[Fic] Where the Streets Have no Name

[youaregonecas]

Title: Where the Streets have No Name (Second part to the Ripped Up the Ending series)
Author: youaregonecas
Written for: otpfic_a_month
prompt: travel
Wordcount: 4.683 words
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Sam/Gabriel
Tags: end!verse, reverse!verse
Warning: (skip) end!verse, falling angel Sam, human Gabriel, angst, hurt/comfort, fading grace, reverse!verse, low self confidence, hurt. roadtrip
Summary: Sam loses more grace, returns to something more human than he would like. They're on the road again, after leaving camp and saying goodbye to his family, they're on their own.

"When we pull away, he rests his hand on my thigh pressed next to his and we ride like that for a long time; the only time he moves his hand is to take better control of a sharp curve or to adjust the music, but he always puts it right back.
And I always want him to."
- J.A. Redmerski
The road stretched before them, the morning sun casting a pink hue over the asphalt. The heat was already there, already making their clothes cling to their frame uncomfortably. It would only get hotter out with temperatures reaching the low eighties, perhaps nineties that day, but that didn’t seem to matter for Gabriel. He was clutching his bottle of water close to him in his sleep.

Sam was driving for a change, letting Gabriel doze off in the back of the car. He had stolen a pillow from one of their motels they passed along the way. Sam didn’t want to know They didn’t really have an end destination in mind and if anything, he quite liked that. Gabe wanted to be as far away from Camp as they could, to never look in the faces of their brothers again.

Yet Sam knew, knew that Castiel would keep on calling and that Dean would still want to pop in from time to time. Not that he had been able to find them until now, Sam had his ways of keeping them both safe.

The day would come that Gabriel’s past would catch up with him, that all this running would stop and he would have to face it all.

The previous day had blessed them with a steady downpour and the first cooling down ever since the start of the heat weave. They were both so excited about it that they had ran outside, let themselves get soaked to the bone with cool water. They knew that running outside would be risky, because neither of them could afford to be sick, but honestly, the heat had lasted too long. Crappy motel showers could only do so much and only for Gabriel, since he was the only one who actually properly fit under them. So yeah, fuck it. They were going to take that chance.

After two weeks of near constant degrees of seventy to ninety, they needed it like a thirst college student needs their beer. Or like a college student had needed, a few years ago. The colleges and universities weren’t off that much better than the rest of the word. Most had been shut down weeks after the world had gone to shit.

Sam didn’t even know if there still were colleges around that weren’t crumbling to the ground from neglect. The world had fallen in the past few years and was only now starting to restart. Education was sort of a later point of importance when people were still dying in the streets and bodies lay rotting in ditches everywhere.

Gabriel had so often always been one of them. Castiel had been able to get him out of quite a few dangerous situations, Dean had been able to do that as well and Sam supposed that he too played a part in Gabriel’s survival thus far.

Sometimes, he wondered why his brother his brother still contacted them, still checked to see if they were both fine. He always included Gabriel when speaking, seemed to be actually interested in his wellbeing. It had never been a secret that Dean and Gabriel weren’t the best of friends, that their relationship could only be called friendly at best.

Sam guessed that Gabriel saving Dean’s life that one time probably caused the spark for their friendship. He only knew what had happened because Dean told him. Sam hadn’t been there, had been too busy patching the broken relationship with heaven up to notice his brother. Dean had said goodbye to his grace, chosen to fall and just a few days later, while he was still recovering from the fall, he’d fallen through ice.

It wouldn’t have been such an extraordinary thing, if he had known how to swim. Gabriel pulled him out, got him to breathe again and the water out of his lungs. Sure, Dean had a salty taste in his mouth for the rest of the day, but that had been worth it.

Gabriel awoke to the radio playing softly in the background, Sam humming along to the tune. Sometimes, when Sam behaved so incredibly human, it was hard for Gabriel to remember that he was still part angel, that he still wasn’t completely human.

“Sometimes,” Sam sighed, tuning the radio to another station, “I think I’m hauling around a fledgling instead of a full grown human.” He saw Sam’s eyes flick to him in the mirror, amusement in them. “You sleep as much as they do. Ar you feeling better?”

“Very funny. Yeah.” But no, not really. His back hurt, neck hurt and his tears stung. It was just a bad day, a bad day of a bad week and a bad year. He had always hoped that with getting out of the camp, his loss would too fade away. It had settled itself too deep in his bones, cradling his anxiousness, his guilt.

Some days, it was barely a sting under his skin, a buzzing. Some days, he could keep it all in check and some days, it was wanting to scratch his skin open and get it out. Some days, it meant sleeping in the back of the car with his earbuds in and audiobook playing to drown out all the sounds.

The story was familiar by now. He knew ever rise and fall of the narrators voice, knew that at the funeral of Captain Barnes, the narrators voice would almost break. The story it told was old and perhaps not for him completely. The first time he’d listened to it - two days after finding it with a dead girls possessions - he hadn’t even caught any of it. He just let the voice fade in the background.

Neither Gabriel nor Sam had a plan on where they were going and oddly, it settled Gabriel’s mood a little. At least Sam didn’t know either, at least neither of them had a plan on where they could go nor wanted to go. Their way was a blank canvas, and they were the artists.

If anything, not having a plan scared him too. Scared him in the fact that they wouldn’t have a clue about where Sam would fully return to human, didn’t know when to start packing extra stuff for him, when to buy him a razor or toothpaste. The trival things, but also, he didn’t know when he’d have to catch his angel and cradle him close, when he’d need the rest.

Sam was losing his grace rapidly and he couldn’t deny it. Not anymore. The past weeks had shown that. If Sam had looked tired in that dusty hotel room that night he found Gabriel, he was a wreck now. Bags under his eyes and a tiredness that never seemed to leave him. It was reflected in Gabriel too, even though it had a different cause in him.

Gabriel wasn’t falling, had never been an angel. Sam was. Sam used to be fierce and powerful, until he gave it up, gave it up for him. He gave it all up because he needed to prove something, because he wanted to take care of him, rebelled for him.

Being on the receiving side of something like that, it was brutal. It had more effect on him than he liked to admit. Gabriel wasn’t worth it, Sam shouldn’t have given up his home for him. He shouldn’t have and yet, he had done so. He had given up everything all because of one stupid fuck up.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

They pulled over at a little diner for a late breakfast or lunch, whatever they would call it. Sam ordered up while Gabriel picked out their booth and slid into it. Everything in Gabriel wanted to order out and get on the road again.

The more distance they put between the camp and them, the better. The smaller the chances that Dean and Castiel would come after them an drag them back. Or rather, him back. Sam would go willingly.

It wasn't his brother he was running away from, nor was it Dean. It was the people, the guilt. Everything that kept him small and brittle and left him feeling awful. He wished that he could talk to them without them wanting to drag him back before he could even say 'croatoan', that he could know that they were safe.

But he couldn't. Couln't deal with the blame and the guilt anymore. The wounded bird had to leave the nest, so to speak. Perhaps mommy and daddy bird Dean and Cas weren’t too happy because he took Sam too, but he was not coming back. Sam should go back, should be smart enough to want to go back. Gabriel had lost count of how many times he had tried to persuade him to leave him be, to let him go but it just wouldn't work.

“I'm not letting you go out there all alone Gabe,” was his answer each time. While it frustrated him, it also made the warmth spread, the comfort settle in his bones. It was almost like a reassurance that Sam actually wanted to be there instead of just being there because he felt obliged.

Sam sat down across from him a minute after ordering, two cups of coffee in his hands. He slid one down to Gabriel, who took it in his hands. The warmth was comforting, better than he was used to.

“I got you pancakes,” Sam announced. “Maple syrup, right?” Gabriel just hummed in reply, letting the familiarness of the situation seep in.

“Pancakes are always okay.” He finally looked up at Sam, who had his tell-tale, ‘are you okay?’ expression. Gabriel honestly wondered where he got that look from, how he became so perceptive. “And yes, Maple. Did you get yourself anything Sammy?”

“After the girl looked at me like I was dragging in my six year old? Yeah.” There was a little grin tugging on the edge of his lips. Sam brought the coffee to his lips and took a sip, face clearing up immediately. “Just some coffee and toast though. Don’t know if I’m ready for a lot more than that.” And perhaps that was the best idea. The previous time, Sam had been up until all hours throwing up his pancakes. Gabriel assumed that it was the beginnings of a flu as well as him not being used to food like that.

“Pancakes are not childish! Not my fault that children prefer eating them with lots of syrup and adults don’t.” He bit back the urge to pout. He was quieted by the waitress bringing them their food with a tiny smile on her lips.

“Where do you want to go next?” Sam was nibbling on the edges of the toast, as if he really wasn’t all that hungry. It should make Gabriel feel a little bit more reassured than he did.

“I don’t know? What’s our next worthy stop on the map?”

“We could go to, uh, hold on.” He pulled out the map, fingers quickly finding where they were. “Well, there’s a few places we could go. Lawrence is pretty close by. A three hour drive, if the roads are good. Do you want to?” Hesitant eyes met his over the map, “You don't have to.”

“Yeah, that would be nice. I want to see what is left.” Gabriel looked down again. “I want to see them again.”

“Then we'll go to Lawrence.”

Sam didn’t want to look at Gabriel any differently than before he had started falling. Losing his grace, it had given him new insights into feeling, things like love and remorse. So after he started falling, piece by piece, he started getting new ‘insights’ in whatever was up with Gabriel.

Flying to meet Gabriel that last time had started the process of his grace getting depleted quicker and quicker, until he was like this now, almost human with the need to eat and sleep. There was some grace there, lingering in the back and healing him.

Getting used to eating or sleeping, well, it wasn’t that bad. He had slept before his grace was this bad, but now, the emotions came into check. This steady flow of emotions that were so foreign and weird and just confusing.

It had started when Gabriel had allowed him to curl next to him in the bed. That little quickening of his heartbeat, the little flutter of wings he couldn’t control that he felt as Gabe ended up scooting closer in the bed, hand reaching out to rest on his shoulder.

And then, in the next two or three weeks - in which he had fallen sick for the first time - that feeling had returned in little affectionate touches and Sam wanting to do the same. He wanted to reach out and calm him down when Gabriel had a bad day, he wanted to do so many things that he knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Wouldn’t because those were the things that Dean did for Castiel, the things that two lovers did for each other. Gabriel and he weren’t lovers and wasn’t even sure what they were. Friends? Best friends at best? Or well, the only people that they had left.

When Gabriel turned his back to the camp and gave everyone an almost stupor, he had turned his back on everybody who cared about him and loved him. Sam hadn’t been there, but he had heard Castiel’s screaming at Dean. ‘That stupid idiot is going to get himself killed!’ amongst other, more sad ones. After hearing him say that ‘Gabe is the last family I had left, Dean. Now he’s gone too’, he’d left Gabriel’s little house, giving the two the privacy they deserved.

At first, when he started looking for his friend, he had done so because he saw how miserable his Dean and Cas were about his dissapearance. So he’d looked, in the hopes of making that misery disappear from their faces, but then when weeks passed and they didn’t find him anywhere, he worried too.

He used so much of his grace scouring every part of the continent for him that he started feeling the pull of those emotions. Not that he realized it until he found Gabe, a mess in a motel room with swollen feet, a slight fever and a whole new appearance.They didn’t have a lot of food in the camp, so everybody had lost some weight, sure. He was used to it by now.

Not in the way that Gabriel had lost it though. His muscles were more defined from all the walking that he had been doing, but he looked sick, pale. There were bones barely visible when a soft layer of fat had still been covering them just weeks ago.

He was bruised up, bruises from doing god knows what. It was that that had spiked that first sense of never wanting to let go again, of never wanting to leave his guy be for another hour. Feeling worry was unfamiliar and strange, but he felt it none the less.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked, pulling him out of his thoughts. They were on the road, a little over a half an hour until they would get to Lawrence. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Lost in thought,” he admitted, sitting up a little bit better. “Do you want me to leave you be? Let you go in alone?” Every instinct yelled at him not to do that, that it could be dangerous to let him be alone. But if that was what he needed, he would let him.

“No.” The response came so fast that Sam wondered if he had even wanted to say it. “I want you to see where I lived, before all of this came down and well, I… I want you to meet my mother, if you are up for that.” He was fidgeting. “I told you the story before, about how she died and such. Maybe you should meet her. See if she’s still there - if her grave is still intact. I know I need to.” His hand fluttered to his neck, where Sam knew his medallion rested.

“I’ll join you.”

Gabriel parked the car somewhere where it would be hidden from prying eyes and they walked the rest of the way. It wasn’t something to do from the car, they needed to walk around, to feel the ground under their feet.

“There was an ice cream shop,” Gabriel muttered. “It was all retro, you know? You can still kind of tell from the outside. Cassie loved it.” He turned his head to see the expression on Sam’s face. He was taken by surprise by the fondness there, the forlornness. Gabriel couldn’t blame him. He himself didn’t even know what he felt or how he felt about all of this. “It’s a shame he’s not here. He should come see mom too. If he could. Or see what his home is like now.”

He let his eyes slip past, to the buildings around them. They all seemed so familiar, even though they were almost unrecognizable. Gabriel could easily remember playing with the kids that lived in some of these houses, could easily remember taking Castiel by the hand as a toddler and leading him through the stalls when there was a market in town, preventing him from buying too much but buying him the little wooden angel regardless, because Cas was his brother and sometimes, you had to use your own pocket money to buy something for them.

They walked in silence for a while, Gabriel following the road on autopilot. He had lived in that house until Croatoan had burst free, had been there, always. Part of him couldn’t bear to see the house ruined, it had been his childhood home. Part of him wanted to see it burned to the ground, so that there was nothing to remind him of what he had lost.

It still stood there, tall and proud. There windows were broken and the place probably looked horribly inside, but part of him still saw it as that house that it had been years ago. Still saw it in all his glory.

“It used to be gorgeous,” he muttered, voice thick. “Top corner? That was my room until a few years ago. After our parents, died, I never could move in to their room. It was theirs, you know? Didn’t even go into it until a few years after dad passed away.”

Sam stood next to him without saying anything, awkwardly not making any noise. Great Gabriel, now you made him uncomfortable.

“If you want, Sam, you can go back to the car. You don’t have to stay.” Even though Gabriel wanted him to, wanted so badly to have him there and to have at least some form of comfort. “I don’t - I don’t really mind all that much.” But he did.

“I want to stay,” Sam said, “you never let me in like this. It’s, nice to hear you talk about them. I just, don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, Sam.” Just having him there was enough, feeling that warmth behind him. “I wish I could take you inside, but I don’t think that would be safe. Don’t want the building collapsing on us.” Part of him didn’t want to go inside, didn’t want to go ahead and walk through the doors to see everything broken, everything trashed.

“We can come back.” Sam almost promised him. “In a while. Get the place cleaned up. Once my grace is restored enough, I can get the building safe, the windows back in.” Part of Gabriel corrected that to if.

“That would be nice.”

They stood there for fifteen more minutes, Gabriel telling him all about Castiel as a toddler and how often he almost fell down the stairs, how often he had grabbed him by his shirt and and saved him from a tumble.

They walked to the cemetery in silence, occasionally stopping somewhere Gabriel wanted to tell something, like the place where he had his first kiss, or the first time that he made out with a guy.

“It wasn’t, encouraged by my father, I know that mom wouldn’t have cared, she always said whoever or they whenever she spoke of love. She was really accepting,” Gabriel sighed sadly. “I would bring my boyfriend over for Christmas and he would treat him as if had brought a friend over. I was, annoying I guess, to him, because I didn’t try to fit into his perfect little role that he carved out for me. After a while, I only took my partner home whenever I had a girlfriend.”

Sam stayed silent, but not the awkward ‘I don’t know what to say’ silence, more the ‘I am thinking’ silence. It was a tell-tale Sam thing to do, to get lost in thought.

“We’re here. This is mom.” He stopped in front of her grave. Naomi Novak. “She was a peach. She used to bake pies, pecan, cherry, everything. They were heaven on a plate. Dean would probably love her.

“Yeah, he would,” Sam said, his hand resting on Gabriel’s shoulder.

“You would too, you know. She could be stern, incredibly. She died before we had the chance to grow up, before we even were children. But I am positive that she would have given us so much trouble with sneaking out of the house.” He couldn’t supress the chuckle. “Or sneaking back in. I bet she would have been the kind of mother that sat downstairs until we came back.” Gabriel hadn’t even noticed the tears in his eyes, until Sam pulled him closer against him and wrapped his arms around Gabriel. “Mom was so smart. You don’t want to know. She seemed to know everything in the universe, she had an answer to everything you asked her.”

He couldn’t help but lean into the touch, enjoy it. “She would sing to me, at night. If I couldn’t sleep.”

“Which song?” He felt Sam’s breath tickled.

“Blackbird. Do you know it?” When Sam shook his head, he started humming the song, under his breath. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.” Sam took one of his hands in his, squeezing it lightly. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free.”

Gabriel shifted closer to Sam, needing the comfort that his whatever Sam was could offer him. “It’s a sad song.”

“It is, yeah,” Gabriel admitted, “but it’s comforting. It used to give me hope. So much hope. It was like a safety blanket, you know? It was there for me when my mother wasn’t, when dad passed away and I needed to take care of Cas.” He chuckled. “You know Cas couldn’t cook for the life of him? So in the first few months, all he did was rely on my cooking when I was home - not that I cancook, because I still can’t - or microwaveable things. He was just fourteen when dad left, I was eighteen, still in school. Got a job, took care of him.”

“Did he ever show up, after?”

“No, he didn’t. The sheriff of some far away town called to say that he had crashed his car and he was in the hospital. I drove there, leaving Castiel all on his own. By the time that I got there, he had already passed away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he muttered, fingers threading through Sam’s. No matter how self-indulgent it was, he needed it. Yes, he would regret it, it could ruin everything they had built together, their nice friendship. It could all be ruined. “Castiel was just fine on his own. The house was clean when I came back.” He could barely hold back the chuckle. “Cas wouldn’t even touch the vacuum cleaner, but he did anyway. He and I, we had a few busy weeks. The funeral was arranged. We buried him with mom.”

“How old were you?” Sam’s fingers drew small circles on his waist. “When he passed?”

“I was twenty, Cas sixteen.”

“A child shouldn’t arrange a funeral for his father,” Sam whispered. “You shouldn’t have lost them both so soon.”

“I don’t know. It got me through, gave me reason to fight for what I needed. Can we go back to the car?” He didn’t want to go on like this, didn’t want to be weighed down even more.

They walked back close together, shoulders bumping into each other. When they reached the car, Sam wanted to get in on the driver’s side, but Gabriel stopped him, put a hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t know where his bravery came from or why he did it now. It was stupid, reckless. That night had been fun, but it had made things nothing but even more awkward. If that happened again, Sam would leave him, use the last of his grace and go back to came.

Yet, he did it. Gabriel pulled Sam back, reached up on his toes and rested a hand on the back of his neck, pulling him down to a gentle kiss. It took Sam a little to get onto what he wanted to do, but he kissed back. God forbid him actually rested his hands on Gabriel’s hips and pulled him in closer. As if he needed it too.

“Where did that come from?” Sam whispered against his lips, almost sad. He hated the look in Sam’s eyes.

“I wanted to do that all along.”

“Oh.” Sam sounded almost sad when he said it. “I always worry, when you do things like this. You always seem to see romance or feelings as a way to hurt yourself, this isn’t, right?”

“No. It’s not.” Gabriel was confused and it must have shown on his face, because Sam shook his head.

“I heard you, that night. Crying in the shower. I wanted to come comfort you, but I didn’t know if it was my fault.” He knew. All this time, he’d seen Gabriel like that heard him break down and he hadn’t said a thing. “After, I saw the bruises that I left and I.” His fingers caressed the spot where they had been. “I felt so sorry. You disappeared and I honestly thought that you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

“No Sam.” He wasn’t ready to talk about that night, couldn’t not yet. “It’s not you.” How could he think that? “Hell. No.”

“Good,” he breathed. “Let’s go, will we?”

“Yeah.”

They drove to wherever they would go next, with Sam’s hand on his thigh, Gabriel’s fingers threaded through his. Occasionally, he would free his hand to turn up the music or change the station. He eventually stopped at U2, a smile on his lips.

“You know, this was the first song I heard and liked,” Sam admitted. “Dean was playing it in the car. It’s kinda fitting you know.” He started mumbling along to the first bit, before actually singing the part that he knew, the part that Gabriel assumed he meant. “I want to feel, sunlight on my face, see that dust cloud disappear without a trace. I want to take shelter from the poison rain, where the streets have no name. We're still building, then burning down love, burning down love. And when I go there, I go there with you, It's all I can do.”

“Yeah, it does fit.” Gabriel squeezed his hand lightly. “Thank you, for coming with me, today.”

“Of course.”