In His Image: Þeodrædene
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In which Sam and Gabriel play a game, and Raphael comes to call.
Sam, Gabriel, Dean, Castiel, Raphael.
þeodrædene [n] (Middle English, also spelt thedreden): fellowship. From Old English þéod (a body of persons forming some kind of group, or a group/order of angels) + ræden (in this context, a settled order or direction).
Sam… wasn’t presuming.
Just because a guy pulls you out of the Pit, just because he kisses you afterwards while still human enough to be affected by things like adrenalin and endorphins, didn’t mean he wants to pursue anything serious or balanced or long-term. Especially when said guy has a habit of flirting with everything that moved, and a history of running away when things (family things) get hairy.
Anyway. Sam was pretty sure Gabriel didn’t actually know what he wanted, or if he was even really welcome.
He knew he himself had been getting into the habit of overlooking those parts of Gabriel that he wasn’t really comfortable with, that didn’t seem to fit. The bits that made him run away when things got too close, or the way he got all sharp and dangerous when the world didn’t conform to his sense of justice. Sam had been using the excuse that he didn’t have time, what with the whole Apocalypse business, but it wasn’t working: every time he thought he’d managed to ignore them, they’d show up again, and he’d end up angrier than before. And if this was going to work, on whatever level, he needed to look them in the face, even if he didn’t much like what he saw.
When he thought about them though, really thought, those bits probably made sense. Sam thought he might be able to learn to understand them.
So, yeah, that kiss in the cemetery hadn’t meant anything. Well, it had meant a lot, but nothing like a promise or anything. Nothing that said “this is what I want, this is where we should go.”
That bit was up to Sam.
“So, yeah, I can’t actually ditch you now. 1800 angel speed dial - I could lose the phone, but you’d always be able to pray me up whenever you wanted.”
Sam gave him a very sceptical look from under his hair. “You want to ditch us?”
“Nah, you’re kind of like Winchester mould. Long tendrils. Or maybe icebergs. If icebergs could grow on people. Actually, they probably could grow on me, if I let them. That might be an interesting experiment. You know, if I ever felt like going undercover again. I just mean, don’t be too quick to braid forever bracelets or whatever, because you don’t actually need me hanging around in order to get hold of me if you’re in a tight spot, or something.”
Sam blinked at him in what he felt was a very patient way. Gabriel was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a supply tent, glowing faintly, while Sam guarded the door. There were too many seriously wounded in this city for the usual individual angelic touch, so they’d called Gabriel in to do some area-effect mass healing thing, which apparently took a lot of concentration and power and left him pretty drained for a few hours.
Seemed like that didn’t mean he couldn’t chatter complete bullshit while he was doing it, though.
“Gabriel. We want you around, okay?”
Gabriel flapped one hand cheerfully. “Oh, for now, sure. But you know, you’ve got that whole tight little band of brothers thing going on, and I’ve got this sexy mysterious lone wolf vibe.”
“Gabriel -”
“Plus, you might not have noticed yet but I’m kind of loud and obnoxious, and that’s when I’m in a good mood.”
“You’re impossible,” Sam sighed.
“Exactly!” Gabriel beamed at him, like Sam had just brought home an A on his report card.
So Sam kissed him. Covered the space between them in a couple of steps, sank down across his lap, and slid his mouth gentle and insistent over Gabriel’s. It was brief, and close, and all slippery-sticky from the candy that Gabriel had been eating earlier, and when he pulled back Sam’s breath was hitching tight and sweet in his chest, and Gabriel was looking at him with this weird stunned attention.
Sam glared at him, a so there sort of glare, and Gabriel’s mouth twitched a bit, candy-red and promising.
Then he cocked his head on one side, and just said, “Huh.”
And that was it, for then. They didn’t discuss it. But that afternoon, when they ran into each other again in Dubai, Gabriel winked, and called him “sugar.” Sam rolled his eyes, grinned back past a bemused Rachel, and called him “honeypie.” Gabriel’s eyebrows climbed, like he hadn’t expected Sam to rise to a challenge, and it was so on.
Gabriel called Sam sugarnipples. Sam called Gabriel munchkin. Gabriel called Sam a delicate little passionfruit flower. Sam called Gabriel dreamboat. Gabriel called Sam eye candy. Sam started using all the most ludicrous pick-up lines he’d ever heard across hundreds of skeezy bars. Gabriel capped them all with replies that ranged from lewd to corny. Sam retorted with the “mediaeval” pick-up lines he’d stumbled across when he’d been trying to teach himself Middle English. Gabriel grabbed his ass. Sam trailed his fingers softly over the nape of Gabriel’s neck when he got up from the table. Gabriel did it back, only it still counted as oneupmanship because apparently the handprint he’d left there was really, really sensitive to Gabriel’s touch. So next time he passed him, Sam dropped a kiss on the back of his neck. Then Gabriel licked his collarbone, which should probably have been gross or silly and definitely not hot at all, and if Sam was ever asked he was putting the undignified yelp down to that.
Gabriel ate maple taffy in a really really explicit way in the middle of a job in Hawaii. Sam dove into the sea off Fiji to cool down, while wearing a thin cotton shirt which he kept wearing afterwards. In Sichuan, Gabriel kept casually putting his hand on Sam’s thigh to demonstrate a point, only it was ever so slightly higher each time. Sam dropped completely innocent double entendres into every single sentence throughout three whole hours in burnt-out Gippsland. Dean’s smirk became a semi-permanent fixture whenever he was around them. It was… actually, the most sheer fun Sam had had in a long time. Definitely the most fun flirting had ever been.
---
So, Becky was terrifying.
Apparently the energy and sheer rabid organisational skill needed to do whatever she did on the internet (which Sam did not need to know about) translated really well into Getting Things Done when there was actually something worth doing, using exactly the same channels.
Sam did start up a feed with the activities of all the official disaster relief organisations out there to route to Gabriel’s phone, so they could get a feel for where human efforts were concentrated, which areas were the worst hit, which were the hardest for humans to get to, and so on. It took him five hours, and was still fairly clunky, especially with all the big blank patches that were all over the internet now. And Sam was good at this sort of thing.
But Becky had rung him three days after Stull, babbling about the appearance of Chuck’s final manuscript on her desk or something, and also about epic love and OTPs and pulling people out of Hell and was there anything she could do to help because the next town over was a giant crater and more than half her friends across the world had vanished from the internet and also most of the internet had vanished from the internet but she knew people, and…
She made Gabriel a better feed in half an hour. She harnessed the terrifying power of Twitter (which was apparently unkillable) to start a network of terrifying efficiency containing volunteers across the globe with a bewildering array of skills. Sam, cautiously, at Gabriel’s delighted insistence, gave her the names of two of the more self-possessed angels to call on and… well, order about. To take those human skills where they were needed, and lend extra juice where that was needed.
Which meant that, when they worked out that the reason so many lines of communication were down across the world was that every single satellite that had been over the southern hemisphere approximately two hours after Sam had said yes had spontaneously decided to spin out of orbit, Becky knew people with the equipment and expertise to spot most of them. And she knew angels to fetch them back. And other people to repair them, or tell the angels how the irreparable bits needed to work so they could mojo them back into shape, and then other people to say where and how to get them into the sky again.
(Becky saved the internet. Sam still wasn’t sure her motives were entirely pure, but she did it.)
People were working with angels. Only on a tiny scale, and when most of them were still too grim-faced and stunned to actually stop and question the whole fabric of the universe or anything, but… it was working.
---
So, Gabriel was cheerfully comfortable with dirty, but he was more than a bit awkward with sweet.
He had a kimono-style robe which he liked to wear when he was draping himself loudly all over the house. It was a beautiful thing, rich reds and soft browns and golds, all abstract swirls and little tiny creatures hidden in the corners, and to Sam it was a thing of distant, exotic wonder, too soft and delicate, not the sort of thing anyone in his life ever actually wore.
The day after Sam caught himself sending it slightly awed sideways glances, he found another one draped over his bed in the morning - longer and broader, obviously, a slightly different style, blues and browns and greens with faint threads of emerald running through their depths. It was far and away the most luxurious item of clothing Sam had ever owned, and it felt odd on him, like he was something graceful and elegant, rather than a hard-edged gawky Kansas kid who was going to die bloody and young (and in fact already had, several times). When he tried to thank Gabriel, though, the angel snickered and made a lewd comment about silk and certain parts of Sam’s anatomy, then took to wearing his own around the place without anything underneath. Even on jobs. Which, given there were slits up the sides as high as his upper thighs, was very distracting, and more than a bit tempting.
Gabriel had really good thighs.
---
“You know that whole language of flowers thing?” Dean slurred vaguely, from behind his mug of Gabriel’s experimental mead.
Sam raised his head, very slowly. Because this sounded potentially terrifying.
“D’you think for angels there’s, like… a language of feathers?”
Sam stared. And carefully, very carefully, didn’t ask.
“Dude… ask an angel.”
Dean made a small disgruntled noise into his cup.
About half an hour later, when they were both more than a little bit drunk, Dean leaned over and said conspiratorially, “So, come on, you totally should. The guy told me back in Nebraska he hasn’t been laid in thirty-four years, and, dude, I don’t even want to think about how long it’s been for you, but you’ve had totally-need-to-get-laid face for months. Seriously? The way you two keep staring at each other? I’m talking exploding balls, any day now.”
Dean was a complete girl when he drank, honestly. Also a hypocrite. And that idea definitely did not keep coming back to Sam at inappropriate moments.
(Thirty-four years? Really? That was longer than Dean had existed.)
---
It turned out that, because Gabriel was a spoiled brat, he wasn’t above abusing awesome cosmic powers to be a cocktease.
“Gabriel.”
There was a soft puff of amused air against the back of Sam’s neck.
“Why do you always blame me?” Gabriel asked with interest.
Sam turned around, moving carefully in the confined space, and tried to get a convincing glare going. It was kind of har- difficult, with Gabriel’s face beaming up at him all open and happy and filthily suggestive.
Still. Stuck in a revolving door. A glass revolving door. With the rest of the world mysteriously frozen outside. And an archangel who had just mysteriously turned up right behind him, in a very small space that was all corners.
“Because I’m not stupid,” Sam pointed out reasonably.
Gabriel made a small thoughtful noise, like that was a fair point, and slid a little bit closer.
“Also,” Sam felt obliged to say, “there are some things I should be doing here. Like fast-tracking this definitely completely legal paperwork. Because we can’t sneakily speed up the construction of a pipeline to get clean water back into Arizona unless people actually start, you know, the construction of a pipeline to get clean water back into Arizona.”
“Mm.” Gabriel’s hands curled smoothly over Sam’s hips. “Knew there was a reason I dumped all the human infrastructure mess on that big throbbing Stanford brain.”
“By which I mean,” Sam elaborated helpfully, skimming his hand lightly down Gabriel’s side while being backed into a handily available corner, “that this could be, technically, considered to be kind of wasting time.”
“Technically,” Gabriel purred just under his ear, sliding his foot along the outside of Sam’s, “time’s only a-wasting while the clock’s still ticking.”
… Oh. Hence the frozen street outside.
Well, that made sense. In a Gabriel kind of way.
“Brat,” Sam breathed hot into his throat. Then he curled his hand warm and broad around the side of Gabriel’s neck, tilted his jaw to one side with his thumb, and nipped a deliberate line up from his collarbone to the stubbled corner under his ear. Because he’d already worked out that Gabriel had a throat thing, and was so not above abusing that knowledge.
Gabriel’s breath went loose and shaky. Like he’d only just worked out that, when you were in a small triangular space, it wasn’t actually very tricky for the other person to shove you into a corner in return.
Sam did it, one brief messy tumble, bracketing him in between Sam’s arms and pinning his legs behind his, leaning forward over him so the whole of his smaller frame was surrounded by two cool panes of glass, and Sam. And, judging by the way his body went all shocked-pliant and his eyes were all wide and hungry with it, Gabriel really didn’t mind being manhandled. Interesting.
Sam smiled, dark and intent, as Gabriel’s hands traced up his chest, exploring, like he couldn’t stay still for a moment. Then he lowered his own head slowly, so Gabriel could see it coming, and touched his lips very gently to the corner of his eye; to the ridge of his cheekbone; to the edge of his mouth.
Gabriel’s head moved, just slightly, just enough, and Sam’s mouth slipped into place, warm and sweet.
He felt the sigh against his lips as Gabriel’s mouth opened, easy and hopeful; felt the tips of his fingers trail up to rest on Sam’s collarbone; felt for a moment the hot flicker of his tongue. Then there was the curve of a familiar smirk against his mouth, and he knew, even before -
Gabriel melted away through the glass like it was nothing. The world started moving again.
So apparently they were upping the ante.
---
Castiel dropped by, fleeting as ever, when Sam and Gabriel and Haliel were in Syria, to warn Gabriel of a faint lead on Raphael’s whereabouts. Gabriel just tipped his head back and looked at Castiel for a minute, like he was trying to work out what he wanted, then shook his head.
“If he doesn’t show in the next two weeks I’ll go a-hunting, but not before. I’m not going to hound him if he don’t want to be found.”
Castiel frowned at that. “Raphael is… bitter,” he pronounced delicately, in a way that managed to sound like “insane and dangerous.”
Gabriel flashed him a grin, bright and persuasive. “Then he needs me too.”
---
The next day, in Boston, wasn’t encouraging, and Sam was pretty sure it set back Sarafael’s faith in humanity by miles. Sam was humiliated on his species’ (and country’s) behalf, sickened that his time was being wasted on injuries and distress caused deliberately by humans to other humans at a time like this, and really fucking annoyed.
Under the harsh shadows of floodlights, Sam looked around at the variety of belligerent, uncertain, and curious faces scattered between the makeshift tents, at the eleven stubborn and self-righteous bastards in front of him, at the two teenagers bleeding in Sarafael’s lap and gasping air back into lungs that had been punctured by their own ribs just a few moments before, at the devastated incomprehension on the angel’s face. Then he pressed his hands together, bowed his head, and prayed visibly and loudly.
There was a journalist over there, beckoning frantically to her cameraman. Sam didn’t give a shit.
“Oh Gabriel, Archangel of the Lord, Herald of the Father, Bearer of Justice, Seneschal of the Heavenly Plane, I beseech you to grant us five minutes of your time.” And please, make an entrance, he added silently.
Judging by the expressions of the small crowd staring over his shoulder, Gabriel caught it.
“Hey, kiddo. What’s going on?”
“Gabriel.” Sam spun on his heel, slid his hand warmly around to claim the back of Gabriel’s neck, and bent his head. It was firm and deliberate, an insistent slide of mouth against mouth in a way that couldn’t be mistaken for chaste, nor for casual. Especially not with the way Gabriel’s body followed his lead and swayed into it, into Sam, burrowing familiar and hungry against his chest. This is me, it said. This is us, and this is what we do.
When Sam pulled back, he spoke loud and clear, a few inches from Gabriel’s faintly questioning expression. “Would you mind explaining to Richard and Jesse and Daniel and their friends here just what Heaven’s position is on taking tyre irons to a couple of kids, on the grounds that ‘God brought this down on us because we’ve been too soft on faggots like you’?”
Gabriel’s eyes went narrow and dangerous; and, as he turned slowly to take centre stage, the heavy gold illusion of wings filled the night sky around them.
After that, Sarafael’s idolisation of Gabriel went from devoted to adorably terrifying. Sam supposed that seeing a long-lost archangel get his personal smite on after more than a thousand years of cold delegation was probably pretty impressive. Especially when Gabriel did it, not by clicking his fingers and turning people into explosion, but with words, and words only.
Well, words, and looking absolutely fucking terrifying.
It was kind of hot.
Also, they were definitely starting up rumours all over the globe, some of them with documentary evidence. Becky told him there was an #angelicfixit hashtag on Twitter, and he got her to keep an eye on it. Rumours like that could come in handy sometime; and if not, well, there was always wriggle room with these things. There was documentary evidence for the Loch Ness monster too, after all.
Anyway, Sam chalked that one up in his own favour, because he got to feel Gabriel up in front of a crowd and Gabriel hadn’t got to respond.
Apparently, Gabriel agreed, because when Sam woke up the next morning he found a book on the bedside table. It was written in Arabic, was from probably around the eleventh century judging by the binding, and was mostly full of very detailed and erotic illustrations of acts of gay sex. Some of them were very creative. Some Sam doubted were physically possible even with an archangel’s mojo in play. Not that he was thinking about… huh. Archangel powers, in play. Interesting possibilities there. And that thing on page 36…
If he hadn’t had important business in Uganda, Sam would have been very late out of bed.
So, fine. If Gabriel was just going to sneak into his room while he slept…
Sam smiled at him every time he saw him that day, innocent and sweet, watching his expression go from lascivious to amused to suspicious. When he finally got too tired to go on and asked Dameyal to take him back, Sam went to bed naked, with the sheets deliberately pooled low around his waist.
Which, in retrospect, was totally asking for it.
He hadn’t been expecting, though, to drift slowly awake long after midnight with an insolent weight warm on his back, and hands sliding slick and hot and clever over the jut of his shoulder blades.
… Probably he should have.
Sam shivered, one long delicious full-body reaction of flesh and daring. All of his senses drew in sluggishly to cling to the press of a single thumb as it arced slowly back in towards his spine, rich like half a dream.
There was a dark ripple of laughter against his skin.
“Gabriel,” he breathed, like it was more of a prayer here alone in the dark than any floodlit demand for justice.
The mouth opened at the top of his spine, full and sweet, and pressed silent desire into his nerves and blood. Warm breath skated over the skin, teasing the edge of the handprint there. One hand slipped down a little way to curve around his side, stopped just short of sliding onto his chest; and the pecs on that side tightened, defensive, hopeful.
Sam groaned, dropped his head between his arms, and shoved back into the touch, shoulders and spine and hips arching under Gabriel’s hot weight. Enjoying.
There was a soft hiss of breath against him, like Gabriel had been given something unexpected and beautiful. The kiss pressed in just under his shoulder blade a moment later was gentle, almost reverent, and the lone finger drawn down the side of his ribs made Sam shiver with its promise.
He made a sound of greedy, sleep-addled approval when the other hand moved, one long slippery curve of temptation, down to nestle in the hollow of Sam’s waist. Gabriel murmured laughter again, warm and sort of filthy, then his mouth vanished as he slid back to sit on Sam’s thighs.
The sheet dragged with him. The night air felt unexpectedly cool where it had been.
Sam lay, eyes half-closed, forehead pressing into his wrist, feeling every beat and pulse of blood slow and steady through him. Throat, chest, stomach, thickening in his groin. Thighs, where it was answered with the faint thud of another body, trapping the top of his legs between its knees. He could almost feel the prickle of Gabriel’s eyes sliding over him in the dark, tracing his skin, mapping it out. The one hand still pressed into his waist shifted slightly, like it was thinking about moving - down and around? Down and in? Under? Up?
Sam… wasn’t really sure where this was going to go, where he wanted it to go, but that didn’t really seem important just now. He lay there, languid and tingling under the expectation of touch, and waited.
Then Gabriel leaned forward (and there, just for a moment against the base of Sam’s spine, the curve of dampened satin and solid heat) and laced his fingers through the fingers of Sam’s free hand. Squeezed once, warm and fierce, then let their hands together take his weight as he leaned down to press his lips into the middle of Sam’s back.
Sam sighed hot, and closed his teeth around the bone of his own wrist.
Gabriel’s mouth travelled down almost to the base of his spine, little nibbles and licks and presses and promises, then back up as far as his shoulders. Down and up again, then down and up, one side then another of the long muscled ridge, until the skin felt warm and bruised and temptingly oversensitive, and Sam’s breath was coming in short wet gasps around his wrist.
Then Gabriel stopped, right at the bottom of his sweep, hovered there hot and thoughtful. The steadying hand at Sam’s waist moved at last, shifted, spread out over the centre of Sam’s back, like if he pressed hard enough Gabriel could feel the thump of Sam’s heart inside, hard and still honey-slow with the last wispy edges of sleep.
Sam waited for the damp, clever heat of Gabriel’s mouth to keep going, to move back up, but it didn’t.
It moved down. Just a fraction. Just enough for his chin to scratch rough against the first swell of flesh.
Sam’s heart skipped in its rhythm.
He wanted.
Gabriel’s mouth curved against his skin, like he heard and approved.
Then there was the faint, powerful beat of wings in the dark, and Sam was alone in the bed.
… If Sam hadn’t been so completely exhausted, he might have been seriously annoyed.
---
Which was no reason to let Gabriel get away with it. So when Gabriel breezed in for breakfast, he had about two seconds to look gleeful and casually shirtless at them before Sam had him shoved up against the wall and was licking soft and brutal into his mouth. He took the stunned sort of grunt as agreement, smirked triumphantly through the kiss, and went for Gabriel’s belt with his free hand. Gabriel’s head thumped back painfully hard against the wall and he stared at Sam from an inch away, eyes dark and startled and kindling with something fiery and old.
Sam raised one eyebrow at him in challenge, then slid to his knees.
The sound Gabriel made when Sam opened his mouth on the skin just over his open buckle was drowned by the clatter of crockery, an exclamation of “Whoa, whoa, make out all you like but I’m not sticking around for that,” and Dean’s hastily retreating footsteps.
Sam laughed quietly into the soft, quivering skin, and pressed the heel of his hand in quellingly between his own thighs.
Gabriel’s hand slid into his hair, almost rough except for the way it just held him there, didn’t push, didn’t contain. There was a moment of stillness, except for Sam mouthing delicately at the curve just below the navel.
Then, “You’re not gonna deliver, are you?”
Sam grinned up at him shamelessly, stood in one easy movement, and bent to drop a kiss to the end of his nose. “You know it.”
“You realise you’re shooting yourself in the foot,” Gabriel said plaintively. Then he hooked two fingers around behind Sam’s neck and drew him in carefully for a proper kiss, all soft edges and hope.
For the first time in years, Sam had the freedom to dawdle.
---
Three days after that, Raphael came for Dean and Castiel.
The first time, it had been Gabriel who had brought Castiel back to life. Gabriel had explained that he’d been given no explicit instruction, just a sudden painful awareness of his death and the certainty that he could fix it if he wanted to; and, when he tried, discovering the capacity within himself which he hadn’t known was there. Joshua had said it was God who had brought him back, so Gabriel figured that God had let him know about it and let him choose where to go from there, given him the strength and grace to mend it.
The second time, there had only been one archangel available. And Sam couldn’t say he hadn’t thought about it, but… seriously, Raphael? Just suddenly knowing Castiel was dead was going to move Raphael to fix things, the one who’d killed him the first time?
Well, apparently it hadn’t. Apparently it had taken more than that.
Castiel was frowning with them at an unexpected crater in the middle of Namibia, his little finger curled light as breath just against the side of Dean’s hand, when Sam suddenly felt the weight and the pressure of angryangel on the back of his skull. And he was turning around, and Castiel was whirling tight and efficient with his sword in his hand, even before they heard the slow, rich voice behind them.
“It was too late for them. They already hoped.”
“Raphael,” Castiel acknowledged, flat and low, but Sam hadn’t needed to hear the name to know. He could feel the power crackling off this angel, violent and raw as he had felt it in Stull Cemetery before the ground opened up, like he sometimes felt just the edges of from Gabriel now if he was really pissed. Only this wasn’t focussed like that had been - it was fractured, jagged in the centre, wheeling off all over the place like it didn’t know what it was trying to be.
And sure, Castiel was stronger than ever now he was back, a hell of a lot stronger than most angels, but he wasn’t going to be a match for a riled-up archangel with sanity issues.
“My father,” Raphael rumbled, voice and eyes dark like velvet. “My father chose to be dead.” He took a step forward, jarring the ground under him, and little crackles of blue electricity scattered into the grass. Sam moved without a thought to stand in front of Castiel. Raphael just looked right through him. “Mine, and we waited for centuries, and he came back only for you. What are you?”
Castiel’s hand closed firm on Sam’s elbow, and pushed him aside. The angel stepped forward beside him tall and straight, like he’d always known this was going to have to happen. “I am what God and I have made of me.”
Raphael laughed, something sharp and wild and deep. “My little bitch,” he said, twisting the words in his mouth like something that he couldn’t account for.
“No,” Castiel said calmly. “Only mine. And I choose humanity, as our Father did.”
Dean moved forward, shoved his shoulder in on Castiel’s other side, solid and sure. “What he said.”
Raphael’s face contorted into fury and betrayal, and the rocks around him began to shimmer with silver heat. “Do you think for a moment, you insignificant rebellious little maggot, that -”
Then the dry ground between them flared with light, and now there were two angry archangels on the scene, only one of them was theirs. And Sam could feel Gabriel’s wings, though they weren’t there to see, spreading out furious and strong like invisible fire between them and Raphael.
“I dare you, brother, to lay a hand on my family.”
And that was the first time he’d said anything like that - the first time any of them had - and - wow. Sam hadn’t been expecting it. Although, hey, plausible deniability, because apparently it was a really good diversionary tactic.
The ground shook. “Gabriel. You turned your back on your family.”
Gabriel’s grin was all teeth. “So sue me, I got more than one. And this one’s more fun.” Then he moved forward without a weapon into Raphael’s fractured silence, raised a hand to touch his cheek, and said, in a very different voice, “Oh, little brother. What have they done to you?”
Dean raised his eyebrows silently at Sam, over the intensity of Castiel’s stare, but Sam was too distracted to respond. There was too much of Gabriel here that suddenly made more sense than it ever had before. Sam had known, but he hadn’t felt, not like now with his sparkly new angel-sensitivity or whatever, and Gabriel and Raphael leaking all over the place, and the little bits of himself that Gabriel had been cautiously and gradually revealing for weeks slotting softly into place around them. Love, deep and terrible and immovable, and really badly hidden now Sam thought about it, threaded right through the centre of him and informing… well, pretty much everything. The way he looked at Sam, laughed with Dean, reached out to touch Castiel, grieved for Lucifer and Michael, hid most of himself from his family, promised that his father hadn’t abandoned them, railed against him anyway, lashed those guys in Boston savagely with his tongue and left them to learn, refused to pick up a weapon against anything that might possibly be saved, hid his uncertainty under jokes or flirting or obnoxiousness, stood fierce and sure in front of them, cupped his hands around Raphael’s face…
Raphael dropped his head, and let Gabriel cradle him.
“He has spoken to you, hasn’t he?” Gabriel asked, all banked anger and gentleness.
“He spoke my name,” Raphael said, low, and it was like the first quiet crack that signals the dam wall beginning to break, to flood the valley below. “One time, Gabriel, once in all of Creation I heard his voice, and it was for this.”
Dean whistled softly, then laid his hand gently against the back of Castiel’s stiffened shoulder. Sam reached out without moving, grasped with that part of himself that he used for prayer toward the hot whorls of awe and fury and old hurt in front of him, and did his best to soften it. He felt Gabriel go still and shocked; then he felt him reach back, powerful and vast, twining around Sam’s offer. Leaning on him.
And okay, so there wasn’t a guarantee Gabriel would stick around this new family either if things got bad, but Sam was willing to take it on faith.
When Raphael left, quiet and still swirling with confused bitterness, Gabriel turned on his heel, grabbed Sam’s shirt with both hands, and kissed him gratefully and thoroughly.
Over the thudding of Gabriel’s heart in the tight circle of his own arms, Sam heard Dean clear his throat and slip on his wry “let’s not talk about what really happened just there” voice. “Hey. I thought we were the ones in danger here.”
Gabriel pulled back, all damp mouth and hot breath and bright mischief, and Dean must have seen it coming because he was backing away a second before Gabriel got an arm hooked around his neck and kissed his way messily and enthusiastically into Dean’s mouth.
Sam leaned against Castiel’s shoulder, and laughed and laughed.
Dean stumbled, spluttered a curse against Gabriel’s insistent onslaught, then, rather to Sam’s surprise, gave as good as he got until Gabriel pulled back and fluttered his eyelashes evilly. Because apparently Dean couldn’t resist a challenge either.
Dean grinned, a bit red-faced, and drawled, “Sorry, honey, Sam doesn’t get jealous that easy.”
Gabriel waggled his eyebrows. “What about Castiel?”
Dean’s eyes slid up over his head to check in on the angel Sam was currently sort of draped over, a little flicker of barely there uncertainty that vanished the moment he settled on the small amused curve of Castiel’s mouth against Sam’s hair. “… Yeah, I don’t think we want to try that. He’s kinda scary.”
“Dean informs me,” Castiel said, in that deep gravelly tone of bland disapproval that he never really meant, “that he is perfectly capable of fending off unwelcome sexual advances should he wish to.”
Gabriel’s mouth curved, wicked and sweet, and he advanced on Dean again. “Oh, so this is welcome?”
“Whoa, whoa whoa, uncle,” Dean laughed, backing away with his hands up in front of him.
Sam made a lazy, amused noise into Castiel’s shoulder. It was nearly the end of the day anyway.
“You gonna rescue him?”
“Are you?” Castiel returned easily, and for some reason pressed a soft kiss to the side of Sam’s head.
Sam stood up and stretched, to the soundtrack of Dean protesting that only little brothers were allowed to be noogied. “Nah. We should probably work out whether this was a troll or some mythic giant snake thing sometime before dark.”
Family. Yeah. Sam thought he could do that.
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