Pelion, with all its woods: Deleted and unfinished scenes
So, Pelion was originally going to be much longer: one scene from each of the weeks that Gabriel, Sam, Castiel, Gwen, and Rachel were Outside, told in such a way that they conveyed a sense of what had been going on throughout the rest of the week. But that one central scene, with Gabriel and Sam, just kept getting longer and longer, and I didn't have much free time. The other problem was, of course, the one scene with Gabriel and Sam is fairly simple, and doesn't need a lot of context, but start introducing the other characters and their various grievances with each other and discussions about plot, and suddenly I'd be needing to provide a very hefty summary. And this was intended for the Sabriel minibang, and therefore needed to stand on its own.
So, here's the sketch for the other weeks. Only week 1 is complete.
Also there is a sketched attempt to make the massage scene turn porny, but the boys weren't up for it. So to speak.
Week one.
Castiel and Gabriel were arguing again. Or, you know, still.
It was polite most of the time, and brittle as ice.
Castiel was… reserved. Too reserved: he was awkward with Gabriel in a way that was too obviously different from the uncertain warmth he had with Sam, the familiar command with which he addressed Rachel, and the grave, distant courtesy he kept for Gwen. When the pain in his broken wing was too much, it was Sam’s broad shoulders he’d lean on to lift himself to his feet, Gwen’s or Rachel’s arm that he’d reach for to get back to the wagon and its pallet bed; and when he had to address Gabriel, there was a painful little note hidden away in the gravel of his voice that sounded like reproach, which no other tone could erase.
Gabriel just alternated between snappy, sarcastic comebacks that didn’t really mean anything but sounded smart enough to cover that up, and a tight-lipped, ferocious kind of tenderness that he obviously didn’t know what to do with, but which left him painfully vulnerable.
They hadn’t actually started yelling yet. Sam almost wished they would.
“You should be resting,” Gabriel said, all abrupt and off-handish and standing half a foot too close so that he loomed over where Castiel was sitting in the grass, helping Gwen sort the usable potatoes from the useless.
“I believe a three-hour morning nap is generally considered sufficient even for an infant, brother,” Castiel said, so mild and formal that the last word came across like a slap in the face.
Gabriel took a quick step back, like he’d just noticed he wasn’t standing where he’d meant to be, and shoved his hands hard into his pockets. “Not that you’d know,” he threw out tangentially, eyeing the tree bark behind Castiel like it was a personal enemy. “You were a menace when you were tiny. Never more than twenty minutes during the day, and poor Mother could only wish for a three-hour stretch at night without having to resettle you.”
“No, Gabriel.” Castiel frowned distantly at a green potato before setting it aside. Sam couldn’t see the blue of his eyes under the dark lashes, and despite the calm of his voice, the set of his wings and shoulders was angular and tense. “That was Balthazar.”
You remember, our other brother, he didn’t have to say. The one who was killed last month, by the humans you’ve spent ten years making nice with.
Gabriel went very still. Then he muttered, “Sure, because one noisy brat is so different from all the others,” and stalked away.
Castiel lifted his head to watch him go, and he didn’t look angry, or disappointed, or hurt. He looked helpless. It was a strange look on him.
Gwen carefully didn’t notice anything, but Sam could see the hard line of her mouth twisting into its well-practised why-am-I-the-only-sensible-person-in-the-room-even-when-we’re-sitting-outside shape. He should probably be offended by that, except for the way, well, he technically wasn’t a person anymore. And couldn’t exactly do anything to help.
To be fair to Castiel, Sam would probably be kind of pissed too if it had been Dean who’d decided to wander off for ten years and let everyone think he was dead. Especially since it seemed (from little half-allusions Sam had heard) that there had been some kind of war, and Gabriel’s absence had left some sort of scary power vacuum. Both angels were pointedly not talking about it in a way that suggested Castiel was determinedly, fiercely assuming Gabriel would now step in to make all the angels magically happy again.
Right now, Gabriel was crooning loudly over his reliable old mare, having spent most of the morning lovingly polishing his wagon and taking inventory of every single thing in his stock. Including re-weighing every silver ingot and bolt of silk. It looked suspiciously like a very unsubtle way of determinedly, fiercely asserting that he was damn well going to keep right on being an itinerant pedlar.
To be fair to Gabriel..?
Sam was pretty sure he’d missed his little brothers like hell. And he’d spent ten years doing the whole travelling from town to town thing, so he was really good at smooth small talk and sales patter (and charm, Sam wasn’t too proud to admit). But that wasn’t the same thing as learning how to work, every damn day for years, at being close to someone without driving each other up the wall. Working out what to say to someone you seriously care for when you’ve seriously messed up. And that was something Sam knew more than a little bit about.
So he could understand Gabriel being kind of useless when it came to working out how to talk to Castiel again, even if Gabriel had been in perfectly sound mind and not all screwed up over what had happened (what Sam had helped to do to him) when Dean and Bobby and everyone back home had worked out that the pedlar wasn’t human after all.
He was still being a dick, though. They both were. Sam had had plenty of time to try to come with excuses for both of them - not like he could do anything else but think - but he couldn’t argue away that fact.
Sam’s world had changed so much in the week (only a week!) since he’d been stupid enough to stumble into that ancient impish curse, or whatever it had been. Castiel had changed from a half-forgotten childhood memory to flesh and blood. There were friends who were technically enemies but whom Sam was determined to turn to allies, and monsters who were people. The borders of their land, of the only land Sam had ever been able to imagine, were disappearing behind them in the dust of the road. And Sam himself was different: a monster now, technically, but a monster who still felt human, who still thought human (or did he? Was he just kidding himself there?).
And okay, so he was running away, but it wasn’t like anyone back at home (except Dean, and maybe Bobby) would exactly want him around when he was like this. And by hanging around, he’d just be making things harder on them, making them cover for him, making them try too hard to treat him right. What other option was there besides running off with the pedlar who had apparently been an angel all along? Only apparently Gabriel wasn’t only an angel but an archangel, whatever that meant, and Sam couldn’t ask all the questions he wanted to, about everything, everything that no one was saying, because he was stuck with this stupid curse.
The world had changed so much, and everyone was being hopelessly dense about it, and Sam had so many things he kept wanting to tell people and ask people and shout at them until they had to take notice (like dragon’s blood, guys, stop sulking and just yell or hug or wrestle it out), and he couldn’t even speak.
(When Gwen had met Castiel, he had gone very still for a moment, leaning painfully against the tall front wheel of the wagon. Then he had tilted his head very slowly sideways like some weird bird, and said, “I recognise you.”
It had been the most alien Sam had ever seen him look, with his eyes the pale blue of the sky right before snow. Sam wasn’t sure exactly who had loosed the bullet that had broken Castiel’s wing, in that disaster of a hunt, but it could just as well have been Gwen as anyone else. And then there was every other hunt, and who knew how well angels could pick out faces from the air. Who knew how many angels Castiel had seen killed by humans. By Sam and Dean, among others.
Gwen’s chin had lifted and her eyes had gone wide, that little-girl gulp of stark fear that Sam hadn’t seen on her for years, and he’d realised in a strange worried way that this would be the first time, for all the years hunting them down with horse and hound and gun, that she’d ever heard an angel speak. Apart from Gabriel, who was the exception to everything.
“And you’re the one who ambushed the hunt last week,” she’d said bluntly, and then Sam had noticed the empty holster and sheathe at her belt and figured that Gabriel must already have taken all her weapons off her, so she was facing down two angels all defenceless and alone. “Guess we winged you after all. Where’s Sam?”
Castiel had blinked at her like she was a puzzling animal, and looked at Gabriel with something like wary resignation. “Why is she here?”
Gabriel had shrugged, and his wings had folded away behind him and vanished, so it was just the pedlar and Sam’s cousin standing there together, which would have looked perfectly normal a few weeks back before any of this had begun. “I might have made a few rocks come down. And a giant. Maybe. This one ended up on the wrong side, figured I knew where Sam was, and wouldn’t let me drop her back where she’s meant to be until I proved he’s not mince.”
… Great. Sam got to star in his own personal one-man freak show.
Castiel’s frown had dropped to Sam, where he was standing half beside and half in front of the injured angel, because he really didn’t like having his friends and his cousin staring thoughtfully at each other’s throats. “Is that wise?”
Gabriel’s shrug had said “of course not,” but Sam had already worked out the way to minimum bloodshed and screw it, he’d just have to hope Gabriel had also taken anything silver she had.
So he’d slunk forward, and used the little stylus that Castiel had carefully strapped to his arm to scratch hi gwen into the dust of the road. Then, as she’d blinked at him in slow horror, a sheepish sorry?.
It hadn’t gone well. But no one had died.)
Castiel said something, low and dark and probably related to nothing more important than potatoes, but in that tone he had that made it sound like the world was about to end. Sam pretended he couldn’t see Gabriel straining to hear.
Sam got to his feet, padded over to where the mare was hobbled, and flopped down there instead, to sprawl out beside Gabriel instead of on the other side of the clearing. Because that was about as useful as he could be right now.
Gabriel blinked, looked at Sam like he wasn’t sure what to do with him, then went to find the curry comb. Even though the poor horse had already been groomed to within an inch of her life this morning.
Soon, Rachel would be back, and Sam could devoutly hope she’d have news. She was meant to be gathering together all the angels of Castiel’s garrison (apparently she was his lieutenant, or something) and telling them to withdraw from the human lands. Castiel had hardly said any more than that, so Sam wasn’t sure if that meant forever, or even why they’d been there in the first place, but it was a good start, right?
And when she got back, they might be able to start out. For… wherever they were going.
Neither angel would speak about it.
(When Rachel had seen Gabriel, before she’d even finished folding her wings from landing, she’d punched him, hard.
“Ow! The hell was that for?”
“All this time,” she’d hissed into his face, and Sam had had to resist the temptation to slink under the steps of the wagon, because it was one thing to hang around with Castiel and Gabriel, but this was an angel, one he didn’t know, and she was kind of terrifying even for a normal person. “All this time you’ve been alive and just choosing not to come back? Have you got any idea what it’s been like?”
Gabriel had gaped, one hand half-raised to the reddened patch over his cheekbone; then he’d narrowed his eyes, jabbed a finger at her, and smirked without humour.
“See, that? Right there? That was why I couldn’t go back.”
“Coward,” she’d spat out, disgusted, and stalked away.
Gabriel had just sort of looked at Castiel, like he was hoping for a shared eyeroll and an “aren’t women crazy?”, and Castiel had shrugged and looked a bit uncomfortable.
“I wasn’t going to say it,” was all he’d offered.)
And of all the people for Sam to be stuck Outside with, watching angels bicker: a hunter who still wasn’t sure that she shouldn’t be killing either of them - possibly even Sam - but who was realistic enough to know she was dead out here alone.
As far as Gwen was concerned, Castiel and Gabriel weren’t people. She was hardly going to step in and try to mediate their little family dramas.
Sam sighed, and dropped his head back onto his paws.
His paws. Seriously. What a screw-up.
Week two.
Sam flew through the air, and connected hard with the pale trunk of a birch.
It was sad, really, Sam’s life. Specifically, the fact that colliding with trees airborne happened to him often enough that he had no trouble self-diagnosing from the crack and give of his own body. By the time he’d slid down to the ground at the base of the tree, before he’d even heard Gabriel’s rough intake of breath behind him, Sam had catalogued three badly bruised ribs, two slightly cracked, none really broken, a lot of fun bruises to muscle and flesh, and a shallow stab wound just over his hip because of course there’d been a narrow stump of a branch sticking out at just that angle right there.
Also a definite bruised ego. He knew his nose was wet, but he hadn’t thought it was that cold.
He made a fuzzy sort of mental note not to go poking it into the backs of people’s knees in future, because apparently that was startling.
“Sam,” Gabriel said behind him, tight and brittle, and he sounded like he was the one who’d been hurt. Weird. “Sam.”
Then Gabriel was touching him, a warm hand on the back of his neck and between his shoulders, which he couldn’t feel properly, because, seriously, fur, and this felt odd for some reason. There was something peculiar about it and Sam’s brain just wasn’t pinning it down.
Sam was hazily sure, though, that the hand on his ruff was shaking.
He tried to make a reassuring, cheerful sort of noise. It came out as a whimper, but maybe a happy sort of one. He didn’t know. Dean was the expert on dogs, not him.
Gabriel’s hands, curving carefully down along his spine to what would have been the small of his back if he’d been the right shape
and okay, so maybe sam was still a bit infatuated.
gabriel going pale and dropping to his knees “Shit, shitshitshit.” reaching out trying to make sure he’s okay.
This week Sam is realising Gabriel’s touch aversion and how that works and how Gabriel responds to his own panics - trying to work out when was the last time he’dseen gabriel touch anyone, or let anyone touch him. Gabriel hating his own reactions, hating to be touched because it reminds him that he can’t be touched and is screwed up.
Still in awe of gabriel, the cool funny pedlar with the allre of the exotic, trying to reconcile with this broken man who was struggling to work out what you did after you broke.
Castiel asking Sam what happened to Gabriel; Sam explains, bare bones and broken sentences, maybe with Gwen. Castiel doesn’t quite understand why this is so traumatic as there was little physical abuse, because Gwen and Sam don’t really convey a very powerful impression and because Castiel has a hard time imagining it, or imagining his big brother actually powerless, feeling powerless.
castiel
we were his friends
stabbed + collared + locked him up like animal
+ left him there
etc, make him understand, as short and evocative as possible in sam’s scratchings
“Thank you, Sam.” buffs out the writing with his foot so that Gabriel won’t see it.
Week three.
They reach the angel settlement. Sam geeks out over angel society and how it all works, but is becoming increasingly frustrated with his own inability to interact and speak.
Gabriel (also feeling isolated and frustrated but for different reasons) starts visiting Sam’s dreams. Giving Sam the chance to rant, giving Sam answers, just like Sam had for him back in the barn. Letting him know he was still real.
Sam’s doubts about ever fitting in again, being the freak he’s always half thought he was. How does he sit quietly on a werewolf hunt again, not sure whether he wants to try to reach them and reason with them or slaughter them far more viciously for resembling the violent freak he’s determined not to be.
Because how could sam ever possibly fit in again? How could either of them go back? Both broken freaks without a home. (After meeting up with other angels and realising just how much gabriel sticks out, just how impossible being the sole archangel who was theoretically dead and who knows so little of recent politics is, and also can’t be touched when touch is such an important part of angel interaction.)
They come up with a plan for fixing sam.
Week four.
They change Sam into a skinwalker (i. e., just the extant Pelion scene).
The following snippet of dialogue obviously never happened, as Sam passed out in the process of the ritual, so it counts as its very own little deleted scene even if it never got properly written up:
After they turn sam back:
Castiel: Is that him?
G: Yup. That’s Winchester the second.
C (head on one side thoughtful looking at Sam who’s lying shivering on the ground trying to work limbs out): He’s very tall.
G makes a thoughtful noise, “He’s very naked.”
C points out that they are going to have to find him clothes somewhere.
G ponders whether they have to (because when in doubt, leer).
Sam decided that this was an excellent moment to remember what his tongue was for. “Yes. Yes, we do.”
Gabriel sadface. “Why did we give him his voice back, Castiel? Why couldn’t we have found some way to keep him our pretty pretty mute slave forever so he couldn’t argue?”
S, grinning broad and happy at him, “You know you aren’t nearly as creepy as you think you are.”
“Hey there, Sam-bug.”
“Hey. You still don’t get to call me that.”
If handjob? Segue to heavier touching via the vicious twinges of the parts of the body that aren’t getting attention, G making brash joke because that’s easier than uncomfortableness, accidentally ending up there, G goes with the suave seductive look.
Gabriel wouldn’t deliberately take things in a sexual direction. But once they were he’d make jokes as brash and lewd as possible, brilliant and charming and mad, try his best to make this seem normal rather than uncomfortable, not realising Sam’s just following his lead here. The sort of lewd jokes men tell around a beer in the fields, but hands still gentle and careful.
Offers to take care of that? Sure, this is something lots of guys/angels do to help each other out among friends. Loud brash “bullshitting because uncomfortable” voice- which Sam doesn’t recognise at the time, but which he uses later in a different context and Sam recognises in retrospect.
Sam lying there with his hand over his eyes laughing weakly, trusting him, relaxed and giddy and happy, light-headed after the pain, not even watching the movement of Gabriel’s hands over his body. Relieved this seems to be slotting so neatly in under the friends category - after all, he’s seen quite a few friends and hunting buddies naked, esp in the context of wounds and illness.
If they get so far as Have A Helpful Handjob: midway through, body seizing up, strange prickling rushing sensation in fingers and toes, wanting to grab something, flails around a bit then grabs at G’s collar, pulls him in, liking the feel of his shoulder against Sam’s cheek, rubbing against it, writhing into his touch. “Okay?” breathless and low from G, and Sam nodding fervently and rolling his hips into it and making little noises, enjoying making noises, “that’s my boy, come on,” can feel the warmth of G near his mouth, breath on cheek and lips, then G’s forehead pressing against his and finishes him off like that.
Sam insists on returning the favour, G wavers but the hunger and the twitch when Sam looks at him aren’t really resistible; Sam drags G from lying on his side on the edge of the bed to lying on his back in the centre, with Sam looming over him on his elbow and one leg wrapped around G’s; Sam is gentle, keeps pressing kisses to his face and neck and murmuring startled “I’ve got you”s to G’s moans; G turns and buries his face in Sam’s neck to hide watering eyes, nails biting into his shoulder; just at the end he gives up and goes for the mouth hungrily. Afterwards, coming down, panting out an apology “got carried away”. “Hey,” lightly, then more seriously when G won’t meet his eyes, “Hey. Thank you. That was…amazing.” nuzzling into temple. G stares at him incredulity wonder bit of fear, looking up and down, groans, “You’re gonna be the death of me, kid.” “Stay?” “I should…” makes a move to go, half-hearted, then concedes and makes it a move to get a wet cloth instead. Stays, being an octopus. Sam drifts off.
Later Gwen pokes her head in to go FOOD ANYONE? where they are all draped nakedly over each other and Sam’s still asleep. G snarks through an explanation that it’s easier for Sam if he’s being touched, Gwen “So that’s why the whole place stinks of sex, huh?” mumble, defensive arm around Sam, but no reaction from her except “You two gonna be out in half an hour, or what?” “… That’s it?” “Well, the way he’s draped all over you says he’s happy, and it’s not like you’re going to knock him up, so.”
Waking up, Sam blinks into consciousness, works out where he is, brilliant happy smile blossoming all over. “Hey there.” nuzzling into G’s cheek. G allows ‘hey’, and pats his back a bit. “food out there for us” kissing his ear, playful and sleepy “so you’re gonna be all awkward and worried about this, huh?” playing along uncomfortably, letting him in to kiss his throat “what? no! angels don’t have feelings, what books have you been reading?” laughing into his neck “okay then. i’ll be all manly and stoic and pretend nothing happened at all,” peeking at him happy and eyes twinkling with the ridiculousness of it, then kissing his way in along his jaw towards his chin. “Sam,” catches his mouth and kisses him long and slow until he can feel him fattening up against his hip, then lets him go. “Sam. You are… a brilliant, beautiful, fucking amazing lump of humanity with a wonderful life ahead of you. I’m a broken-down loner of an archangel who can’t even look after my little brother and can’t manage to be an angel or a human properly.” watches it settle in, watches the indignation and the bitchface rising, looks away. “Let’s get you home, yeah?” silence (small part of him wishes Sam would fight for him, would want to keep him and say to hell with everything else, but as if that would ever work out, and he wouldn’t be able to let him fight for it). “Okay. Fine.” (G shoulders slump) hurt and awkward, didn’t even sound angry. (too young to be angry about it, doesn’t really understand what all that is meant to mean, has absolutely no context for this)
Week five.
Making their way back towards the human’s home. Scenic route! Flying together, seeing wonderful things, Sam can’t stop talking and asking and exclaiming and discovering, and that at least he and Gabriel can do together even if Gabriel’s still being all weird if things get intimate at all.
The way Gabriel talks about family… why leave?
Because they were killing each other, and wanted me to join in. And that was worse [than not having them at all].
Week six.
Approaching home, Gabriel realises Castiel means to not just drop them off at the border but come right in. Castiel, of course, has business with Lucifer and the demons, but Gabriel doesn’t realise how deeply he’s personally committed himself to that, and is more interested in keeping angels and humans away from each other than wiping out the last of the demons within those lands. Gabriel suspects he’s infatuated with Dean - tries to warn him off Dean, “he’d put a bullet through your head in a moment if he thought it’d get him a nice pat on the head from Singer”.
Sam overhears this and charges into the argument.
G: Stay out of this, Sam.
Seeing red, slow dangerous surge of anger rising, Screw you, Gabriel, tha’ts my brother you’re talking about.
Gabriel insists Castiel can’t trust him.
S: Look. There’s two people in the world who can trust Dean absolutely, and that’s Castiel and me.
(Sam attributes this to them both counting as ‘little brother’ to Dean.)
(Uncertain Castiel, because for him the categories of brother and him-and-Dean are mutually exclusive - after all, Dean’s kissed him, fairly passionately, so ‘brother’ can’t be right. Not that he’d mention this aloud.)
G: Little brother. Right. So he’s going to string you along then fob it all off as being brotherly. That’s just great.
C squinting at Gabriel, “Your arguments are inconsistent.”
G: “I don’t want you hurt.”
C: “Then you shouldn’t have left.”
wince, Gabriel leaves, Sam mutters, “Below the belt, Cas.”
confused Castiel does not understand what’s wrong with his belt.
“I mean not fair,” and then “You know he only left because he didn’t want to see you and everyone else hurt, yeah?”
“His departure only kept him from seeing it. It didn’t keep it from happening.”
They were going home. (Return home, facing up to it, facing up to being freaks.)