabriel’s other hand on the second try. Because he was feeling kind of sick and shaky here, and Dean had always used to rub his back or scratch his hair when Sam was feeling like crap (still did, sometimes, when he was really out of it), and as long as Gabriel was taking instruction…
He clumsily dropped Gabriel’s hand on the pillow in the general vicinity of Sam’s head, and patted it into place. The tips of the angel’s fingers dug in slowly, like he was waiting for the punch line. Then they slid in through the hairs like they had been doing so naturally for weeks into Sam’s ruff, when he’d had one.
Which technically he still did. Or would if he decided to…
Sam shuddered, a full-body twitch of visceral reaction to the thought. The hand on his chest pressed down in response, and Gabriel’s features cut into clearer focus as he leaned forward, out of the direct line of the sunlight burning its way in through the cabin window. “What now, my delicate little manly flower?”
Sam made a face at him, and shook his head minutely on the pillow. His muscles tried to lock up and run for cover again, but Gabriel’s fingers flexed coolly and dismissed the tension before it could set in properly. “Nothing much,” Sam mumbled through a scratched throat. “Just. Water, please?”
That whole “so I’m a skinwalker now” conversation… yep, that could wait for another day. Although honestly, given the options, being technically a cursed dog that could change into a human was a hell of a lot better than just being a cursed dog who was stuck as a dog.
Hell. He was never going to be able to hunt with silver again. Maybe he could discreetly leather-wrap all the parts of the knife that he might have to touch.
Because he had to go back, if there was even a chance of not getting killed the minute he set foot inside the Wall.
Sam hadn’t known, when he’d left, just how bad it would be. Sure, he’d expected to miss Dean. But he’d thought that he’d get over it, he’d enjoy getting out from the stifling always-there blanket of his older brother’s presence, from the limits of a town that felt so small and prosaic compared to what books and the stories of pedlars told him was really out there. He hadn’t expected this lurching uncertainty, like half of one leg was missing. Dean was always there, always at his elbow with a bad joke and a stupid annoying grin. Sam wasn’t really sure he knew who he was, without Dean around.
Gabriel managed to pour him a glass one-handed from the water jug, by dint of resting the glass on Sam’s chest and steadying it with the wrist of one wing as he poured. Then he looked at the glass, looked at Sam, sighed, sat down next to him, and slid the hand in his hair down around his shoulders to manhandle him clumsily into a sitting position. Sam manfully refrained from teasing him about a complete and utter lack of nursing skills, because he was busy trying not to list sideways and slip pathetically out of Gabriel’s arm. Anyway, even if Gabriel was kind of crap at this, it was a hell of a lot better than not having anyone here.
The water was deliciously cool slipping in over Sam’s teeth to lap against the sides of his sore mouth. His tongue still felt too thick and too short, and the blunt human-shaped teeth at the front of his lower jaw were like a stern barrier holding it in place, where it was in the habit of slipping forward to pant. Which was a good thing, because that would be a really embarrassing habit to keep.
The steady band of Gabriel’s arm moved a little behind him, slipping back so that his hand was nestled between Sam’s shoulder blades, and something warm and strong and dry-soft settled up against Sam’s back instead. It took a moment for Sam to place the sensation of feathers, feathers against skin, and the crook of the muscled bone snug around his shoulders. Huh. That was… actually not a bad back rest. And, well, if it was strong enough to lift Gabriel into the air, it was probably strong enough for Sam to lean on, a little.
He’d had plenty of occasion to think of wings as weapons before, and as targets for a bullet. He’d never really thought about them as being handy around the house, or being a comfort.
It was around the third sip of water when Sam’s head cleared enough for him to realise that the sheets had pooled in his lap when he’d sat up, and he was… kind of exposed. Not that Gabriel hadn’t seen him before - no one bothered with modesty much after a really messy or muddy hunt, when it made much more sense just to sluice the worst of it off each other outside with buckets of water before everyone went into their own houses to scrub off - but… not this close, in bed, touching him, with Sam pretty much useless.
He took another hasty gulp of water, to hide the sudden burning in his cheeks. Then he choked on it, and had to have a fit of coughing, which was even more embarrassing. Gabriel confiscated the glass, and squeezed the back of his neck gently, as if he were still dog-shaped.
“You’re not allowed to die,” Gabriel informed him imperiously. “If you killed yourself on a glass of water Castiel would frown at me, and you wouldn’t want to subject me to that.”
Sam made a grumbling noise at him around coughs, but apparently he was too weak and shaken just now even to keep himself sitting up through a coughing fit. Leaning on Gabriel was kind of nice, though. The press of his collarbone against Sam’s shoulder, and the warmth of his body down Sam’s side and the wing wrapped around him from behind, and the occasional scrape of his half-beard as he turned his head, kept at bay the worry about how Sam would even manage to step inside the gate at home without getting a chest full of silver bullets. And there was a cautious warmth in the way he grumbled “tell me you aren’t going to expect me to make you chicken broth, kiddo” that almost sounded like he just might, if Sam asked.
Dean would probably try to shoot Gabriel again when he heard what they’d done, but hey. Castiel had helped too. Not to mention Sam.
Gabriel’s hand shifted a little, just a stretch and reposition, and Sam rolled his shoulder blades back into it appreciatively, hinting like he had as a dog. Gabriel snorted, and began rubbing careful little circles into the skin, under the ticklish touch of feathers.
It could all be a hell of a lot worse.
Sam had had enough of being a grown-up, for now. He’d done it pretty well non-stop for weeks, through some pretty heavy crap, unable to say a word with Dean losing his shit around him and Castiel’s life in serious danger and Gabriel being insufferable and broken and borderline mad, and, oh yes, having to run away from home because he’d got turned into a dog, and still having to be the sensible one around the place, and seriously, Sam was over it. And he hurt. He was pretty sure he could get away with just slumping here against someone else’s body, someone he trusted even if Dean never would, and letting them take care of things.
“That’s good,” he noticed with mild surprise, slurring his words a bit. “Like it’s sort of… reminding the muscles how they’re all meant to fit together.”
Gabriel made a sarcastic little noise that said he wasn’t even going to bother commenting on that. But the self-conscious little circles widened and loosened over the tired skin, brushing feathers aside as they went, until they were long soothing sweeps down one side of his spine and back up the other. Sam groaned, a much happier sound, and let his head fall forward onto his chest. The hand hesitated, then curved up to cup the back of his neck, out in one direction then the other to rub warm and firm over the muscles of his shoulders, then down from there to brush carefully over the outside of his ribcage. The flesh tingled then settled in its wake, grudgingly agreeing to be soothed for a while.
Sam closed his eyes and drifted. Yeah. He could put up with this for a bit.
It lasted maybe five minutes. Then the flesh in his thighs and calves and stomach started to crawl again, tugging at itself like it wanted to pull away from the skin.
Sam whined, scratchy in his throat, then remembered that he was human-shaped and should probably be cursing instead.
The fingertips stilled on the valley of his spine. “Again?”
“Legs,” Sam managed. “Gut. Everywhere you’re not… shit, Gabriel, I hate this.”
That came out as a snarl on a flare of temper, at nothing in particular but his own uselessness; but Sam felt the sharp puff of air against his shoulder as Gabriel flinched, started to say something, then aborted it.
Sam tried to breathe through the spasms, to argue the muscles in his abdomen out of clamping down too hard on his lungs.
“I should have. You know there wasn’t any other way,” Gabriel said abruptly, like he was the one needing the telling, and his hand spread out (ridiculously small, for what he was) over the expanse of Sam’s back. Too warm, for its size. Then the other one settled, tentative as a cat setting paw inside the dog kennels, on Sam’s blanketed knee.
“Screw modesty,” Sam gritted out, and shoved ineffectively at the blanket with hands that felt blunt as paws. “Gabriel, for fuck’s sake, stop being so freaking gallant and just touch me.”
“There’s my clueless provincial little farm boy,” Gabriel cooed derisively, that one little moment of painful sincerity sliding out of reach like it had never been there. The prickly weight of the blanket vanished from Sam’s legs. “You actually have no idea what you sound like when you make demands in that growl of a voice, do you? Lie down and roll over.”
Probably not, Sam wanted to grumble, to chafe against the mocking tone and force it to talk to him properly, but I know what you sound like when you’re trying to turn an uncomfortable conversation into a joke about sex, because that’s where every second conversation has ended up for the last four weeks. But all he found to say was “I can’t,” snappish with pain and impatience over how pathetic it made him, that the thought of moving so many muscles to do something so complicated as turn over onto his belly was overwhelming.
“Okay then,” Gabriel said carefully. “Okay, kiddo. Trust me? For a minute?”
Sam’s stomach cramped as he almost laughed. Because, seriously? Did Gabriel not know how much sheer, terrifying trust it had taken to step into that circle last night under the invisible new moon, to hold still as Castiel drew that strange symbol on his front leg, to drink the bowl Gabriel had set on the ground for him to the dregs?
And before that, every night, letting Gabriel into his dreams, lounging around weirdly intimate in Sam’s own head, talking about nothing important at all, just talking because there, at least, Sam could. And before that, sticking close to Gabriel even after that one time three weeks back (before Sam had worked out how badly he was broken) when Sam had touched him, just a light touch of the nose to the back of his knee to say “I’m here,” and Gabriel had startled so badly that he’d flung Sam into a tree yards away on the other side of the road before he’d even worked out who it was. And before that, choosing to leave with Gabriel rather than return home with Dean and see how long he’d last without going mad or getting killed; and before that, letting Gabriel use something in Sam’s essence to drag Castiel back from the edge of dying without even a question; and before that, hardest of all, looking into his eyes where Gabriel was penned up in the bull press in the barn and snarling as mindlessly as he could, viciously playing the role of monster to the hilt, and Sam had just as stubbornly chosen to see the person there instead. To trust in that.
Trust Gabriel, just for a minute?
Sam nodded, because he couldn’t say the rest.
Gabriel’s arms slid around his ribs and under his knees and Sam was lifted easy as a doll, and turned over in the cradle of one wing. Sam did manage - small mercies! - to wrap his own arms around the pillow and cushion his forehead on it, but for the rest it was Gabriel, careful as if he were handling newly risen dough, lifting one leg from where it had twisted across the other, resettling the angle of his hips, laying him out naked and aching on the sheets. Gabriel’s hand ended up on the back of his calf, soft as a promise, and the spasms quieted for a moment, like they were waiting to see what he would do.
He started out slow, and silent, just a pair of hands cupping the backs of Sam’s calves and pressing gently into the muscle, warm on the skin but cooling the blood beneath it. A strange sensory contradiction, almost feverish, and Sam shivered with it, feet twitching against the sheets.
“Bad?” Gabriel murmured, like he was thinking about making another lewd joke but wasn’t sure how to segue.
Sam huffed quick amusement into the pillow, because the idea of Gabriel not knowing how to make a stupid joke was unexpectedly amusing, and shook his head minutely. Threads of sweat-sticky hair slid over the back of his neck, all distinct on over-sensitive skin.
“Okay. Just. Punch me or something if this gets weird, yeah?”
“Already done,” Sam mumbled, as the hairs of his shins prickled up under the pass of Gabriel’s fingers. Because, after all, this had got weird months ago, pretty much at exactly that moment when Dean and Bobby had rumbled Gabriel as an angel. And Sam wasn’t anything close to proud of what his own reaction had been, that night.
Gabriel’s knuckles brushed over the sensitive skin in the back of Sam’s right knee, then both hands glided around to encircle the muscle at the base of his thigh, callouses scraping up the curve of it. The blood and the skin were tingling together under his touch now as it skimmed up the back of his thigh. Kneading it, like he was re-teaching it its shape. Or remoulding him, completely, like a potter. Making him into something new.
Thinking was not Sam’s friend right now. Especially because the more he woke up the more he was conscious of the whole nudity thing. And also of the inescapable fact that several of the married angel couples he and Gwen had met last week, when Castiel had introduced them to the rest of the garrison, had been same-sex. And, more importantly, that none of the angels seemed to get why he and Gwen had thought that was a bit weird. And that, even more importantly, from some of the remarks Gabriel had dropped, Sam was pretty sure Gabriel had… um. Seen naked guys in a bed before. In a not-innocent kind of way.
And sure, Sam could admit to a nagging curiosity about how that actually worked, but there was no way he was admitting it to Gabriel. Especially not when he was… shit, brushing rough fingertips over the soft inside of Sam’s thigh, just where it was almost but not quite pressed up against the other. It was a fleeting touch, shallower and less lingering than it had been on his shins, but it set the hairs prickling.
Sam had a moment to wonder just how far up Gabriel would go, to imagine (nervously and daringly) that his hands would keep moving up over the top of his thigh to press hot into the meat of his ass. But they didn’t: they vanished, and Sam felt them again, careful and strangely impersonal, starting from the knee of his other leg.
Sam’s brain was waking up slowly, like a spring thaw, little drips and trickles of it at a time.
“This is some kind of angel thing, isn’t it?” His voice came out husky into the pillow, like the jittery feeling under his skin had lodged itself in his throat as well.
Gabriel made an interrogative sort of noise, and pressed a thumb carefully into a knot of muscle. “I’m not healing you, kid, if that’s what you mean. This is just good old-fashioned skin-on-skin.”
Sam’s mind snagged for a moment on the irritation of kid - Gabriel had barely called him that for weeks, so why was he using it so much now? - but he let it go, because this was interesting. And it was a purely intellectual curiosity, which was helpful and maybe even distracting. “That’s what I mean. What you said about faith, when you healed Cas. The way angels need… friends, or family, or whatever, being able to rely on them, how that’s what keeps you going. Because you had to touch him to fix him, and before that Dean and I had to keep touching Cas pretty much all the time or he’d get worse even quicker.”
He didn’t mention those harrowing few hours, while Dean had been away breaking Gabriel out of the barn to save Castiel, when it had just been Sam in the old hunting cabin with an unconscious angel: pressed up against his side, nose pressed in against his neck, just willing him to take the next breath, and the next, because if he moved away even a little Castiel made the most piteous noises like his heart was failing him.
Gabriel could probably figure that bit out anyway.
The angel made a noise like a thoughtful sparrow, and ran the backs of his nails lightly up the meat of Sam’s thigh. It set off a trail of shivers that raced up over the sensitive skin higher up and coiled at the base of Sam’s spine, hot and confusing. “Something like, maybe,” and Gabriel’s voice was sharp and interested again, more like the curious, chatty, relaxed Gabriel who visited Sam’s dreams. “Touch of a friend keeps you grounded, keeps you human, makes things less overwhelming. More literally than for most humans, in your case,” he added, closer to teasing than mocking, and patted the top of Sam’s thigh.
Shit. Sam’s blood was getting too busy now, running hot and interested to parts of his body that weren’t appropriate when you were naked and a friend was just trying to help. And now Gabriel had reached the top of that thigh, and he’d done that leg altogether, and so there was nowhere else for him to go but…
Sam pressed his hips a little more firmly into the mattress, an instinctive kind of embarrassed cringe, and made a high-pitched sort of noise that he hoped sounded conversational.
Gabriel just smoothed his hands firmly up over Sam’s ass and into the small of his back, like it was nothing. Which was… a relief. Definitely. And if the skin was tingling in their wake, that’d go away soon enough, right?
The muscles melted under Gabriel’s fingers as they moved, quicker and firmer and more sure, up over the more familiar territory of Sam’s back. Sam sank into the mattress, finding (almost to his surprise) that the brush and dig of fingertips wasn’t just a relief, but kind of pleasant.
“You know angels go into heat, like most animals?” Gabriel dropped in, conversationally, like that wasn’t a weird and embarrassing thing to bring up while his fingers were skimming down over Sam’s ribs and curling around until they were almost touching his belly. “Female angels. And archangels,” he added, like that bit didn’t matter, when wait, what? “Every two years. Only there’s two stages to it. And in the first stage they just get really clingy. Need touch,” and one hand rose in a broad arc up Sam’s ribs over the peak of his shoulder, like a demonstration. “Not about sex. Just friends, family. Hugs, or a slap on the back, or a brush of hands. Anything that just means they’ve got lots of people around them who care. That the baby won’t be brought into a world where it doesn’t have that. If they don’t get enough happy-smiley vibes, the whole thing just fades: no full heat after it. No fertility, no babies. Birth rate’s probably been way down these last few years,” he added wryly, and Sam could hear that bitter little twist in the corner of his mouth that he got whenever he was mocking himself and secretly meaning it.
The jittery feeling was back, pooling nervous warmth in the pit of Sam’s stomach. With all the stupid prickling in his blood as his body adjusted to the curse, he couldn’t even tell whether it was worry or arousal. Or which he wanted it to be. Where the hell was Gabriel going with this?
“Um?” he offered intelligently, when Gabriel fell silent.
Gabriel huffed a derisive little huff, and dug the tips of his fingers sharply into the back of Sam’s neck. “Nothing. Just. Balm for the body and the soul both. Don’t underestimate it, yeah? Turn over.”
Sam froze.
Because sure, yes, this would all be fascinating if it had stayed abstract and hypothetical, something in a book, if Sam wasn’t naked with Gabriel’s hands all over him and if Gabriel hadn’t said and archangels. And how did that even work? Sam didn’t even really know what an archangel was, apart from “stronger than other angels,” only no way was he asking when Gabriel was pointedly saying they instead of we.
And of course, if all that was so crucial, there was no way Gabriel had - gone into heat, shit - for ten years or more. And now all Sam could think of was the most embarrassing things possible, like barn cat queens with their chests to the ground and their hips tilted up and back, yowling hopefully, or the way even a casual pat on the back would make a bitch in season flag her tail to one side and spread her legs, and… and the way Sam was spread out on the bed pretty much exactly like that right now, and the idea of Gabriel lounging around naked and flushed and panting, and shit, really not helping, brain.
“Um,” he said again, and heard the crack in his voice when he said “I think,” and was about to plead that he couldn’t move again when he realised that would probably lead to Gabriel picking him up again and manhandling him over onto his back, and. This was really uncomfortable.
His hips twitched forward into the mattress again, all of their own accord, and Sam considered a quick and merciful death.
Gabriel’s hand was still for a moment in the small of his back; then the angel laughed, loud and rich. “Kid, I promise I’ve seen boners before.”
“I hate you,” Sam grumbled into his arms.
A bright smirk danced through Gabriel’s voice. “Hey, I’m just impressed you’ve got enough blood in there to blush that hard and to lift that thing.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really,” Gabriel said gleefully, and tickled the back of Sam’s neck. “Is the top foot of all that ridiculous height of yours just backup blood, or something? Because that would actually explain a lot. Ever heard the word ‘hot-headed’?”
“I will shave your head while you sleep,” Sam threatened, and realised too late that that was what Dean would have said.
Gabriel flicked his ear. “I’ll risk it. And I don’t give a shit if your dick is throwing a wild little human-again party all by itself down there. You want me to finish this or not?”
… Sam was really bad at saying no to that voice. Had been ever since it had just belonged to that sly, charismatic, fascinating pedlar, always the first one to reach them every spring. The one Sam had secretly planned to beg an apprenticeship of before everything had turned on its head.
He rolled over, and let his arms flop open on the pillow in a “go ahead, laugh, get it over with” kind of gesture.
Gabriel leered at him brightly, and ruffled his hair. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“You really aren’t as funny as you think you are,” Sam griped, but he couldn’t help smiling a bit, and Gabriel’s eyes were honey-warm and all crinkled up at the edges, and screw it, if he could brush this off, if he could slot it all in so easily under the category of “friend,” then so could Sam. He’d already figured angels were far more casual about sex and nudity and so on anyway, so inappropriate erections were probably normal, right?
And yes, it seemed like Gabriel could just ignore it, not even bother to glance down while he flicked the sheet up over Sam’s hips and began running his hands over Sam’s chest and abs, soothing the muscles there. He kept up a running flow of chatter, baby stories about Castiel with no bite or bitterness or nostalgia, brilliant and charming and so mad that Sam was distracted from the treacherous jumping in his stomach by trying to work out just how much Gabriel was shitting him. So he found himself just lying there with his hand over his eyes, laughing weakly, relaxed and almost happy, giddy with the aftermath of pain, not even bothering to watch the movement of Gabriel’s deft hands over his body. Trusting him.
So when the last wrenching spasm hit, whole body seizing up, the strange prickle of it rushing to the very tips of his fingers and toes, it only made sense to reach out like he would for Dean, to flail for Gabriel. He fastened on a collar and tugged, pulled him in, liked the sudden press of his shoulder hard against Sam’s cheek and rubbed against it like a cat as he rode out the pain. And this time he wasn’t helpless before it: it was he and Gabriel both standing in the way, holding back the tide, soothing it down and keeping things as they should be.
“Okay?” he heard, breathless and low from Gabriel, and Sam nodded fervently because he would be, he was, it was just pain now and it had no hold over him.
Gabriel’s hand spread hot and low over his belly, holding him steady, keeping him human. “That’s my boy,” and his voice was rough and wondering. “Come on.”
And Sam arched his back and fought it down, reclaimed his body, legs and arms and hips and torso and neck and head, all his, all the right shape. Because, after all, his soul was still human, still him; so there was no need for his body to get confused.
He came down slowly, giddy with it. He could feel the warmth of Gabriel near his mouth, his forehead pressed to Sam’s temple. And Gabriel’s breathing, he realised gradually, was all wrong: shallow, hasty puffs of it across Sam’s cheek and lips, not easy and not happy.
Sam turned his head sluggishly on the pillow, eyes too heavy to open, and found the tip of his nose grazing over shaggy stubble.
He tilted his face up, just a little, and his lips brushed against the edge of Gabriel’s chin.
The next puff of breath was a very long time in coming.
Then, “You look good like this,” Gabriel murmured, and there was something in there that Sam couldn’t interpret, didn’t really like. “All sated and warm.”
He started to draw back; and Sam felt a sudden queasy surge of panic, said his name and tightened his hand in his collar, kept him there and pressed in to kiss his cheek. He missed, and found the corner of Gabriel’s jaw instead, right up under his ear. It clenched tight as Gabriel swallowed.
Sam spread one hand, broad and careful, out over Gabriel’s neck and shoulder in his turn, and held him there, stubborn, lips still and dry against the corner of Gabriel’s cheek, too afraid to open his eyes. He had no idea what he was doing here, but it was something to do with the impulse to give something back, with the spiky bitterness in the line of Gabriel’s shoulders whenever Castiel opened his mouth and the easy fondness with which he spoke of Castiel as a baby. The idea of ten years without the touch of family, something that Sam had never realised was so profoundly unnatural, for an angel or a human, because he’d never had to think about it. Because Dean was always there.
Only he wasn’t now, and Sam ached with the loneliness of it.
“Sam,” Gabriel said, like there was a whole book of meaning in that one word but it was written in a language Sam didn’t know.
But Sam had conquered every book-language that he’d come across yet, no matter how much it tried to keep from him.
He smiled against Gabriel’s cheek, tried to make it feel real instead of shaky, and mouthed a second kiss at the corner of Gabriel’s eye.
Gabriel pulled back, and Sam was suddenly very cold all the way down his left side.
“You don’t know what you’re offering,” Gabriel growled, almost as deep as Castiel, then, “Open your eyes.”
Sam opened his eyes, the better to glare. “Screw you. How stupid do you think I am?”
Gabriel looked like a statue, looming over him, stone-grey and stone-hard, nothing like the warmth and amusement of a few minutes ago. “You,” he grated out. “Your people. You are not casual.”
Sam felt his stomach curdle, even though he had only the slimmest idea what Gabriel actually meant. “What about this is casual, Gabriel?” he flung back, and reached out to touch his neck, the sharp curve of it where it became his shoulder and disappeared under his shirt.
Gabriel flinched away.
Sam remembered, horribly belated, that Gabriel was broken. That Sam had helped to break him, so that a simple touch or too much proximity could trigger panic and fight, sometimes. Unpredictably. Especially if he wasn’t expecting it.
And Sam had pretty well forced him to press his hands all over Sam’s body.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and curled his hands into fists, pulling them sharply in against his sides, even as Gabriel’s face shifted into that ugly self-disgusted cringe it did every time he realised his memories had stuck their claws into him.
“Forget it,” Gabriel rapped out, and sneered at the wall. “Not your fault.”
“Kind of is,” Sam mumbled, small and miserable and guilty, and stole a look up at Gabriel under his lashes. “Gabriel. I just wish I could... I’m sorry, okay? Really.”
Gabriel’s bright eyes slid away from his, and his hand beside Sam’s elbow curled into something uncertain.
“Winchesters,” he muttered, pointlessly. Then he looked at Sam again, and his gaze snagged on something, became rough and startled and… hungry, in a way that Sam couldn’t name but thought he understood. And he wavered there, one long breathless moment.
“Gabriel,” Sam said again, softer, and uncurled one hand towards his friend. Because there was something here that he didn’t understand and couldn’t let just pass by, even if it turned out to be a terrible idea. “Come here?”
Hell, he sounded like a freaking kid.
Gabriel’s hand opened carefully, in tiny soft jerks like an evening primrose seeking out the last of the light. It looked weirdly vulnerable - terrifying, and Sam almost pulled back when it crept forward to settle over his hand, because how could he not screw this up?
He worried at his lower lip instead, and turned his hand over to wrap it carefully around Gabriel’s from underneath.
Gabriel looked at him, looked at their hands, and his mouth twitched in a way that made Sam sure he was about to say something cutting and nasty that would break it all into nothing; but he didn’t. He just leaned down stiffly and pressed a kiss of his own, feather-light, to Sam’s forehead. Then, as Sam’s chest squeezed up with startled pleasure, to his temple, to his cheek, and, careful and deliberate, to the tip of his nose.
Sam exhaled, long and messy, and tilted his head up, just far enough.
The first touch of Gabriel’s mouth on his was dry and cautious, like one or both of them was waiting for the punchline. Sam had never kissed anyone on the mouth before, but there were some folk he kissed on the cheek pretty often, and he’d seen plenty of people kissing for real, so he was pretty sure even the most chaste of kisses wasn’t meant to be this… still. And this wasn’t about sex, not exactly, or at least he didn’t think it was, but he meant it. He wanted to mean it.
So he squeezed Gabriel’s hand a little tighter, tugged a little harder, and moved his mouth a little: pressed it in, then let it relax open. Offering.
The hiss of Gabriel’s breath was a sudden cool shock against the heat inside Sam’s mouth. Then he moved, one hurried little jolt forward against Sam’s chest, and opened his mouth hungry and startlingly hot against Sam’s.
Sam let all his breath out in a rush and melted into the pillow, into the unexpectedly strong sweep of Gabriel’s tongue over his lower lip, the sharp clutch of his hand in Sam’s hair, and the insistent, repeated shove of his mouth. There was a terrible gut-deep longing in it, like he was trying to dig in a little deeper and closer with each breath. Like all Sam had had to do was push, and Gabriel had snapped, all the restraint and the mockery of him, and this was the real archangel here. All the power and the weight pressing down into Sam, and all the ferocious years-old loneliness. It was heady, and it was weird as hell, and it was fucking terrifying, but Sam hadn’t run away just because something was scary in years.
And he trusted Gabriel, no matter how desperate, not to take anything that Sam couldn’t give.
Sam wormed his other arm under Gabriel and pulled him in flush against Sam’s side, ignoring the hard throb that was flaring between his legs again, because that wasn’t what this was about. If the power of touch worked to heal the body and the soul, this, what they were doing here, wasn’t about the bodies, no matter what Sam’s might like to think. This was all on the other level.
At least, Sam thought it was.
Gabriel broke away from Sam’s mouth to groan deep and ragged against his throat. The vibration of it sent hot licks of pleasure down Sam’s spine, made him shiver. He turned his head and pressed an awkward sideways kiss into Gabriel’s hair and the top of his forehead where he could reach it, heard himself murmur this startled little “I’ve got you.” Gabriel’s nails bit hard into his shoulder, and Sam suddenly realised, with a panicked little lurch of his stomach, that Gabriel’s face was wet.
Tears.
Sam had never even kissed anyone before; but Gabriel had, and far more than kissed. How much was he going to want, here? How much would it take to help, to mean something?
Or how much would be too much? Was this already too far, too strong? Sam had no freaking clue.
“Gabriel,” he got out, and barely knew his own voice.
Gabriel’s back was firm and smooth under his shirt when Sam slid his arm cautiously around it, moving slowly so as not to startle. It was an awkward manoeuvre, because his wings were folded tight and firm down the length of him, all the red and gold and copper brilliance of them tucked up small as could be.
Sam abruptly had another belated, embarrassing thought. Because that kiss had definitely not been the kind of kiss one normally shares with a friend. Especially another guy. And if archangels - if Gabriel - could have some sort of heat cycle like a… well, say a female angel, instead of any of the more barnyard comparisons that Sam’s brain shied away from, did that mean he wasn’t exactly male? Would that account for… this sort of thing?
Not quite. It wouldn’t account for Sam’s part in it.
Sam added that to the list of things to think about later - it had been building up for a few weeks, one or two more items wouldn’t hurt - and rubbed carefully at Gabriel’s back.
“So. Um. Thanks,” he said, and tried to make it sound like a smile. It came out rueful and embarrassed into Gabriel’s too-soft hair, but it was good enough. “For, you know. These.” He wriggled his fingers a bit against Gabriel’s hand, and against the stiff vanes of feathers.
Gabriel’s chest rose and fell against his shoulder, once, twice. Then he lifted himself up on one elbow and blinked down at Sam, incredulous and wondering and red-eyed and something like fearful.
He was a bit of a mess, actually, and his hair was everywhere, and he looked nothing like the pedlar Sam had been in awe of a couple of months ago. But he still looked like someone Sam would choose.
Sam grinned at him a bit, and Gabriel’s eyes widened, then he groaned.
“You’re gonna be the death of me, kid.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Stop calling me that. Stay?”
Gabriel’s eyes flickered up to the window, startled like he hadn’t noticed the fading of the afternoon light.
“I should…” he began, words slotting into place like the first bricks of a wall, and Sam saw where those walls would rise again until they were sleek and mirrored and impenetrable as ever.
He disentangled his right hand from Gabriel’s, so that he could flick him in the soft skin of his wrist.
“Punch me if it gets weird,” he wheedled, and grinned his most winning grin up into Gabriel’s narrow-eyed glare.
Then Gabriel laughed, and reached for the blankets.
Onwards, for LJ dislikes too many words in one post!
Art by machidieles.
a March-Stalkers Mighty extra
Proud of their strength, and more than mortal size
The gods they challenge, and affect the skies:
Heaved on Olympus tottering Ossa stood;
On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood.
Homer’s Odyssey, trans. Alexander Pope. (Book IX.)
Written for the Sabriel mini-bang, 2012. Artwork by machidieles.
Word Count: 10800.
Pairings: Gabriel/Sam, background Dean/Castiel.
Genre: Slashy pre-slash.
Rating: Mature.
Beta: kototyph
Warnings: Slight elements of PTSD. Hints (without details) at intersexual characteristics.
Spoilers: None (AU).
Summary: If you haven’t read the main story:
The Winchesters live in a small, very isolated town in the middle of the barren monster-ridden marches, which has very little contact with the outside world. The second-worst of the monsters that inhabit their lands are the demons. The very worst are also the most newly arrived, and they are the angels. Dean and Sam have both buried the memories of the silent boy with black wings whom Dean had used to play with as a child, years before any other human every saw an angel. But when Castiel returns to bring an end to the war, and the familiar pedlar Gabriel turns out to have been an angel all along, things get messy - and not only for them.
The hunters, including Sam and Dean, turn on Gabriel and lock him up in the barn; Castiel is shot out of the sky and almost dies before Dean and Sam find him; and finally, Dean has to help the archangel escape and make a wary ally of him, to save Castiel’s life.
Sam has, in the course of the main story, been turned into a dog by tripping an old curse, and has fled the land with Gabriel and Castiel to avoid a kill-or-be-killed situation with the other hunters. Together they’ve just come up with a solution: the curse can’t be lifted, but it can be transmuted, so that Sam is now a skinwalker.
And now that you’ve read the main story, or the summary:
This story is told from Sam’s perspective, while he is out in the wide world with Gabriel, Castiel, Gwen, Rachel, and the other angels. Sam returns to consciousness, human-shaped again after a month on four feet, with Gabriel at his bedside. Gabriel’s fumbling attempts to soothe the pain of transformation tumble them hard and fast towards emotions and vulnerabilities that neither is ready to deal with.
AO3 link.
… Pain.
That was a good starting point for consciousness.
Actually, come to think of it, it was a shitty starting point. Pain hurt.
At least it was definite, though. No mistakes here. That was pain alright.
Sam’s toenails hurt.
Weird. He took a moment to ponder this imponderable. Then another, just to be sure. He concluded, carefully, that he was pretty sure his earwax hurt too. He’d never really thought about his earwax. Maybe it was feeling left out?
Another rough wave of pain snarled its way out from the centre of him, trampling with vicious claws over his gut and liver and up through his throat to the clench of his jaw and fists and legs. He heard the sound it tore from his mouth, ragged and inhuman.
… No. Not inhuman. That was the whole point. That was why they’d done this.
Pain.
Did that mean they’d pulled it off?
“Shit,” he heard himself mutter, stupidly weak. The press of strong thick tongue against the inside of blunt teeth, the hiss of the sibilant over dry lips, the sharp dextrous click of the final consonant. Human-shaped.
How about that.
Then something inside his belly tried to twist itself out of shape, and he lost all his limbs to a fit of desperate trembling.
“Rise and shine, sparkles!” he heard, stupidly chirpy, dim and distant through the pain. “The sun is green, the grass is shining, and Sam has opposable thumbs again!”
Sam felt something that he vaguely remembered as his hand twitch and clutch loosely at the air inside it. “I hate you,” he mumbled, or meant to, but he wasn’t quite sure how to make his tongue obey him again.
There was a chuckle by his ear, low and rich. “That’s what all the ladies say the morning after. Don’t be a cliché, Sammy.”
Huh.
That was an answer. Sam had said something, with his actual mouth, and Gabriel had replied.
Sam laughed with the shock of it, hoarse and rasping; and the movement set off another wave of agony, just because he’d needed that. All the muscles in his torso seized and yanked at once, like they were trying to twist the rest of him into another shape. The laugh struggled to turn itself into a scream, but there was no breath for it to ride, and it collapsed into gasps.
“Maybe we made a mistake,” Gabriel drawled, and Sam was on the edge of panic when his brain caught up with the delighted tease in the angel’s voice, and what the hell? “I mean, kid, you look like shit. Maybe we got some siren or barrow wight in the mix.”
“Gabriel,” Sam croaked out in a plea. He was so thirsty, and his body was twisting itself up from the inside, and Gabriel was right there and he couldn’t reach him, and Sam was so very far from home.
“Right here, kiddo,” came the reply, a little bit softer.
Sam groped blindly in the direction of that voice. His wrist was caught in a gentle, inexorable grip, hot as a furnace (or was Sam just that cold?) and slippery with sweat. Although, come to think of it, maybe the sweat was Sam’s too. There were creeping prickles all over his skin, sending hot and cold shivers all over him.
His hand was returned firmly to lie on his own chest, and the warm touch retreated.
“Yeah, don’t even try.” Not unsympathetic, but smug and comfortable and happy, and - it grated. “Just lie there and take it for a bit. It’ll pass.”
Like it was just a little pain. Like Gabriel thought it wasn’t ripping Sam apart from the inside.
(Dean wouldn’t have let go. Dean would have given him hell for hand-holding, but Dean would have stayed right there the whole time. Probably wouldn’t have eaten or slept either, the idiot, until Sam would have had to tell him to just leave Sam the hell alone already because he couldn’t sleep with Dean hovering right over him all the time like some kind of obsessive owl. Sam’s anchor, or his foundation, or something. Always there. But Dean was a long way away now.)
What if they had made a mistake?
Panic clawed dustily at the inside of his throat, and his jaw seized up and skewed itself viciously, teeth sliding and grating over bone. His backbone writhed, and arched against the bed.
“Hurts,” was all he could choke out, begging.
“Yeah, we know that. You knew that, remember? This whole thing is heaping Pelion on Ossa of unnatural shit, it ain’t meant to go down easy.” And then, brighter and more incongruous against the wringing of Sam’s lungs in his chest, “Hey, what do you get if you cross a sasquatch with a werewolf?”
“Shut up,” Sam snarled, a high edge of terror creeping through at the edges. (And all he could think of was Gabriel’s hands, a pathetic desperate fixation: the damage they’d fixed to Castiel’s wing, the cool wash of sensation that had driven away the pain after he’d startled at Sam’s touch that one time and flung him into a tree, the brush of two fingers that could draw Sam into a dreamscape and give him speech, the warm touch on the back of his neck that said “Hey, I know you’re here, I haven’t forgotten that you’re you, I know this sucks” when everyone else was talking over and around him.) “Gabriel, hurts. Wrong. It’s wrong. Please.” His hand groped, sluggish and pathetically weak, at the folds of the sheet. “Help.”
There was a moment of sickening silence. Sam’s hands and feet ached viciously, trying to twist themselves back into paws, and any minute now those muscles were going to prove themselves stronger than the joints and pop one or two of his toes out of place, and Sam couldn’t stop them. Every time he thought about them they just screwed themselves up further.
Don’t screw with the supernatural, boy. You never know what it’ll make of you once it gets into your blood, but sure as hellfrost it won’t be kind.
Shit. What would Bobby say now?
“Sam,” he heard, quieter and a bit rough. “You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong. I’ve been keeping an eye out good and sharp. Trust me, yeah?”
Something snagged and tore against his tongue, and he felt his mouth fill up with blood.
“Please,” he choked uselessly.
“Hey. Hey,” Gabriel bit out, and then his hand was blessedly cool on Sam’s forearm, setting off a little cascade of hypersensitive pinpricks as it slid over the hairs. “Stop fighting it, you stubborn thick-headed excuse for a human-shaped object. You’re fine, you hear me? Just - just stop trying to tear yourself apart.”
And he wasn’t actually doing anything - Sam knew what angel healing felt like now, and this wasn’t it, it was just a hand on an arm - but for some reason just that little touch took a bit of the edge off, like his body wasn’t on the verge of tearing itself to pieces.
“Fuck off,” he mumbled, and felt something warm and wet well out of the side of his mouth and slide mockingly down his chin.
A dry thumb caught it and rubbed it off, rough and calloused against his skin. Then it froze, like it had been caught doing something highly suspicious, and pulled away.
“Sorry,” Gabriel said, all casual. “I know blood’s the hot new thing in the fashionable set just now, but it was really clashing with your pale and sweaty vibe.”
Like Sam was some shy little damsel who’d go crying to his mother if someone touched him without permission.
He growled something indistinguishable and twisted his arm around clumsily, grabbing for Gabriel’s hand. It retreated a bit, hesitated just long enough for Sam to latch onto it, then curled up like a self-conscious spider as Sam tugged it higher.
“Uh,” Gabriel put in intelligently.
Sam ignored him, and planted his prize firmly just above the top of the sheet, in the centre of Sam’s chest.
“Um. Okay,” Gabriel tried. The fingers squirmed slightly between Sam’s palm and the sweat-slick skin of his breastbone. “You want me to..?”
“Stop it,” Sam breathed. “Better when you touch.”
“Gorgeous sweaty young men naked in bed begging me to touch them? This is some kind of a trap, isn’t it?” Gabriel snapped back.
The curved shells of his fingernails slid half an inch as the loose fist opened a little way. It hovered for a minute, like Gabriel was looking for something, and Sam tried to blink his eyes open to focus on him (or, you know, to glare). The world was a blur of too many colours, and Sam had to squeeze his eyes shut again with a moan as another savage spasm tore through his abdomen.
This one lasted far too long. It took him in its teeth and shook him like a rat, until Sam could feel his head thrashing on the pillow. It was too much, and his body was tired and treacherous and wrung-out. Every muscle was spasming with exhaustion and fierce confusion, and Sam couldn’t even spare the energy to care when he felt tears welling hard and fast from his eyes.
“Sam.” Nails were digging sharp into his chest, and a palm pressing down hot and flat, pinning him to the bed. “You’re doing this to yourself, you useless lump. Come on, you can out-last your sodding brother in a spat, you’re more bull-headed than this. Let go of it.” Then there was a muttered “Fuck,” and, wonder of wonders, that blessed coolness rippling out from the touch, soothing rebellious muscles in its slipstream.
Sam sucked a breath into battered lungs and sobbed it out again, shaking with reaction and relief. The pain was still there, a niggling background throb, gnawing at joints and muscles that were suddenly back to their old shape, but without the savagery of a body trying to remodel itself by main force.
A fingernail flicked his nose. “This is why you lot shouldn’t be trusted with brains,” Gabriel decided. His other hand stayed where it was on Sam’s chest, like it thought it might be noticed if it moved. “You were doing just fine when you were out. Switch on consciousness, and what do you do? Decide you dislocated everything overnight and try to pull yourself out of shape again.”
Sam curled up his fingers into an experimental fist, then spread them out again. No clenching muscles, just twinges and protestations against the stupidly unfamiliar action. He felt a tentative, delighted little wave of triumph, forced his eyes open and grinned at the blur of Gabriel. It felt weak, but he meant it.
“Your bedside manner sucks,” he mumbled around a heavy and bitten tongue.
Gabriel’s teeth flashed white in the mess of colour that was the world. “Go easy on me, sir,” he purred, lewd with that extra edge of bravado that Sam was starting to think meant Gabriel was feeling way out of his depth. “It’s my first time.”
Gabriel had always seemed like he could do anything, before. Do anything, be or say anything, and do it with swagger and charm. Just like, a few short years ago, Sam had been convinced that Bobby knew everything, that there was nothing he couldn’t solve. Sam had revelled in Gabriel’s laughter at the Roadhouse so many times, basked in the brightness of his grin, tried to catch the trick of his ready wit so that Sam could be like that too.
But Bobby hadn’t been able to lift Sam’s curse; and Gabriel had been lying all that time, playing human to save his own life and because he hadn’t had the courage to go home.
Usually it was easy to forget that Gabriel had lived all of his adult life effectively alone, with no one to care for but a horse. Sometimes, though, it kind of forced itself on your notice. But, hey, Sam was mostly used to Dean, so who was he to talk?
“Wouldn’t have guessed,” Sam mumbled, and captured Gabriel’s other hand on the second try. Because he was feeling kind of sick and shaky here, and Dean had always used to rub his back or scratch his hair when Sam was feeling like crap (still did, sometimes, when he was really out of it), and as long as Gabriel was taking instruction…
He clumsily dropped Gabriel’s hand on the pillow in the general vicinity of Sam’s head, and patted it into place. The tips of the angel’s fingers dug in slowly, like he was waiting for the punch line. Then they slid in through the hairs like they had been doing so naturally for weeks into Sam’s ruff, when he’d had one.
Which technically he still did. Or would if he decided to…
Sam shuddered, a full-body twitch of visceral reaction to the thought. The hand on his chest pressed down in response, and Gabriel’s features cut into clearer focus as he leaned forward, out of the direct line of the sunlight burning its way in through the cabin window. “What now, my delicate little manly flower?”
Sam made a face at him, and shook his head minutely on the pillow. His muscles tried to lock up and run for cover again, but Gabriel’s fingers flexed coolly and dismissed the tension before it could set in properly. “Nothing much,” Sam mumbled through a scratched throat. “Just. Water, please?”
That whole “so I’m a skinwalker now” conversation… yep, that could wait for another day. Although honestly, given the options, being technically a cursed dog that could change into a human was a hell of a lot better than just being a cursed dog who was stuck as a dog.
Hell. He was never going to be able to hunt with silver again. Maybe he could discreetly leather-wrap all the parts of the knife that he might have to touch.
Because he had to go back, if there was even a chance of not getting killed the minute he set foot inside the Wall.
Sam hadn’t known, when he’d left, just how bad it would be. Sure, he’d expected to miss Dean. But he’d thought that he’d get over it, he’d enjoy getting out from the stifling always-there blanket of his older brother’s presence, from the limits of a town that felt so small and prosaic compared to what books and the stories of pedlars told him was really out there. He hadn’t expected this lurching uncertainty, like half of one leg was missing. Dean was always there, always at his elbow with a bad joke and a stupid annoying grin. Sam wasn’t really sure he knew who he was, without Dean around.
Gabriel managed to pour him a glass one-handed from the water jug, by dint of resting the glass on Sam’s chest and steadying it with the wrist of one wing as he poured. Then he looked at the glass, looked at Sam, sighed, sat down next to him, and slid the hand in his hair down around his shoulders to manhandle him clumsily into a sitting position. Sam manfully refrained from teasing him about a complete and utter lack of nursing skills, because he was busy trying not to list sideways and slip pathetically out of Gabriel’s arm. Anyway, even if Gabriel was kind of crap at this, it was a hell of a lot better than not having anyone here.
The water was deliciously cool slipping in over Sam’s teeth to lap against the sides of his sore mouth. His tongue still felt too thick and too short, and the blunt human-shaped teeth at the front of his lower jaw were like a stern barrier holding it in place, where it was in the habit of slipping forward to pant. Which was a good thing, because that would be a really embarrassing habit to keep.
The steady band of Gabriel’s arm moved a little behind him, slipping back so that his hand was nestled between Sam’s shoulder blades, and something warm and strong and dry-soft settled up against Sam’s back instead. It took a moment for Sam to place the sensation of feathers, feathers against skin, and the crook of the muscled bone snug around his shoulders. Huh. That was… actually not a bad back rest. And, well, if it was strong enough to lift Gabriel into the air, it was probably strong enough for Sam to lean on, a little.
He’d had plenty of occasion to think of wings as weapons before, and as targets for a bullet. He’d never really thought about them as being handy around the house, or being a comfort.
It was around the third sip of water when Sam’s head cleared enough for him to realise that the sheets had pooled in his lap when he’d sat up, and he was… kind of exposed. Not that Gabriel hadn’t seen him before - no one bothered with modesty much after a really messy or muddy hunt, when it made much more sense just to sluice the worst of it off each other outside with buckets of water before everyone went into their own houses to scrub off - but… not this close, in bed, touching him, with Sam pretty much useless.
He took another hasty gulp of water, to hide the sudden burning in his cheeks. Then he choked on it, and had to have a fit of coughing, which was even more embarrassing. Gabriel confiscated the glass, and squeezed the back of his neck gently, as if he were still dog-shaped.
“You’re not allowed to die,” Gabriel informed him imperiously. “If you killed yourself on a glass of water Castiel would frown at me, and you wouldn’t want to subject me to that.”
Sam made a grumbling noise at him around coughs, but apparently he was too weak and shaken just now even to keep himself sitting up through a coughing fit. Leaning on Gabriel was kind of nice, though. The press of his collarbone against Sam’s shoulder, and the warmth of his body down Sam’s side and the wing wrapped around him from behind, and the occasional scrape of his half-beard as he turned his head, kept at bay the worry about how Sam would even manage to step inside the gate at home without getting a chest full of silver bullets. And there was a cautious warmth in the way he grumbled “tell me you aren’t going to expect me to make you chicken broth, kiddo” that almost sounded like he just might, if Sam asked.
Dean would probably try to shoot Gabriel again when he heard what they’d done, but hey. Castiel had helped too. Not to mention Sam.
Gabriel’s hand shifted a little, just a stretch and reposition, and Sam rolled his shoulder blades back into it appreciatively, hinting like he had as a dog. Gabriel snorted, and began rubbing careful little circles into the skin, under the ticklish touch of feathers.
It could all be a hell of a lot worse.
Sam had had enough of being a grown-up, for now. He’d done it pretty well non-stop for weeks, through some pretty heavy crap, unable to say a word with Dean losing his shit around him and Castiel’s life in serious danger and Gabriel being insufferable and broken and borderline mad, and, oh yes, having to run away from home because he’d got turned into a dog, and still having to be the sensible one around the place, and seriously, Sam was over it. And he hurt. He was pretty sure he could get away with just slumping here against someone else’s body, someone he trusted even if Dean never would, and letting them take care of things.
“That’s good,” he noticed with mild surprise, slurring his words a bit. “Like it’s sort of… reminding the muscles how they’re all meant to fit together.”
Gabriel made a sarcastic little noise that said he wasn’t even going to bother commenting on that. But the self-conscious little circles widened and loosened over the tired skin, brushing feathers aside as they went, until they were long soothing sweeps down one side of his spine and back up the other. Sam groaned, a much happier sound, and let his head fall forward onto his chest. The hand hesitated, then curved up to cup the back of his neck, out in one direction then the other to rub warm and firm over the muscles of his shoulders, then down from there to brush carefully over the outside of his ribcage. The flesh tingled then settled in its wake, grudgingly agreeing to be soothed for a while.
Sam closed his eyes and drifted. Yeah. He could put up with this for a bit.
It lasted maybe five minutes. Then the flesh in his thighs and calves and stomach started to crawl again, tugging at itself like it wanted to pull away from the skin.
Sam whined, scratchy in his throat, then remembered that he was human-shaped and should probably be cursing instead.
The fingertips stilled on the valley of his spine. “Again?”
“Legs,” Sam managed. “Gut. Everywhere you’re not… shit, Gabriel, I hate this.”
That came out as a snarl on a flare of temper, at nothing in particular but his own uselessness; but Sam felt the sharp puff of air against his shoulder as Gabriel flinched, started to say something, then aborted it.
Sam tried to breathe through the spasms, to argue the muscles in his abdomen out of clamping down too hard on his lungs.
“I should have. You know there wasn’t any other way,” Gabriel said abruptly, like he was the one needing the telling, and his hand spread out (ridiculously small, for what he was) over the expanse of Sam’s back. Too warm, for its size. Then the other one settled, tentative as a cat setting paw inside the dog kennels, on Sam’s blanketed knee.
“Screw modesty,” Sam gritted out, and shoved ineffectively at the blanket with hands that felt blunt as paws. “Gabriel, for fuck’s sake, stop being so freaking gallant and just touch me.”
“There’s my clueless provincial little farm boy,” Gabriel cooed derisively, that one little moment of painful sincerity sliding out of reach like it had never been there. The prickly weight of the blanket vanished from Sam’s legs. “You actually have no idea what you sound like when you make demands in that growl of a voice, do you? Lie down and roll over.”
Probably not, Sam wanted to grumble, to chafe against the mocking tone and force it to talk to him properly, but I know what you sound like when you’re trying to turn an uncomfortable conversation into a joke about sex, because that’s where every second conversation has ended up for the last four weeks. But all he found to say was “I can’t,” snappish with pain and impatience over how pathetic it made him, that the thought of moving so many muscles to do something so complicated as turn over onto his belly was overwhelming.
“Okay then,” Gabriel said carefully. “Okay, kiddo. Trust me? For a minute?”
Sam’s stomach cramped as he almost laughed. Because, seriously? Did Gabriel not know how much sheer, terrifying trust it had taken to step into that circle last night under the invisible new moon, to hold still as Castiel drew that strange symbol on his front leg, to drink the bowl Gabriel had set on the ground for him to the dregs?
And before that, every night, letting Gabriel into his dreams, lounging around weirdly intimate in Sam’s own head, talking about nothing important at all, just talking because there, at least, Sam could. And before that, sticking close to Gabriel even after that one time three weeks back (before Sam had worked out how badly he was broken) when Sam had touched him, just a light touch of the nose to the back of his knee to say “I’m here,” and Gabriel had startled so badly that he’d flung Sam into a tree yards away on the other side of the road before he’d even worked out who it was. And before that, choosing to leave with Gabriel rather than return home with Dean and see how long he’d last without going mad or getting killed; and before that, letting Gabriel use something in Sam’s essence to drag Castiel back from the edge of dying without even a question; and before that, hardest of all, looking into his eyes where Gabriel was penned up in the bull press in the barn and snarling as mindlessly as he could, viciously playing the role of monster to the hilt, and Sam had just as stubbornly chosen to see the person there instead. To trust in that.
Trust Gabriel, just for a minute?
Sam nodded, because he couldn’t say the rest.
Gabriel’s arms slid around his ribs and under his knees and Sam was lifted easy as a doll, and turned over in the cradle of one wing. Sam did manage - small mercies! - to wrap his own arms around the pillow and cushion his forehead on it, but for the rest it was Gabriel, careful as if he were handling newly risen dough, lifting one leg from where it had twisted across the other, resettling the angle of his hips, laying him out naked and aching on the sheets. Gabriel’s hand ended up on the back of his calf, soft as a promise, and the spasms quieted for a moment, like they were waiting to see what he would do.
He started out slow, and silent, just a pair of hands cupping the backs of Sam’s calves and pressing gently into the muscle, warm on the skin but cooling the blood beneath it. A strange sensory contradiction, almost feverish, and Sam shivered with it, feet twitching against the sheets.
“Bad?” Gabriel murmured, like he was thinking about making another lewd joke but wasn’t sure how to segue.
Sam huffed quick amusement into the pillow, because the idea of Gabriel not knowing how to make a stupid joke was unexpectedly amusing, and shook his head minutely. Threads of sweat-sticky hair slid over the back of his neck, all distinct on over-sensitive skin.
“Okay. Just. Punch me or something if this gets weird, yeah?”
“Already done,” Sam mumbled, as the hairs of his shins prickled up under the pass of Gabriel’s fingers. Because, after all, this had got weird months ago, pretty much at exactly that moment when Dean and Bobby had rumbled Gabriel as an angel. And Sam wasn’t anything close to proud of what his own reaction had been, that night.
Gabriel’s knuckles brushed over the sensitive skin in the back of Sam’s right knee, then both hands glided around to encircle the muscle at the base of his thigh, callouses scraping up the curve of it. The blood and the skin were tingling together under his touch now as it skimmed up the back of his thigh. Kneading it, like he was re-teaching it its shape. Or remoulding him, completely, like a potter. Making him into something new.
Thinking was not Sam’s friend right now. Especially because the more he woke up the more he was conscious of the whole nudity thing. And also of the inescapable fact that several of the married angel couples he and Gwen had met last week, when Castiel had introduced them to the rest of the garrison, had been same-sex. And, more importantly, that none of the angels seemed to get why he and Gwen had thought that was a bit weird. And that, even more importantly, from some of the remarks Gabriel had dropped, Sam was pretty sure Gabriel had… um. Seen naked guys in a bed before. In a not-innocent kind of way.
And sure, Sam could admit to a nagging curiosity about how that actually worked, but there was no way he was admitting it to Gabriel. Especially not when he was… shit, brushing rough fingertips over the soft inside of Sam’s thigh, just where it was almost but not quite pressed up against the other. It was a fleeting touch, shallower and less lingering than it had been on his shins, but it set the hairs prickling.
Sam had a moment to wonder just how far up Gabriel would go, to imagine (nervously and daringly) that his hands would keep moving up over the top of his thigh to press hot into the meat of his ass. But they didn’t: they vanished, and Sam felt them again, careful and strangely impersonal, starting from the knee of his other leg.
Sam’s brain was waking up slowly, like a spring thaw, little drips and trickles of it at a time.
“This is some kind of angel thing, isn’t it?” His voice came out husky into the pillow, like the jittery feeling under his skin had lodged itself in his throat as well.
Gabriel made an interrogative sort of noise, and pressed a thumb carefully into a knot of muscle. “I’m not healing you, kid, if that’s what you mean. This is just good old-fashioned skin-on-skin.”
Sam’s mind snagged for a moment on the irritation of kid - Gabriel had barely called him that for weeks, so why was he using it so much now? - but he let it go, because this was interesting. And it was a purely intellectual curiosity, which was helpful and maybe even distracting. “That’s what I mean. What you said about faith, when you healed Cas. The way angels need… friends, or family, or whatever, being able to rely on them, how that’s what keeps you going. Because you had to touch him to fix him, and before that Dean and I had to keep touching Cas pretty much all the time or he’d get worse even quicker.”
He didn’t mention those harrowing few hours, while Dean had been away breaking Gabriel out of the barn to save Castiel, when it had just been Sam in the old hunting cabin with an unconscious angel: pressed up against his side, nose pressed in against his neck, just willing him to take the next breath, and the next, because if he moved away even a little Castiel made the most piteous noises like his heart was failing him.
Gabriel could probably figure that bit out anyway.
The angel made a noise like a thoughtful sparrow, and ran the backs of his nails lightly up the meat of Sam’s thigh. It set off a trail of shivers that raced up over the sensitive skin higher up and coiled at the base of Sam’s spine, hot and confusing. “Something like, maybe,” and Gabriel’s voice was sharp and interested again, more like the curious, chatty, relaxed Gabriel who visited Sam’s dreams. “Touch of a friend keeps you grounded, keeps you human, makes things less overwhelming. More literally than for most humans, in your case,” he added, closer to teasing than mocking, and patted the top of Sam’s thigh.
Shit. Sam’s blood was getting too busy now, running hot and interested to parts of his body that weren’t appropriate when you were naked and a friend was just trying to help. And now Gabriel had reached the top of that thigh, and he’d done that leg altogether, and so there was nowhere else for him to go but…
Sam pressed his hips a little more firmly into the mattress, an instinctive kind of embarrassed cringe, and made a high-pitched sort of noise that he hoped sounded conversational.
Gabriel just smoothed his hands firmly up over Sam’s ass and into the small of his back, like it was nothing. Which was… a relief. Definitely. And if the skin was tingling in their wake, that’d go away soon enough, right?
The muscles melted under Gabriel’s fingers as they moved, quicker and firmer and more sure, up over the more familiar territory of Sam’s back. Sam sank into the mattress, finding (almost to his surprise) that the brush and dig of fingertips wasn’t just a relief, but kind of pleasant.
“You know angels go into heat, like most animals?” Gabriel dropped in, conversationally, like that wasn’t a weird and embarrassing thing to bring up while his fingers were skimming down over Sam’s ribs and curling around until they were almost touching his belly. “Female angels. And archangels,” he added, like that bit didn’t matter, when wait, what? “Every two years. Only there’s two stages to it. And in the first stage they just get really clingy. Need touch,” and one hand rose in a broad arc up Sam’s ribs over the peak of his shoulder, like a demonstration. “Not about sex. Just friends, family. Hugs, or a slap on the back, or a brush of hands. Anything that just means they’ve got lots of people around them who care. That the baby won’t be brought into a world where it doesn’t have that. If they don’t get enough happy-smiley vibes, the whole thing just fades: no full heat after it. No fertility, no babies. Birth rate’s probably been way down these last few years,” he added wryly, and Sam could hear that bitter little twist in the corner of his mouth that he got whenever he was mocking himself and secretly meaning it.
The jittery feeling was back, pooling nervous warmth in the pit of Sam’s stomach. With all the stupid prickling in his blood as his body adjusted to the curse, he couldn’t even tell whether it was worry or arousal. Or which he wanted it to be. Where the hell was Gabriel going with this?
“Um?” he offered intelligently, when Gabriel fell silent.
Gabriel huffed a derisive little huff, and dug the tips of his fingers sharply into the back of Sam’s neck. “Nothing. Just. Balm for the body and the soul both. Don’t underestimate it, yeah? Turn over.”
Sam froze.
Because sure, yes, this would all be fascinating if it had stayed abstract and hypothetical, something in a book, if Sam wasn’t naked with Gabriel’s hands all over him and if Gabriel hadn’t said and archangels. And how did that even work? Sam didn’t even really know what an archangel was, apart from “stronger than other angels,” only no way was he asking when Gabriel was pointedly saying they instead of we.
And of course, if all that was so crucial, there was no way Gabriel had - gone into heat, shit - for ten years or more. And now all Sam could think of was the most embarrassing things possible, like barn cat queens with their chests to the ground and their hips tilted up and back, yowling hopefully, or the way even a casual pat on the back would make a bitch in season flag her tail to one side and spread her legs, and… and the way Sam was spread out on the bed pretty much exactly like that right now, and the idea of Gabriel lounging around naked and flushed and panting, and shit, really not helping, brain.
“Um,” he said again, and heard the crack in his voice when he said “I think,” and was about to plead that he couldn’t move again when he realised that would probably lead to Gabriel picking him up again and manhandling him over onto his back, and. This was really uncomfortable.
His hips twitched forward into the mattress again, all of their own accord, and Sam considered a quick and merciful death.
Gabriel’s hand was still for a moment in the small of his back; then the angel laughed, loud and rich. “Kid, I promise I’ve seen boners before.”
“I hate you,” Sam grumbled into his arms.
A bright smirk danced through Gabriel’s voice. “Hey, I’m just impressed you’ve got enough blood in there to blush that hard and to lift that thing.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really,” Gabriel said gleefully, and tickled the back of Sam’s neck. “Is the top foot of all that ridiculous height of yours just backup blood, or something? Because that would actually explain a lot. Ever heard the word ‘hot-headed’?”
“I will shave your head while you sleep,” Sam threatened, and realised too late that that was what Dean would have said.
Gabriel flicked his ear. “I’ll risk it. And I don’t give a shit if your dick is throwing a wild little human-again party all by itself down there. You want me to finish this or not?”
… Sam was really bad at saying no to that voice. Had been ever since it had just belonged to that sly, charismatic, fascinating pedlar, always the first one to reach them every spring. The one Sam had secretly planned to beg an apprenticeship of before everything had turned on its head.
He rolled over, and let his arms flop open on the pillow in a “go ahead, laugh, get it over with” kind of gesture.
Gabriel leered at him brightly, and ruffled his hair. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“You really aren’t as funny as you think you are,” Sam griped, but he couldn’t help smiling a bit, and Gabriel’s eyes were honey-warm and all crinkled up at the edges, and screw it, if he could brush this off, if he could slot it all in so easily under the category of “friend,” then so could Sam. He’d already figured angels were far more casual about sex and nudity and so on anyway, so inappropriate erections were probably normal, right?
And yes, it seemed like Gabriel could just ignore it, not even bother to glance down while he flicked the sheet up over Sam’s hips and began running his hands over Sam’s chest and abs, soothing the muscles there. He kept up a running flow of chatter, baby stories about Castiel with no bite or bitterness or nostalgia, brilliant and charming and so mad that Sam was distracted from the treacherous jumping in his stomach by trying to work out just how much Gabriel was shitting him. So he found himself just lying there with his hand over his eyes, laughing weakly, relaxed and almost happy, giddy with the aftermath of pain, not even bothering to watch the movement of Gabriel’s deft hands over his body. Trusting him.
So when the last wrenching spasm hit, whole body seizing up, the strange prickle of it rushing to the very tips of his fingers and toes, it only made sense to reach out like he would for Dean, to flail for Gabriel. He fastened on a collar and tugged, pulled him in, liked the sudden press of his shoulder hard against Sam’s cheek and rubbed against it like a cat as he rode out the pain. And this time he wasn’t helpless before it: it was he and Gabriel both standing in the way, holding back the tide, soothing it down and keeping things as they should be.
“Okay?” he heard, breathless and low from Gabriel, and Sam nodded fervently because he would be, he was, it was just pain now and it had no hold over him.
Gabriel’s hand spread hot and low over his belly, holding him steady, keeping him human. “That’s my boy,” and his voice was rough and wondering. “Come on.”
And Sam arched his back and fought it down, reclaimed his body, legs and arms and hips and torso and neck and head, all his, all the right shape. Because, after all, his soul was still human, still him; so there was no need for his body to get confused.
He came down slowly, giddy with it. He could feel the warmth of Gabriel near his mouth, his forehead pressed to Sam’s temple. And Gabriel’s breathing, he realised gradually, was all wrong: shallow, hasty puffs of it across Sam’s cheek and lips, not easy and not happy.
Sam turned his head sluggishly on the pillow, eyes too heavy to open, and found the tip of his nose grazing over shaggy stubble.
He tilted his face up, just a little, and his lips brushed against the edge of Gabriel’s chin.
The next puff of breath was a very long time in coming.
Then, “You look good like this,” Gabriel murmured, and there was something in there that Sam couldn’t interpret, didn’t really like. “All sated and warm.”
He started to draw back; and Sam felt a sudden queasy surge of panic, said his name and tightened his hand in his collar, kept him there and pressed in to kiss his cheek. He missed, and found the corner of Gabriel’s jaw instead, right up under his ear. It clenched tight as Gabriel swallowed.
Sam spread one hand, broad and careful, out over Gabriel’s neck and shoulder in his turn, and held him there, stubborn, lips still and dry against the corner of Gabriel’s cheek, too afraid to open his eyes. He had no idea what he was doing here, but it was something to do with the impulse to give something back, with the spiky bitterness in the line of Gabriel’s shoulders whenever Castiel opened his mouth and the easy fondness with which he spoke of Castiel as a baby. The idea of ten years without the touch of family, something that Sam had never realised was so profoundly unnatural, for an angel or a human, because he’d never had to think about it. Because Dean was always there.
Only he wasn’t now, and Sam ached with the loneliness of it.
“Sam,” Gabriel said, like there was a whole book of meaning in that one word but it was written in a language Sam didn’t know.
But Sam had conquered every book-language that he’d come across yet, no matter how much it tried to keep from him.
He smiled against Gabriel’s cheek, tried to make it feel real instead of shaky, and mouthed a second kiss at the corner of Gabriel’s eye.
Gabriel pulled back, and Sam was suddenly very cold all the way down his left side.
“You don’t know what you’re offering,” Gabriel growled, almost as deep as Castiel, then, “Open your eyes.”
Sam opened his eyes, the better to glare. “Screw you. How stupid do you think I am?”
Gabriel looked like a statue, looming over him, stone-grey and stone-hard, nothing like the warmth and amusement of a few minutes ago. “You,” he grated out. “Your people. You are not casual.”
Sam felt his stomach curdle, even though he had only the slimmest idea what Gabriel actually meant. “What about this is casual, Gabriel?” he flung back, and reached out to touch his neck, the sharp curve of it where it became his shoulder and disappeared under his shirt.
Gabriel flinched away.
Sam remembered, horribly belated, that Gabriel was broken. That Sam had helped to break him, so that a simple touch or too much proximity could trigger panic and fight, sometimes. Unpredictably. Especially if he wasn’t expecting it.
And Sam had pretty well forced him to press his hands all over Sam’s body.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and curled his hands into fists, pulling them sharply in against his sides, even as Gabriel’s face shifted into that ugly self-disgusted cringe it did every time he realised his memories had stuck their claws into him.
“Forget it,” Gabriel rapped out, and sneered at the wall. “Not your fault.”
“Kind of is,” Sam mumbled, small and miserable and guilty, and stole a look up at Gabriel under his lashes. “Gabriel. I just wish I could... I’m sorry, okay? Really.”
Gabriel’s bright eyes slid away from his, and his hand beside Sam’s elbow curled into something uncertain.
“Winchesters,” he muttered, pointlessly. Then he looked at Sam again, and his gaze snagged on something, became rough and startled and… hungry, in a way that Sam couldn’t name but thought he understood. And he wavered there, one long breathless moment.
“Gabriel,” Sam said again, softer, and uncurled one hand towards his friend. Because there was something here that he didn’t understand and couldn’t let just pass by, even if it turned out to be a terrible idea. “Come here?”
Hell, he sounded like a freaking kid.
Gabriel’s hand opened carefully, in tiny soft jerks like an evening primrose seeking out the last of the light. It looked weirdly vulnerable - terrifying, and Sam almost pulled back when it crept forward to settle over his hand, because how could he not screw this up?
He worried at his lower lip instead, and turned his hand over to wrap it carefully around Gabriel’s from underneath.
Gabriel looked at him, looked at their hands, and his mouth twitched in a way that made Sam sure he was about to say something cutting and nasty that would break it all into nothing; but he didn’t. He just leaned down stiffly and pressed a kiss of his own, feather-light, to Sam’s forehead. Then, as Sam’s chest squeezed up with startled pleasure, to his temple, to his cheek, and, careful and deliberate, to the tip of his nose.
Sam exhaled, long and messy, and tilted his head up, just far enough.
The first touch of Gabriel’s mouth on his was dry and cautious, like one or both of them was waiting for the punchline. Sam had never kissed anyone on the mouth before, but there were some folk he kissed on the cheek pretty often, and he’d seen plenty of people kissing for real, so he was pretty sure even the most chaste of kisses wasn’t meant to be this… still. And this wasn’t about sex, not exactly, or at least he didn’t think it was, but he meant it. He wanted to mean it.
So he squeezed Gabriel’s hand a little tighter, tugged a little harder, and moved his mouth a little: pressed it in, then let it relax open. Offering.
The hiss of Gabriel’s breath was a sudden cool shock against the heat inside Sam’s mouth. Then he moved, one hurried little jolt forward against Sam’s chest, and opened his mouth hungry and startlingly hot against Sam’s.
Sam let all his breath out in a rush and melted into the pillow, into the unexpectedly strong sweep of Gabriel’s tongue over his lower lip, the sharp clutch of his hand in Sam’s hair, and the insistent, repeated shove of his mouth. There was a terrible gut-deep longing in it, like he was trying to dig in a little deeper and closer with each breath. Like all Sam had had to do was push, and Gabriel had snapped, all the restraint and the mockery of him, and this was the real archangel here. All the power and the weight pressing down into Sam, and all the ferocious years-old loneliness. It was heady, and it was weird as hell, and it was fucking terrifying, but Sam hadn’t run away just because something was scary in years.
And he trusted Gabriel, no matter how desperate, not to take anything that Sam couldn’t give.
Sam wormed his other arm under Gabriel and pulled him in flush against Sam’s side, ignoring the hard throb that was flaring between his legs again, because that wasn’t what this was about. If the power of touch worked to heal the body and the soul, this, what they were doing here, wasn’t about the bodies, no matter what Sam’s might like to think. This was all on the other level.
At least, Sam thought it was.
Gabriel broke away from Sam’s mouth to groan deep and ragged against his throat. The vibration of it sent hot licks of pleasure down Sam’s spine, made him shiver. He turned his head and pressed an awkward sideways kiss into Gabriel’s hair and the top of his forehead where he could reach it, heard himself murmur this startled little “I’ve got you.” Gabriel’s nails bit hard into his shoulder, and Sam suddenly realised, with a panicked little lurch of his stomach, that Gabriel’s face was wet.
Tears.
Sam had never even kissed anyone before; but Gabriel had, and far more than kissed. How much was he going to want, here? How much would it take to help, to mean something?
Or how much would be too much? Was this already too far, too strong? Sam had no freaking clue.
“Gabriel,” he got out, and barely knew his own voice.
Gabriel’s back was firm and smooth under his shirt when Sam slid his arm cautiously around it, moving slowly so as not to startle. It was an awkward manoeuvre, because his wings were folded tight and firm down the length of him, all the red and gold and copper brilliance of them tucked up small as could be.
Sam abruptly had another belated, embarrassing thought. Because that kiss had definitely not been the kind of kiss one normally shares with a friend. Especially another guy. And if archangels - if Gabriel - could have some sort of heat cycle like a… well, say a female angel, instead of any of the more barnyard comparisons that Sam’s brain shied away from, did that mean he wasn’t exactly male? Would that account for… this sort of thing?
Not quite. It wouldn’t account for Sam’s part in it.
Sam added that to the list of things to think about later - it had been building up for a few weeks, one or two more items wouldn’t hurt - and rubbed carefully at Gabriel’s back.
“So. Um. Thanks,” he said, and tried to make it sound like a smile. It came out rueful and embarrassed into Gabriel’s too-soft hair, but it was good enough. “For, you know. These.” He wriggled his fingers a bit against Gabriel’s hand, and against the stiff vanes of feathers.
Gabriel’s chest rose and fell against his shoulder, once, twice. Then he lifted himself up on one elbow and blinked down at Sam, incredulous and wondering and red-eyed and something like fearful.
He was a bit of a mess, actually, and his hair was everywhere, and he looked nothing like the pedlar Sam had been in awe of a couple of months ago. But he still looked like someone Sam would choose.
Sam grinned at him a bit, and Gabriel’s eyes widened, then he groaned.
“You’re gonna be the death of me, kid.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Stop calling me that. Stay?”
Gabriel’s eyes flickered up to the window, startled like he hadn’t noticed the fading of the afternoon light.
“I should…” he began, words slotting into place like the first bricks of a wall, and Sam saw where those walls would rise again until they were sleek and mirrored and impenetrable as ever.
He disentangled his right hand from Gabriel’s, so that he could flick him in the soft skin of his wrist.
“Punch me if it gets weird,” he wheedled, and grinned his most winning grin up into Gabriel’s narrow-eyed glare.
Then Gabriel laughed, and reached for the blankets.
Onwards, for LJ dislikes too many words in one post!
Art by machidieles.