In His Image: Zwitter
Previous chapter --- Masterpost
In which Gabriel finally gets the narrative voice.
Gabriel, Sam, Castiel, Dean, Cathy Randolph.
zwitter [adj] (German) hybrid.
June, 1784.
There was next to no light in this room.
The rafters weren’t quite snug against each other, and a few small-hours-of-the-morning stars peeked through between the cracks. One little skylight nestled under the eaves, looking out over the fields, and there was a faint flickering glow just above it from a lantern down below. Not that Gabriel needed the light to see.
In a couple of hours, when she came to offer breakfast, the innkeeper would find her guests vanished, payment and then some on the table by the bed, the old bed sheets replaced with fine blue linen, the mattress and pillows twice as thick and deep, and everything in the room a hell of a lot cleaner than she’d ever managed to get it to look before. The place wasn’t bad, for what and where and when it was, but twenty-first century standards were kind of demanding.
Besides, international disaster-relief volunteers needed a decent mattress to sleep on. Well-known fact. Especially when they’d just had a full day’s work, hopped back to ten in the morning in a completely different century, and spent another whole day running around enthusiastically poking everything and failing hilariously at French before crashing into an exhausted stupor at six in the evening.
This whole juiced-up re-angelified thing had its perks. Like, no pins and needles. Gabriel had been propped up on one elbow for almost three hours straight, just watching, barely breathing. Tracing the lines of Sam’s features with his eyes.
It was, impossibly, over. Lucifer and Michael had been stopped, locked away where they couldn’t kill each other and couldn’t drive the rest of Heaven and Hell into eternal war around them.
This man, this man sleeping loose and comfortable against him, had stopped them.
Sam, with his self-built faith. Sam, who had looked without flinching when Castiel had re-ignited Gabriel’s grace, but who had winced at the approach of his purer brothers and sisters in their naked forms. Sam wasn’t the only one who’d lived through seeing a beloved older brother dragged to Hell, who had lost himself a bit after it.
So yes, okay, Gabriel could admit he might be a little bit in awe. Of the monster Sam had elected to make of himself, because he had believed the world needed it, and because he loved his brother too much. Of the way he’d chosen to turn his back on the monster, once he saw it, once he didn’t need it. So very similar to, and so very far from, what Gabriel had made of himself, in the same circumstances.
And yet, impossibly, here. Happy. Wanting Gabriel. Even liking him, apparently.
Well, he had always said that these boys were a couple of cylinders short of a two-cylinder engine.
The slack corner of Sam’s mouth twitched a bit. Then, without opening his eyes, he mumbled, “You’re watching me sleep, aren’t you?”
Gabriel leaned down just a little, until his breath stirred the long strands lying across Sam’s throat. Reluctant to break the sleepy stillness, he murmured into Sam’s cheek, “Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I played angel. Gotta brush up on my inappropriate creeping skills.”
Sam’s eyes drifted open, and he dragged his mouth into a languid, contented grin.
“Mornin’.”
“Why am I here?” The question slipped out, curious and soft, a bit more than Gabriel had meant to give away.
“’S that philosophy or a line?” Sam drawled, voice thick with sleep. “Cos ’m not awake enough for philosophy.”
Gabriel slid his hand up easily over Sam’s side, slid his mouth down, and grinned into his chest. Because creature of eternal angelic patience he might be in theory, but he’d waited plenty long enough for this. “Line it is, then.”
Long bed-warm fingers crept into his hair and rubbed at the back of his scalp. “’Bout time. Y’been drillin’ a hole in my thigh past couple hours.”
Which was an arrant lie. Mostly. Kind of self-fulfilling, though, with the slow deep burn that started to stir in Gabriel’s belly at the touch, at the lazy intent in Sam’s eyes.
“What can I say?” He dropped into his low suggestive purr, the one that always seemed to make Sam snort and look kind of indulgent (which counted as a win in Gabriel’s book, when it was Sam). “You sleep sexy, babe.”
“Mm.” Sam’s hand crept around to cup Gabriel’s cheek, tracing the shape of him in the dark. He let his thumb drag softly over Gabriel’s lower lip - catching on the swell of it, pressing just a little inside. Gabriel flicked it with the tip of his tongue, then turned his face to nuzzle into the centre of the palm (so many filthy things that Gabriel could think of to do with those enormous, beautiful hands).
“Can’t even see me in here, in this light,” Sam murmured; then he stretched, one long shift and slide of sleepy warmth between the sheets. Against Gabriel’s belly and thighs.
Gabriel suddenly, intensely, regretted the impulse of gallantry that had prompted him to wear pants to bed. His knee, which had been leaning against Sam’s, nudged up and in on a sudden throb of greed; and Sam made a sound, pleased and lazy, and moved obligingly with it. Gabriel’s leg ended up hooked loosely around Sam’s, like it had decided it belonged there, though, hey, Gabriel wasn’t about to argue with it.
He leaned in, rubbed his nose into the scratchy warmth of Sam’s cheek, and hummed the opening bars of “You are my sunshine.”
Sam’s laugh rumbled deep in his chest, like it couldn’t be bothered really waking up. “You are so corny.”
“Keep sweet-talking me like that and I might even get you some light.”
Sam yawned, a wide jaw-cracking yawn, closed his fingers around Gabriel’s wrist and tugged. “Yeah, do it.”
Which was how Gabriel ended up looking down at Sam’s lazily suggestive grin, with one long naked thigh lodged snug between his and a soft glow-light of his own hasty conjuring bumping around in the rafters.
Never let it be said that Gabriel couldn’t grab a hint with both hands.
Sam’s mouth was sour-sweet with sleep and wine and last night’s soup, and he kissed with all the casual arrogance of some magnate taking his time to explore his new lands, or something. Gabriel was totally okay with that.
They sparred indolently, Gabriel’s hand braced against the pillow by Sam’s shoulder, Sam’s hands sliding up and down his back like they were trying to distract him, wrapping casually possessive over each curve. Gabriel took delighted advantage of his position to let his other hand wander, relishing the dips and firm planes of his chest, the warm sleepy feel of him between his legs.
Linen rustled against skin as one of Sam’s feet drew up behind Gabriel to brace against the mattress: just a slight shift and roll of his hips against the top of Gabriel’s thigh, stronger, more leverage, carefully restrained. So far.
This, this was good: moving as it pleased him, all of Sam’s long, sleek shape spread out below him for the tasting and the ogling, half-muffled in the sheets. But what was better was the promise of muted impatience in the nip of his teeth, the hot press of his fingers against Gabriel’s waist. Sam was letting him lead; but only for now.
Gabriel danced his tongue sweet and easy over the swell of Sam’s lower lip, brushed his fingers casually over that sweet spot just above Sam’s ribs, and pulled back. Sam growled, fingers tightening, but he didn’t grab and drag him back in. He lay there, gorgeous and dark and dangerous under Gabriel, and watched him, like he knew Gabriel was his for the taking anyway.
… Yeah, fine. No arguments here.
Sam’s eyes went dark, as if he could see the blood pounding hotter and stronger inside Gabriel’s hybrid body, and liked it.
Gabriel smirked down at him, all challenge and glee, and slung a leg right over Sam’s thighs, sliding into place on top of him. Sam’s hands spread warm and tight over his hips, holding him in place; and Gabriel happily admired the flex of muscles in his stomach as he leaned up to resume the kiss.
And, yes - this was better, laziness blurring at the corners and draining away from the dark beat of blood rising deep inside. Also, the roll and shift of muscle between his thighs helpfully conjured the image of being pinned under Sam in his own turn, held down and shoved into the mattress by the hot weight of that powerful body. Which, now he thought of it, went straight onto the agenda.
Meanwhile…
Gabriel rolled his hips forward, just enough to push one long heated line against another for a moment, cotton tugging and slipping promisingly over skin, then he rode out the wave when Sam’s hips bucked up against it.
“Tease,” Sam purred into the kiss.
Gabriel grinned back against the bright press of his teeth, and gleefully got his hands everywhere.
Sam’s tongue bullied its way into Gabriel’s mouth to an utter lack of resistance, turning it into a supple and deep and messy counterpoint to the flaring spots of pleasure-pain his fingers were digging into Gabriel’s hips. His heart was thudding strong and fast under Gabriel’s hand when he slid it over that seriously gorgeous chest, teased the edge of the tattoo with his nails, dragged it up to curl loose and possessive around Sam’s throat with his thumb just nestling in the hollow. Sam was gasping, little muffled curses and growls creeping out between their mouths, even before Gabriel bit cheerfully at his lip and slipped his hand the rest of the way, around between the damp skin of his spine and the mess of his hair, to curl tight over the sensitive mark he’d left there.
His hand. His desperate gamble. His claim.
Sam’s whole body went stiff between Gabriel’s thighs, under the heat of his hands, struggling back from the sudden precarious edge of orgasm with his head flung back, pressed into the pillow, and the muscles straining exquisitely in his throat. Gabriel buried his face in the side of Sam’s neck and laughed and laughed, feeling like his heart was trying to skip out of his chest.
Oversized sweaty hands loosened their death grip on his hips and moved in breathless curves up his back. They lingered on his ribs, dipped into the hollow between his shoulder blades, scratched almost too hard over the back of his neck.
“You little shit,” Sam breathed into his ear, amused and sort of tender. “You knew that would happen.”
“Guessed,” Gabriel allowed happily, and bit his neck.
Sam made this gorgeous little noise somewhere between a groan and a sob that thrummed pearlescent and velvety over Gabriel’s senses, and the slide of Sam’s hands went static-sharp and hungry over his skin. Gabriel mouthed at his neck in breathless little laps, sucking in air cold over the wet skin between gasps, pressing his body into the feel of Sam’s heart thumping passionate and alive beneath him.
And, he had no clue how all those other supernatural types, the ones that could trace the beat of human blood inside the body, the thud and flow of hormones and life, could stand having sex with people who were unwilling or scared, or even just bored. Because this, the feel of all of Sam arching under him, inside and out, demanding his touch, all of him revved up for it, wanting him, joying in him, in him - this, this was such a holy fucking turn-on.
One of Sam’s fingertips slipped under the waistband of Gabriel’s pants, and Gabriel forgot to breathe.
He could taste the self-satisfaction in the rasp of Sam’s breath.
“Yeah?”
The finger dragged sideways, slid around the inside of the waistband until it was resting against one side of his tailbone.
Gabriel wasn’t going to run. Not this time. But would Sam - was Sam really suggesting that he wouldn’t, that he was willing to, ready to… holy shit, he was.
“Damn, kid,” Gabriel hissed. Then he had Sam’s mouth under his again, hot and greedy, and he was devouring it and pushing into it and into Sam, in what had to be the most enthusiastic consent an angel had ever given a human. Sam obviously got it, because his next words came through something that felt like a smirk, curving wide and happy against Gabriel’s mouth.
“If, you know, you’re feeling up to it.”
Gabriel pulled back far enough to glower. “Not exactly a virgin here, y’know.”
Yes - a smirk. Fucking arch.
“Dean said it’d been a while for you. I’d understand if you were feeling… skittish.” And under that Gabriel heard the silent offer: if you aren’t ready to stop teasing yet.
Gabriel pushed forward, knocked Sam’s head up and back with a forceful nudge to his chin, and opened his mouth hot and dark and really not-skittish against Sam’s throat. “Fucking Winchesters. Get a man drunk and worm all his mystique out of him.”
“Dean?” Sam’s hands slid right past that barrier of cotton and anachronistic elastic, shoved right down and in without apology and curled possessive and tender over the warm expectant flesh below. “Dean got you drunk?”
“Alcohol tolerance, not exactly something I ever needed before.” Gabriel considered for a moment indulging in the sensual human tease of undressing, but the logistics of that right now would take too much wriggling, and also, moving off Sam.
He took the intelligent course of action, because he was all old and brilliant with cunning, and banished his boxers to some local paper merchant’s wine cellar.
And, there - not only the hot clench of Sam’s hands on his ass, but the scrape and tangle of hair and the heave and throb of skin far hotter and slicker. Sam growled again, one long deep shudder, and arched up hard against him, setting every nerve racing. Then one hand loosened, ran down the back of his right thigh and up again with a shiver of nails, and where it ended up wasn’t quite where it had started. It slid further in, two fingers pausing just either side of oh holy hell yes, if Sam was up for that, yes. Gabriel heard a low whine claw its way out of his throat and he shoved back, quick and shameless, into the questing touch.
Except. He was pretty sure Sam had only ever slept with women before, and with human taboos about certain functions of the body…
“Y’know,” he purred, feeling his own voice rumble low and hoarse through his chest, “I can do that bit myself. If it’s too weird.”
Sam snorted against his cheek, a sound that might have been meant for “you piss me off,” but which bypassed it and went straight for “you’re adorable when you worry” instead. “Okay, first?” One finger skidded teasingly around the edge, and Gabriel groaned shamelessly and reached out with his mind to find something that would be really useful right about now. “… you know you can do this with girls, right? And second…” Sam’s voice faltered for a moment as he found the skin under his touch suddenly slick with oil. Then he laughed, a rough hitch of breath into the corner of Gabriel’s mouth, and brought his second finger into the game. “… why the hell should you get all the fun?”
His teeth flicked over Gabriel’s lip on the last dark-edged word, then he was pushing in, opening Gabriel’s flesh and body up for himself. Gabriel snarled wordlessly and shoved back onto him with all his weight (one deeper, the second there, just the edge, just catching, not delivering). Because Sam couldn’t hurt him, not like this. And the sting and the stretch, the promise of it… Gabriel was damned (hah) if he was going to miss out on feeling any second of it due to some Winchester chivalry bullshit.
Sam took the hint. One became two, a deep sharp ache of satisfaction. His eyes were dark and heady as wine framed in dark tangled hair and pale linen, his fingers were broad and roughened and cunning, it had been more than eighty years since Gabriel had done this (let anyone do this), and it felt good.
A third impossibly large finger coaxed and shoved its way in, and Gabriel tossed his head back and groaned, long and low, rocked back to force him deeper, to grind himself down onto the hard stretch of knuckles. Sam laughed, happy and breathless and maybe just a bit awed, like he couldn’t quite believe he was here like this, alive and safe and free, and with this person.
Gabriel knew the feeling.
And then, thank fuck, Sam was apparently done teasing. Gabriel was suddenly empty, and Sam was shifting under him, twisting and surging until the mattress thudded into Gabriel’s back and six-foot-hells-yes of horny Winchester was pressing him down into the bed. Gabriel heard a strangled little yelp from his own throat and tangled his hands in Sam’s hair. Almost of their own delighted accord, his hips canted up into Sam’s body, begging with the arch of his back and the writhe of his body, as he spread his legs wide and then wider again when huge hands caught under his knees and tugged.
Sam was hanging over him, one long line of deliciousness and unyielding muscle, breathing damp and sharp into his shoulder. The heat of him tingled on Gabriel’s belly, the insides of his thighs, heavy and potent and gorgeously inescapable. So he did the only thing he could do: rolled his hips against Sam in little pleading circles, rocking himself up into the heady illusion of powerlessness.
Like he had been. Like he could remember far too well being. When Sam could have broken him, in more ways than one, and Gabriel might even have let him if he’d had the courage.
Might still let him now. And hell, there, a push, a slide, a slick blunt nuzzling just where he was long and almost open for it. Teasing, rubbing, circling. Hesitating.
Gabriel drew breath deep into lungs that didn’t need it anymore, and slid his hand into place tight on the back of Sam’s neck, over the marked flesh.
Sam made a noise, low and rough, and ran one hand up his side where the skin was so sensitised it felt like it was about to strike off sparks at the touch. Gabriel turned blindly into the sweet rasp of the tongue under his ear, seeking it out greedily for himself, as the first blunt nudge turned into a blazing hot pressure.
The shivers raced ahead of it, chasing each other up his spine, spiking out to the tips of his fingers. So much of it, heavy and strong, forcing him deliciously open, pushing in smooth as silk through the burn. Gabriel writhed under it, pushed up against him greedily, stole Sam’s tongue into his own mouth and sucked at it in hungry demand, until finally Sam was all the way in and Gabriel was full, full to overflowing; and he had to draw his nails down the sweat-slick valley of Sam’s spine and clamp down hard on the print at his hip as well to make him just move already.
And move he could. A few tantalising shoves, grinding slow and deep, working for room; then he drew out a little, and just went for it.
The world narrowed abruptly to that: the snap and drag of Sam’s hips, the tense and flex of his back, all warmth and demand and joyful strength. The smells of sex and sweat and Sam’s loose damp breath, the heat of skin over and around and between and deep deep inside. The wonder and the fierce, feral pleasure, thrumming all the way through him.
And then. Then.
The brush of Sam’s panting lips against his forehead, over his eye. An almost incongruously gentle touch that turned everything else into a very different picture.
Sam wasn’t just fucking. He was loving. He was making Gabriel beloved.
Gabriel’s breath caught on something sharp and strange, stumbling in his lungs. And he was shaking under Sam’s strokes, shaking with the vulnerability and the awe of it. Because, forget thirty-four years since he’d had sex, forget eighty-six years since he’d been fucked - how long was it, how many centuries, since he’d dared let someone in far enough to break his heart? since he’d chosen to give himself up?
“Gabriel?”
Sam’s voice rasped its way across his nerves, jarred his stomach. Gabriel felt very proud of the vaguely interrogative noise he managed in response.
“If you go and vanish on me now,” Sam panted against the underside of his chin, impressively comprehensible, “I swear I will hunt you down and end you.”
Gabriel lost all his breath in one huff, something that might have been laughter before it was jolted out of place by the jab of Sam’s hips. Incredulous, because how could he possibly…
“Nah,” he managed. “I’m done running.”
“Good,” Sam seared into his neck, vehement and fucking terrifying in its promise. Gabriel wrapped himself around him, around this magnificent, broken, rebuilt, stubborn, incomprehensible, utterly human man, clung to him, and hoped like hell that they were both telling the truth.
Sam’s eyelashes swept against his cheek as he lifted himself up just high enough to devour Gabriel with his eyes. Gabriel bit down hard on his own lip and forced himself to hold his gaze steady through the burn in his lungs, in his blood, through the inexorable and devastating and delicious roll of Sam’s hips into his body.
Sam was rapt, like the sight of Gabriel was something captivating and endless; and the expression in his widening eyes had Gabriel clenching around him, all want and no finesse, rocking faster, making Sam pick up the pace.
He moved fluid and beautiful, and the warm light glowing overhead picked up the faintly golden sheen of sweat glistening on every inch of him, outlining every roll of every muscle, every flicker and strain and sucked-in breath.
He felt like relief, and safety, and strength. Like the impossible finish of a war that had never been meant to end.
Sam shifted his weight, leant it onto his left hand, freeing his right to push deep into Gabriel’s hair and claim his mouth again; only this time it wasn’t just sex, or affection, or teasing, or friendship, or any other words that Gabriel wasn’t daring to think about. Wasn’t just his body, either, even while breaths grew short and rapid between their mouths and muscles drew tight in anticipation. Sam poured his soul into it, almost as literally as Gabriel had wrapped Sam in his own instead of his missing grace when he’d pulled him back and anchored him to the world. Oath, and consent, and command, and the promise of years.
To Gabriel, of all creatures in creation.
And what the hell else could Gabriel do but return it, as Sam’s rhythm broke and scattered into slick, gasping fragments, pushing Gabriel over the brink into white-hot absolution.
Five minutes later, five minutes of thundering hearts gradually slowing and deep breaths sucked in against hot, damp skin…
Gabriel opened one eye, and peeked at Sam over the lazy blue swell of the pillow. Between his own sluggish lashes and the way Sam’s face was half smushed into the soft fabric he could only glimpse impressions, lines: the soft curve of his mouth, the quirk of his eyebrow, the utter shameless mess that was his hair.
Then he groaned, and flopped an arm down over his face.
“If I had a masculinity. It would be feeling very threatened.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” Sam’s voice was a lazy, sated drag of I-know-better-than-to-take-you-seriously, and it was also really hot.
“Because right now,” Gabriel grumbled blindly, “I am seriously considering composing odes to your eyebrows.”
There was a soft huff of laughter against his throat; then lips; then the slow, tingling drag of teeth.
“You know,” Sam murmured into his pulse, innocent as an oversized incubus, “if you took us back now, there’d be hours of night left. And I’d still have time for sleep before the sun came up.”
… Sam could make persuasive points.
---
We’re making it up as we go along.
That had been the moment Gabriel had really started paying attention. The angel of the lord, sweeping aside what the prophet had already written.
Before that, it had been an inevitable march towards Michael-versus-Lucifer, to the Winchesters as their vessels since the lunkheads had screwed up and made sure of Lucifer’s rise. And that final moment of betrayal had been imminent: of brother against brother, that moment that neither would have been able to come back from, that would have fit them both for the roles and emptied them out inside for persuasion and consent. Locked them into Michael and Lucifer’s stories.
Those had been the players: Michael and Lucifer; Zachariah and Lilith as stage managers; Sam and Dean as props. Gabriel had been too wary and too bitter to watch any of them closely, and hadn’t seen the point in watching anyone else.
Then, we’re making it up as we go along. Castiel had thrown away the script. One angel, making a choice for the first time. Castiel had made himself an actor, one without a known role, driving all the others into different corners. He had become the wild card. And Gabriel had really started watching.
Of course, five minutes later he’d got himself exploded, but hey. Gabriel had fixed that for him.
Or apparently Father had. Through Gabriel.
Castiel, his good and faithful servant. In all the best ways. The ways that he’d made up for himself and thrown back in their faces.
Nolite me considerare quod fuscus sim quia decoloravit me sol. Castiel had exposed himself to the world’s sun, and had become something new, new and fiercely beautiful.
Castiel, with his centuries of patience, which Gabriel had never really needed to develop (and hadn’t that come back to bite him in the ass when he suddenly wasn’t all-powerful anymore). Rumpled and confused, and the way he didn’t speak so much as intone seriously, especially when he was at his least serious. Castiel, for whom “family” and “brother” had never meant what they had for Gabriel - had meant orders, and duty, and impersonal ties. Who must have spent so much of the last two years being so very fucking lonely, and Gabriel should have reached out to him earlier, before it all went south, if he’d only had the courage.
He’d had this fiercely suppressed thought niggling at the back of his mind, when he’d started darting from town to town showing them how to defend themselves against the Apocalypse, that Castiel might have been proud of him. One little seraph, and the disappointment burning in his eyes in an abandoned warehouse - more of a motivation than Gabriel had ever cared to admit.
Hadn’t all been Castiel, of course. Or all Sam, come to that. There was Dean as well.
First, Dean the inexorable force - the one who’d made Gabriel look at the whole bloody mess from another perspective, not just as a family argument. Not as an angel, not as a human. Just as a person.
Then, Dean the immovable object - the rock you could build on, with Castiel and Sam in erratic double orbit around him. The nightmares, well, those had been a regular thing ever since Gabriel had been remade, mortal enough to need to sleep. (Being spitted by his brothers. Dying slow and frozen while they tore each other apart wearing the Winchesters’ faces. Reaching out to heal the breach and tearing through them with hands that were too strong. Justice, turned on itself and on him, for deserting them in the first place.) Only then, there had been Dean, fighting at his side, a solid physical strength that wouldn’t back down and leave him. And Dean climbing into bed with him in that weird little motel with canary-coloured walls: Dean, big and strong and brotherly and unquestioning. One soft press of protective warmth under the sheets, and it had been far too tempting just to trust, to give in, only it had set Gabriel’s heart skipping because it had felt too big. Too much like forgiveness.
Dean, graceless and fiercely, messily human, raw and beautiful, all easy amusement and jagged edges and fire. Dean, whose greatest strength and weakness was Sam (as Gabriel had tried to hammer through their thick skulls right back when). Who really, really needed to invest in someone else too. Who might just manage it now.
And then - well, yeah. Sam. Where would you even start?
So, okay, Gabriel might be totally besotted with the lot of them. From time to time, week to week, each of them had taken on the weight of the world in his turn and shoved it in a new direction. Carrying on when one or both of the others was too defeated to keep on; learning to get up and carry on in his turn. Redefining the whole “team” thing like whoa. Strange and unfamiliar and wonderful.
And now, weirdly, it seemed like they wanted him around.
Well, no accounting for tastes.
---
It took three hours to exhaust Sam back into sleep. Gabriel promised to be back in the morning and left him to it, left Dean glowing audibly with incredulous contentment even in his dreams half a house away, while Gabriel went to make sure the world was still holding itself together.
Considering its track record, it was doing surprisingly well.
He made a quick round of all the angels he had busy on the ground, cuffed Senyel around the head and explained the complex mechanism of doors to her, checked out a report of seismic disturbances around Indonesia, then dropped in on his little brother and helped him take out a family of barmanous.
Castiel felt as bemusedly contented as Dean had. It was a good look on him. Gabriel approved.
(He cradled the memory of Sam’s sheepish “So, this is going to sound really stupid and kind of corny, but I had sort of forgotten that sex can be happy” close and secret.)
---
He had one more stop to make, before the night pulled over Missouri: to one other person who’d once told him make it up.
Cathy Randolph’s new house was one of the best protected in the state, even without factoring in the slumbering archangel hidden inside one of its inhabitants.
Joane Trundle was mourning her husband, mother, three sons, and half her village, dead four months ago (or, you know, three and a half hundred years). Cathy Randolph was mourning her younger sister, killed in a hurricane far more recently by either reckoning. Both women were bonding over baking, horses, and surviving the end of their world. Gabriel thought they’d probably manage.
Humans were seriously awesome sometimes.
Sariel was peaceful in her unconsciousness inside Joane, slowly rebuilding her tired mind, but it would be at least eight years before she was strong enough to wake up.
… Yeah, sooner or later he and Castiel were going to have to work out something regarding that whole vessel issue. Jimmy Novak wasn’t the only decent man who’d been shafted by that.
Joane had outed him to Cathy, apparently. Wasn’t like he’d had much time to hang around between Sariel taking him there, Sariel unbinding Death, Sariel collapsing in on herself, the confusion of Joane waking up, and Gabriel… well, okay, fleeing like a coward, but he had had things to do. (Helped that he’d managed to persuade Sariel to bring that little yellow car with them. He was getting fond of that thing.) Seemed like Joane had been awake most of the time Sariel had been riding her anyway, so she already knew when and where she was, what had gone down, and that she didn’t want to go back home or abandon Sariel.
Also she remembered who Gabriel was. Apparently. Which was embarrassing.
Gabriel was mildly surprised that Cathy didn’t seem to want to hit him, all things considered. She did have quite the knack for taking things in her stride.
She gave him cupcakes instead.
“Gabriel.”
He turned, with his hand on the doorknob. Cathy was looking at him with that self-possessed, solemn humour that had caught his attention as soon as he’d gotten his head out of his ass - the look that had made him remember her, and brought him back.
“What are you really?”
“Angel” wasn’t right, not anymore, though it wasn’t wrong either. It was less fundamental now - not a species, maybe a job description. “Human” was… cultural, which probably meant more in some ways only you couldn’t really put it on a census form. And there was still a lot in him of the god, power drawn from the earth and from his desires rather than from upstairs, except he was more bound to his body than any god.
And his soul… well, just because humans were the only other things he knew that had real souls didn’t mean that his soul was a human thing. That was his. And most of his power, his fundamental power, everything he’d twisted into what was his own since Kali had brought him back… it all had its roots in that. Well, they’d always known souls were awesome and powerful things.
He grinned at her, and gave her the only answer he was sure of.
“I’m a mongrel.”
It was an answer that he thought he liked.
Then he flew back to Tuscany, and to Sam.
---
Gabriel had been sort of looking forward to seeing Dean’s face when he saw Sam wander in for breakfast and sit down at the table: all sex-languorous and yawning, satiation written into every line, a chain of bites trailing ostentatiously down from under his jaw all the way down his chest, clad in nothing but soft sleep pants riding low on his hips.
Unfortunately, Castiel had turned up ten minutes ago and was now sitting all quiet and shirtless and softly smug at the table with a book. This meant Dean was sprawled out contentedly beside him with hot chocolate and blueberry pie and coffee, and that his only reaction to seeing Sam was to quirk an eyebrow and offer a deadpan “Someone get hungry during the night, Sammy?”
(Yep. If it hadn’t been for Sam and, well, Castiel, Gabriel could totally have set his sights on that ass, and the easy curve of that grin. The righteous fury, and willingness to forgive. He’d fallen for a hell of a lot less, in his time.)
Gabriel wiggled his eyebrows helpfully, slipped an arm around Sam’s shoulder and leaned into him, nuzzling at his hair. “What can I say? I like a midnight feast.”
“Good morning, Sam, Gabriel,” Castiel put in blandly, and Sam’s “Morning, Cas” sounded far too innocent and honestly chirpy, so Gabriel had to kiss him.
Sam gave a happy little murmuring sort of sigh and stretched out in the chair, temptingly long legs crossing under the table and giving Gabriel a delicious view of all the way down that reddened trail and just where it led. At which point it was a logical course of action to slide a thigh over to perch across his lap (with complete disregard for the way his kimono splayed out around their legs) and nuzzle possessively at the top bite. Then to nibble it. Then to start retracing them, nice and gentle.
After a while, he commented against Sam’s left nipple, to Sam, “You know, I was expecting just a bit more protest from him. Don’t sully my innocent eyes, don’t ruin my poor little brother’s honour, oh no two guys kissing in front of me. Something like that.”
“Still sitting right here, you know,” Dean retaliated mildly, and Gabriel felt the deep vibration of Sam’s chuckle under his mouth.
“I’m thinking,” Gabriel murmured, spreading the consonants out slow and deliberate over Sam’s skin as he edged back up again, “that our Dean got laid last night too.”
“Are you?”, came Castiel’s tolerant rumble from somewhere behind him, then Dean, sort of grudgingly amused, “Doesn’t he ever stop talking?”
Sam let his head fall lazily to one side so that Gabriel could pay closer attention to his neck. “Mmm. Not much.”
Gabriel stole the end of his words and kissed him, all unhurried and morning-slow and just a bit like worship, cupping his hands around his face and pushing them reverently into his hair, thighs sliding easily over his through silk and cotton. To his delight, Sam not only opened under it but slid his own hands, completely without compunction, up onto Gabriel’s thighs under the kimono. It was all easy and open-mouthed, gradually heating up, no hurry, no goal; and hells, Gabriel had forgotten things too, entirely forgotten how nice this could be with someone you really cared about (so sue him, it had been centuries).
One of his hands slipped down to trace over the line of awakening interest in Sam’s pyjamas. It earned him a groan of breathy encouragement, so Gabriel cupped it possessively, pressed in gently.
“You guys know you’re still in the kitchen, right?”
Gabriel flipped Dean off with the hand that wasn’t busy with more important things.
“Whatever. You get jizz on the floor, you clean it up, ’sall I’m saying.”
Sam made a petulant sort of muffled squeak around Gabriel’s tongue, which made Gabriel break off to laugh, quiet helpless puffs into Sam’s cheek, while Sam dropped his head back and groaned.
“You guys are never gonna let up, are you?”
“Not much,” Gabriel parroted cheerfully back at him.
Sam huffed messy laughter against his hair. Then his fingers dug sharp into Gabriel’s ribs. “Off, I’m hungry. Feed me, wife.”
“Oh, I see how it’s going to be.” Gabriel slid off to sprawl all over the long contiguous sofa into which he’d just turned all the chairs around the table, settling his head on Sam’s thigh and his feet across Castiel’s lap. “I get fucked, I get breakfast. Barefoot,” he added thoughtfully, and snapped his fingers.
Solid illusions were all very well for sitting on, but not for eating. Hunger had been seriously lacking in fun. It was still a gleeful novelty to be able to reach out with his mind halfway around to world to fetch real food again. Pancakes, fruit, cream, pain au chocolat, croissants, crispy bacon, muffins, eggs, more chocolate. Also, some of those chocolate-coated coffee beans that Castiel had discovered yesterday (rather to his surprise) that he liked, only Gabriel sneakily put them just out of Castiel’s reach, so that Dean would have to fetch them for him. And also, because he was feeling well-fucked and magnanimous, an apple pie for Dean.
He so wasn’t above bribing his way in here with food. And judging by the sounds both humans were making, and also the way Sam’s hand kept slipping down to run through Gabriel’s hair between forkfuls, they weren’t above being bribed.
Castiel just picked at it, of course. Gluttony was never going to be one of his indulgences. Curiosity, on the other hand…
“So where do you want us today, hot shot?” Dean prodded Gabriel in the foot, because he had zero respect for warriors of God.
“With me.” Castiel’s voice did that cute little under-socialised thing where it sort of growled its way into the middle of the conversation. “Gabriel’s crews are gaining momentum, and the most immediate of large-scale physical disasters are over. However, the hostile supernatural forces stirred up by Lucifer’s activities - intentionally on his part, or opportunistically on theirs - will not simply ebb away. While I and the angels under my direct command have dealt with the more blatant incursions on the world,” (which was a nice way of saying “the mother of all five-headed elephant-sized dogs rampaging on the Île de Paris and things like that,”) “there remain many whose effects are subtler and less distinctive. Our difficulty now is in identifying and locating threats.”
Dean made a thoughtful noise around pancake. “Less ‘Godzilla is stomping downtown Tokyo and needs to be smote with all your nukes’ and more ‘weird shit is happening and we can’t work out where to start’?”
“Something like that,” Castiel allowed, with a faint edge of determinedly-not-puzzled that meant Gabriel would be lining up cheap classic monster movies in the near future.
They needed that humanity, the other angels. Needed to remember what it was to want, to think, to help, to live. It was doing them good: confused they might be, but most of them had never looked brighter in millennia. Certainly not in the last couple of thousand years. Still, the point of the whole thing was giving them a frame of reference then getting them to use their own judgement. Within reason.
And Sam and Dean were hunters - they were going to want to go back to that sooner, not later. Trying to keep them for himself… that wouldn’t end well.
“Could be time to lose the training wheels,” Gabriel said lightly, and stole a slice of peach from Sam’s plate without opening his eyes. “See if they wobble off the rails.”
Sam slapped his hand away a moment too late. “Hey. This is freaking awesome peach. Get your own.”
“Also he beats me,” Gabriel opined to the room at large, which made a variety of amused and unsympathetic noises at him because his was a cruel lot.
Dean gave a non-committal grunt. “I dunno, dude. Sarafael’s still trying to find his feet. Literally. And Raniyel and I were rocking the whole it’s-not-creepy-that-two-foreign-dudes-want-to-touch-all-your-kids routine. And what about the next lot of newbies?”
Gabriel opened his eyes and blinked at him for a moment. He actually looked like he meant it, with that little scratch of a frown between his eyebrows and his mouth all deliberately casual.
Huh. Dean the big brother. To angels.
“Few days a week, or between hunts maybe?” he suggested.
Dean shrugged in a don’t-give-a-damn way that Gabriel was getting to be pretty sure he could see right through. “Sure, if you like.”
“So you want us to be your sniffer dogs.” Sam’s voice curled up at the end into a thoughtful sort of a question, but he didn’t sound bothered by the idea. Which was… interesting.
“Or for us to be your attack dogs, yes.” One of Castiel’s long, clever hands trailed over Dean’s knee, a soft path of consideration and interest. (The other stayed where it was, curled loose against Gabriel’s ankle.) “There are many creatures small and local enough not to catch our attention unless already noted by more human means. Have you ever tried asking an angel to scan a newspaper for reports that might constitute ‘a freaky death’? Manrael is convinced that there is a wraith somehow possessing all the world’s financial reviews.”
“Rocking the sarcasm, Cas,” Dean put in, looking far too pleased with himself. “So does this mean we get to move back home?”
Sam made one of his patented “my brother is such a disgrace” faces, which Gabriel suspected Castiel of secretly studying for later reference. “You’re in such a hurry to get back to crappy motels and junk food?”
“America, Sam,” Dean pointed out, like someone who wasn’t American might have said “the centre of the world.”
Gabriel wondered idly whether he should mention the three houses and various small apartments he had set up across the lower forty-eight. Maybe later.
Castiel’s hand wrapped around the bridge of Gabriel’s foot, one deliberate warm finger at a time; then his thumb pressed into the arch, stroking. Calling Gabriel to account. Gabriel closed his eyes, tilted his head into the slow press of Sam’s fingers, and let the voices drift over him.
“Hunting with angels at our backs whenever we need them,” Sam mused somewhere over his head. “Almost sounds like cheating.”
“Cheating? To keep our asses alive?” Dean spoke though one final mouthful of bacon. “Look. Hunting, even when it isn’t all post-Apocalypse? It’s a death sentence. Family curse, whatever. People just keep getting hurt and you can’t stop it. No one quits this life, because they all die first. The odds are stacked against us, man, always were, and this? This could halfway square them.”
“Hey, not arguing,” Sam returned mildly. Then, all brotherly reproach, “Dean. Are you trying to get Castiel addicted to chocolate-coated coffee beans?”
There was a sharp motion of a hand that felt like Castiel’s in the air, a bewildered indignant grumble from Sam, and a burst of fond pride from Dean, possibly aimed at both of the other two. Gabriel concluded, to his glee, that Castiel had just flipped Sam off.
Gabriel was a brilliant influence on him.
Gabriel twisted his neck around to bite Sam lightly on the calf. Sam yelped. Dean reached over and flicked Gabriel’s toe.
“Hey. No molesting my brother at the breakfast table.”
Gabriel fluttered his eyelashes at him sweetly. “You’ve all done eating. That makes it the conference table.”
Dean eyed him. “I just got signed up for a lifetime of this, didn’t I?”
Sam was smirking ridiculously over Gabriel’s head, and Castiel’s mouth was almost soft at the edges with that weird little half-smile of his that somehow meant more than the whole thing, and Gabriel cackled. “Promise to go easy on you one day a week, tiger.”
Dean managed to look pissy for all of two seconds before he caught Castiel’s eye and slid into a helpless grin. “Seriously. How is this my life?”
It started rhetorical and ended up kind of wondering, the sort of question Gabriel didn’t really know the answer to either. That after everything, they should maybe be able to come to this. Even if it was only for a few months, a year or two, a human lifetime.
Sam tugged at Gabriel’s hair until Gabriel grumbled and let him move his legs. Then he stood up, all ready to save the world again, every day. Because he was ridiculous and amazing like that.
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
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