((Supernatural AU)) One More Miracle (Chapter Six)
Previous Chapter
Sam couldn't breathe.
Gabe stared at him expectantly, leaning forward, quiet, waiting for Sam to make the next move, but there was nothing Sam could do. How could he even begin to process this? He cradled his arm against him, still not believing that it was really whole and healed, his fingers brushing against the pristine skin, back and forth, from his elbow to his wrist.
“I've gotta be dreaming,” he muttered, staring at the opposite wall and trying to will himself back to reality because certainly this couldn't be happening. “Dreaming or...or crazy. I'm crazy, aren't I? God, I've gone totally insane or something-”
Gabe's hand was on his arm again, his head tilted to one side. “You're not crazy, Sam. I promise you, you're not crazy.”
Sam just stared at his arm, flexing his fingers, waiting to wake up. Gabe reached forward and brushed the lightly singed bits of plaster and bandages from Sam's lap. “I asked you to trust me,” he said, so softly that Sam almost couldn't hear him over the blood pounding in his own ears. “Do you still trust me?”
Sam turned his gaze from his arm, looked up at Gabe, into his gold-tinted eyes that were now somber and dark with intense purpose, and suddenly he was nodding. Gabe let out a breath and leaned back, his fingers dragging lightly across the denim of Sam's jeans.
“I told you,” Gabe said, all of a sudden sounding anxious - like he was putting an enormous amount of effort into not letting his voice shake as he spoke. “I told you I wasn't from here. That I was from...up north?”
“Yeah,” Sam breathed. In his mind, he traveled back to the night of their first meeting, and he remembered Gabe's oddly cryptic words. You don't have to be cryptic for the sake of character development, he'd said. Now he couldn't help but feel that they'd carried meaning beyond his understanding.
Gabe bit the inside of his cheek, never looking away from Sam's face as he said, “Well I was telling the truth...sort of. But when I said I was from up north, I didn't mean Jersey or Montreal. I meant, well...up north.” He extended one finger up toward the ceiling as he stressed the last word, and Sam glanced upwards.
“What do you mean, north?” he asked.
“I mean way north. About as north as you can get north.”
Sam stared, and a nervous laugh forced its way from his parched throat. “What, you mean Mars or something?”
“No, not that kind of north! I mean-” He cut himself off, sighing and running his hands over his face. “I'm not from...from space, Sam, but I'm not from here. Think clouds, sunshine, pearly gates.”
Sam's lips were slightly parted, and when Gabe finally looked up again, his mouth went completely dry. Gabe said nothing more; he just waited, watching intently, leaning forward with his fingers laced in his lap.
“You're saying you're a...a...”
“Angel,” Gabe finished softly, now fixing his gaze on the floor. “An angel.”
Sam felt his throat close around his words, and suddenly he wasn't sure which of them was the crazy one anymore. “You're not an angel, Gabe,” he said carefully, not looking him in the eye, but instead staring at his hunched shoulder. “I mean, angels...they don't...”
“What?” Gabe asked intently. “They don't exist?”
Sam set his jaw. “I've known that for a while.”
“You've known it,” Gabe scoffed. “Everyone knows things, Sam. When kids are little, they know where babies come from - it's the stork, of course. Can't be anything else. And when people get older, they know that God's out there, or that He isn't. They know because they can feel it, in their heart or in their bones or their soul. And you know that angels can't be real-”
“Because they aren't!” Sam snapped, standing up from the couch, tiny particles of plaster raining down onto the carpet. “There aren't any angels, there's no Heaven, there's no God. There's nothing out there waiting for us, watching us-”
“And you know that, don't you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Gabe stood at his full height - which wasn't much next to Sam - and stared up at him, as if issuing a challenge. “How?” he asked.
“What?”
“How do you know that? For sure. Tell me.”
Sam stumbled over his words: “Because...I just...do...I don't-”
“Sam.” Gabe's voice was tender, warm and sympathetic, and when Sam finally met his eyes again, his expression had softened. “There's no such thing as perfect. Not Heaven, not even God...” He reached for Sam's arm, taking it gently in his hand and draping his palm over it. His thumb stroked lightly over the short hairs there, over the bumps of the bones in his wrist. “But there is such a thing as good, and Sam...you deserve it.”
“And that's why you healed me,” Sam found himself saying. Gabe nodded. It still wasn't enough; Sam's mind still protested valiantly against what it was being offered. “But you can't be...there's no way you could be an angel...”
“I am, sasquatch,” Gabe said with a melancholy laugh. “Whether you believe it or not.”
Sam met his gaze and squared his shoulder, pulling his arm back. “But you can't be,” he rasped. “I mean you can't be.”
“Why?”
“Because why would an angel ever waste his time in a place like Lawrence, with someone like...” He stopped, and Gabe's eyes suddenly clouded over with such overwhelming sadness that Sam simply couldn't continue. He stared at the floor, but Gabe reached up, cupped Sam's face in his palms and forced him to make eye contact.
“I told you,” he said. “Lawrence was just the luck of the draw. And you...Sam, you deserve so much more than you think you do.”
Sam closed his eyes, leaned into Gabe's touch, and barely heard Gabe's words when he asked, “Do you still trust me?” Sam reached up and wrapped his fingers around Gabe's wrist, stood there in silence for a long, stretched out moment before finally nodding.
“I'm crazy,” he said. “But yeah...I do.” He opened his eyes again, and Gabe was smiling, though it was a sad, tired smile. “Gabe...what happened to you?”
Gabe's smile broke, and he looked away, letting his hands drop from Sam's face. He sat back down on the couch, as if a heavy weight had suddenly found its way onto his shoulders. Sam sat next to him.
“I told you,” Gabe finally said, staring down at his own hands. “I was kicked out.”
“Kicked...out?”
When Gabe looked up at him, he looked so small, and there were tears shimmering in the corners of his eyes, though he didn't let them escape. “I fell, Sam,” he said, so softly that it was nearly a whisper, and suddenly Sam felt anguish lodge itself between his ribs, though he couldn't for the life of him explain it away. He just gazed at Gabe, questioning without words, and Gabe sighed, deeply.
“People question all the time. It's expected. It's normal. But angels...we're built to have faith. It's what we do. I...questioned. I doubted.” Gabe looked up at him, eyes wide and expression pained. “You're better than us, Sam. Better by miles. You can face doubt like it's nothing, but for us...We're so scared of it, it's like a disease. I'm quarantined, Sam. And until I prove I'm not contagious, I can't go back.”
“Can you?” Sam asked. “Prove it?”
Gabe looked pensive, running his fingers through his hair. “There's this law,” he said thoughtfully. “A rule, a...bullet point that's been around for millennia. And it says that any angel who falls gets a chance...just one chance, to make it back.” He turned his head toward Sam, gauging his reaction before continuing: “See, when I was cast out, I lost all of my power, except just enough for a few...miracles. Three, to be exact. Three miracles. That's all I get.”
Gabe glanced at Sam's arm, and Sam followed his gaze with his own. “My arm...” he mused. Gabe nodded.
“The first,” he said. “Almost five years I've been here, and that-” He pointed at the arm as Sam brought his hand up to study it. “That's the first one I've used.”
Sam stared at him, disbelieving. “But...why?”
“Because you didn't deserve that, kiddo. You never deserved what those bastards did to you. Not one bit of it. And you don't deserve anything this life has chucked at you either. But even after all of it, after all that shit, all it did was make you kind, sasquatch. And after all that, I'd say you deserve a miracle or two, dontcha think?” Gabe smiled at him, hopefully, but Sam still couldn't return the gesture.
“You said...you only get three,” he said. Gabe nodded. “What happens...when you run out? When you use them all? What happens to you?”
Gabe was silent for a long time - too long, Sam thought, and he scooted closer to him. “Gabe...what happens to you?”
“If I can prove to Heaven that I deserve to come back home...then I do. Once I perform my last miracle, I go back.”
“So you'll leave,” Sam clarified. Gabe just looked away sadly.
Sam drew in a ragged breath. “Don't go.”
“What?” Gabe asked, his expression one of surprise. Sam reached for him, cupping his face in his hands and pulling him close.
“Don't go,” he repeated. “If they kicked you out, left you all alone just because you questioned or doubted or whatever...That doesn't sound like the paradise everyone says Heaven is supposed to be. Why go back to a place like that?”
Gabe reached up, running his fingers along the curve of Sam's wrist. “It's my home, Sam,” he said. Sam squeezed his eyes shut.
“I know...” he sighed. “I know it's awful for me to want you to stay here...”
“Geez, sasquatch...” Gabe said, his voice thick with emotion. “I don't want to leave you either, you know.” Sam opened his eyes, looked him over hesitantly.
“Why'd you do it?” Sam pressed his forehead to Gabe's, just rested there a moment. “Why'd you use up a miracle on my stupid arm. It would have healed. Why did you do it...why did you...”
“Because I'm the reason it happened,” Gabe said. “Me and my shop...this place, it's the only home I've got. You know what it means to me, and you got hurt standing up for it, and for me. How many times do I have to tell you that you deserve this before you'll start believing me?”
“Just...promise me you won't use any more on me, okay?” Sam pleaded. “Promise me, alright?”
“As long as you don't get yourself hurt again,” Gabe said with a chuckle.
Sam forced a smile of his own. “I'll do my best.” Slowly, he leaned forward, tentative because unless this was a very vivid dream - and there was still a lingering voice in the back of Sam's mind that said that it had to be, still - then he was about to kiss a freaking angel, and that had to be at least four different kinds of blasphemous.
“Is this...” he found himself breathing against Gabe's lips, “Is this...okay? You and I...together...is it?”
“You don't really believe that asshole preachers who yell about homosexuality up on their soapboxes, do you?”
“Of course not, but...Gabe...”
“I get what you're asking, sasquatch. I do. And trust me, the powers that be aren't nearly as uptight as the Catholic church would have you believe. All that hate...that's people, not God.”
“Wow...” Sam sighed, and he leaned back.
“What?”
“I just...it's good...to hear that, you know?” Gabe's gaze was understanding and empathetic.
“I bet,” he said.
Sam cocked a crooked smile his way and asked, tentatively, “Still think we're better?”
Gabe's grin spoke volumes. “By a longshot,” he answered, and he closed the distance between them. Sam went still, almost frigid as Gabe’s lips moved gently against his. But Gabe was patient, not pushing, just waiting, until finally, slowly, Sam allowed himself to kiss back.
-
The walk home that evening felt like a dream, and by the time Sam stumbled through the door of his and Dean's apartment, he found he could barely remember it save for a few bits and pieces. One minute, he was leaving Gabe's bookstore, his mind spinning, and the next he was home. He dropped his backpack by the door, went to the kitchen sink and splashed some water on his face.
“Dude, late night?” Sam turned just as Dean strode into view. “Lot of work?”
“Yeah,” Sam clipped out. “Had to catch up on some stuff.”
And I found out that Gabe is actually a fallen angel, so there's that.
It sounded so utterly insane to him, and he wondered what Dean would say if he found out. Probably exactly what he'd been saying to himself since he'd first heard the truth: that he was crazy, that he'd lost it, that this couldn't be reality. So he kept his mouth shut, but then Dean's brow furrowed.
“Dude,” he said, stepping toward Sam and squinting. “What happened to your cast, man?”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“I...” He stuttered and stumbled, glancing at his own arm and scratching the back of his neck. He couldn't tell Dean the truth; there was no telling what would happen if he did, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to convince Dean. That was a whole can of worms that he really didn't want to open. So he improvised.
“There was some kind of a...mixup at the clinic. Something about the x-ray being screwed. Turns out it's not actually broken.” He tried to laugh, to pass it off as a weird accident that could happen to anyone. Dean blinked. Something in his gut told Sam that he was being utterly unconvincing.
“Are you kidding me?” Dean scoffed. He ran an irate hand through his short hair. “Son of a bitch! Those assholes don't even know what the hell they're doing!”
Sam breathed an inward sigh of relief. It was a crap story, but it had done the job for the moment, and that was all he could ask for.
“Yeah, well at least I don't have to have the damn thing on my arm for six weeks, you know?”
“Maybe, but we're going to a real hospital next time. Patient First can kiss my ass.”
“I'm hoping there's not going to be a 'next time,' Dean,” Sam pointed out.
“Yeah, same,” Dean agreed. But he still didn't look like he was finished analyzing the situation. He gave Sam a long once-over, looking unsettled. “You okay?”
“What? Yeah.”
“You look like you're about to puke or something.”
Did he? Honestly, that didn't surprise him much.
“I'm fine,” he said, and he grabbed his backpack. The words that had been clambering around inside his head continued to bang against the insides of his skull, louder and louder: Gabe is an angel, Gabe is an angel, he's an angel, angel, angel, angel, angel.
Angels are watching over you, Sammy.
He froze.
Mom told me that. When I was scared. She said angels are watching over us.
Dean.
Suddenly, he was five, having rushed to his brother's bed after a nightmare filled with fire and blood and screams, and Dean was holding him close because their dad couldn't. Suddenly he was crying into his big brother's shirt in the middle of the night, Dean soothing him through his soft, hitching sobs. Suddenly he was falling asleep on his brother's shoulder with the words that he wondered if he'd ever truly believed at all echoing through his head: Angels are watching over you.
“Sammy?”
Dean's real voice, much deeper and rougher now than it had been in Sam's head, cut through the fog, and Sam started. “Man, what's going on with you? Did something happen or what?”
“No, I...I just need to study, Dean.” He pulled away, stalked toward his room.
Dean's hand on his shoulder stopped him: “Hey,” his brother barked. “Just hold up a minute, okay? Dude, you can talk to me. What's going on? Is this about what those assholes did to Gabe's shop? Because they're idiots, Sam. You know that-”
“Yes, I know that, Dean!” Sam snapped, pushing his brother away. “Of course I know that! I'm not five, Dean. I don't need you to baby me!”
He tried to pull back again, but Dean pushed him against the wall, his hands twisting in Sam's shirt. “I'm not babying you, you hear me?” he barked. “I'm your big brother, dammit, and when something's eating at you, I can tell. I've seen stuff eat away at people from the inside, you know I have. And I've felt it too. And I'm not letting that happen to you, Sammy, not in a million years. The day I do is the day I've failed as a big brother, you got it?” Dean's voice was raspy and wrecked by the time he finally fell silent, his grip on Sam's shirt going slack. He rested his palms against Sam's chest.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “Sorry...look, I just...I don't like feeling like you don't think you can talk to me, you know? Cause you can...”
“I know, Dean,” Sam sighed. He let out a long breath, staring down at the carpet.
He couldn't tell Dean the truth, or at least not the whole truth. But he could tell him part of the truth.
“I guess I just...what they did...it doesn't really go away, you know? I keep trying to make it not hurt, but it still does.”
“I know it does,” Dean said, leaning against the wall beside Sam, his hands clasped behind his head. “And you know I would have slammed them both into the pavement if I'd been there.”
“I know you would have,” Sam said, and surprisingly, he chuckled a bit as he spoke. Both of them glanced up at the clock at about the same moment, and Dean sighed. “Late shift?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Dean replied. “Look, Sam...I can be late. I can call in sick. If you need to talk-”
“No, Dean, it's fine. I'm fine.”
“Okay,” Dean relented. He pushed off the wall and went to get dressed. “You okay to cook your own spaghetti-O's tonight, little brother?”
“Yeah, I'm good.”
“Put in a movie, dude. Call your boyfriend. Hell, have him come over. It's a Friday night for Christ's sake. I won't be back until late anyway, and I promise I won't interrupt anything.” Sam did smile at that.
“I think I'll just stick with the movie,” he said. “I'm kinda tired...besides, I got a paper I have to finish by next Tuesday.”
“My brother, the nerd,” Dean teased.
“Almost a college educated nerd, or do I need to remind you?”
Dean punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You never let me forget it, Sammy.”
When Dean had left for the night, Sam did put in a movie, but he didn't watch it. How could he concentrate on Thor when the knowledge of what Gabe was, of what he'd done for him, kept rattling around in his brain? Still, even though he couldn't quite wrap his head around it, as the information settled and calmed like water in a glass, there was part of him that was soothed by it rather than riled up.
It was as if part of him had known for a long time.
That night, Sam crawled into bed early, lying awake as his thoughts buzzed in his mind like a hive of angry bees, and finally, when he was exhausted from turning it over and over in his brain so endlessly, he closed his eyes and didn't sleep, but prayed for the first time in nearly ten years.
Next Chapter
Sam couldn't breathe.
Gabe stared at him expectantly, leaning forward, quiet, waiting for Sam to make the next move, but there was nothing Sam could do. How could he even begin to process this? He cradled his arm against him, still not believing that it was really whole and healed, his fingers brushing against the pristine skin, back and forth, from his elbow to his wrist.
“I've gotta be dreaming,” he muttered, staring at the opposite wall and trying to will himself back to reality because certainly this couldn't be happening. “Dreaming or...or crazy. I'm crazy, aren't I? God, I've gone totally insane or something-”
Gabe's hand was on his arm again, his head tilted to one side. “You're not crazy, Sam. I promise you, you're not crazy.”
Sam just stared at his arm, flexing his fingers, waiting to wake up. Gabe reached forward and brushed the lightly singed bits of plaster and bandages from Sam's lap. “I asked you to trust me,” he said, so softly that Sam almost couldn't hear him over the blood pounding in his own ears. “Do you still trust me?”
Sam turned his gaze from his arm, looked up at Gabe, into his gold-tinted eyes that were now somber and dark with intense purpose, and suddenly he was nodding. Gabe let out a breath and leaned back, his fingers dragging lightly across the denim of Sam's jeans.
“I told you,” Gabe said, all of a sudden sounding anxious - like he was putting an enormous amount of effort into not letting his voice shake as he spoke. “I told you I wasn't from here. That I was from...up north?”
“Yeah,” Sam breathed. In his mind, he traveled back to the night of their first meeting, and he remembered Gabe's oddly cryptic words. You don't have to be cryptic for the sake of character development, he'd said. Now he couldn't help but feel that they'd carried meaning beyond his understanding.
Gabe bit the inside of his cheek, never looking away from Sam's face as he said, “Well I was telling the truth...sort of. But when I said I was from up north, I didn't mean Jersey or Montreal. I meant, well...up north.” He extended one finger up toward the ceiling as he stressed the last word, and Sam glanced upwards.
“What do you mean, north?” he asked.
“I mean way north. About as north as you can get north.”
Sam stared, and a nervous laugh forced its way from his parched throat. “What, you mean Mars or something?”
“No, not that kind of north! I mean-” He cut himself off, sighing and running his hands over his face. “I'm not from...from space, Sam, but I'm not from here. Think clouds, sunshine, pearly gates.”
Sam's lips were slightly parted, and when Gabe finally looked up again, his mouth went completely dry. Gabe said nothing more; he just waited, watching intently, leaning forward with his fingers laced in his lap.
“You're saying you're a...a...”
“Angel,” Gabe finished softly, now fixing his gaze on the floor. “An angel.”
Sam felt his throat close around his words, and suddenly he wasn't sure which of them was the crazy one anymore. “You're not an angel, Gabe,” he said carefully, not looking him in the eye, but instead staring at his hunched shoulder. “I mean, angels...they don't...”
“What?” Gabe asked intently. “They don't exist?”
Sam set his jaw. “I've known that for a while.”
“You've known it,” Gabe scoffed. “Everyone knows things, Sam. When kids are little, they know where babies come from - it's the stork, of course. Can't be anything else. And when people get older, they know that God's out there, or that He isn't. They know because they can feel it, in their heart or in their bones or their soul. And you know that angels can't be real-”
“Because they aren't!” Sam snapped, standing up from the couch, tiny particles of plaster raining down onto the carpet. “There aren't any angels, there's no Heaven, there's no God. There's nothing out there waiting for us, watching us-”
“And you know that, don't you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Gabe stood at his full height - which wasn't much next to Sam - and stared up at him, as if issuing a challenge. “How?” he asked.
“What?”
“How do you know that? For sure. Tell me.”
Sam stumbled over his words: “Because...I just...do...I don't-”
“Sam.” Gabe's voice was tender, warm and sympathetic, and when Sam finally met his eyes again, his expression had softened. “There's no such thing as perfect. Not Heaven, not even God...” He reached for Sam's arm, taking it gently in his hand and draping his palm over it. His thumb stroked lightly over the short hairs there, over the bumps of the bones in his wrist. “But there is such a thing as good, and Sam...you deserve it.”
“And that's why you healed me,” Sam found himself saying. Gabe nodded. It still wasn't enough; Sam's mind still protested valiantly against what it was being offered. “But you can't be...there's no way you could be an angel...”
“I am, sasquatch,” Gabe said with a melancholy laugh. “Whether you believe it or not.”
Sam met his gaze and squared his shoulder, pulling his arm back. “But you can't be,” he rasped. “I mean you can't be.”
“Why?”
“Because why would an angel ever waste his time in a place like Lawrence, with someone like...” He stopped, and Gabe's eyes suddenly clouded over with such overwhelming sadness that Sam simply couldn't continue. He stared at the floor, but Gabe reached up, cupped Sam's face in his palms and forced him to make eye contact.
“I told you,” he said. “Lawrence was just the luck of the draw. And you...Sam, you deserve so much more than you think you do.”
Sam closed his eyes, leaned into Gabe's touch, and barely heard Gabe's words when he asked, “Do you still trust me?” Sam reached up and wrapped his fingers around Gabe's wrist, stood there in silence for a long, stretched out moment before finally nodding.
“I'm crazy,” he said. “But yeah...I do.” He opened his eyes again, and Gabe was smiling, though it was a sad, tired smile. “Gabe...what happened to you?”
Gabe's smile broke, and he looked away, letting his hands drop from Sam's face. He sat back down on the couch, as if a heavy weight had suddenly found its way onto his shoulders. Sam sat next to him.
“I told you,” Gabe finally said, staring down at his own hands. “I was kicked out.”
“Kicked...out?”
When Gabe looked up at him, he looked so small, and there were tears shimmering in the corners of his eyes, though he didn't let them escape. “I fell, Sam,” he said, so softly that it was nearly a whisper, and suddenly Sam felt anguish lodge itself between his ribs, though he couldn't for the life of him explain it away. He just gazed at Gabe, questioning without words, and Gabe sighed, deeply.
“People question all the time. It's expected. It's normal. But angels...we're built to have faith. It's what we do. I...questioned. I doubted.” Gabe looked up at him, eyes wide and expression pained. “You're better than us, Sam. Better by miles. You can face doubt like it's nothing, but for us...We're so scared of it, it's like a disease. I'm quarantined, Sam. And until I prove I'm not contagious, I can't go back.”
“Can you?” Sam asked. “Prove it?”
Gabe looked pensive, running his fingers through his hair. “There's this law,” he said thoughtfully. “A rule, a...bullet point that's been around for millennia. And it says that any angel who falls gets a chance...just one chance, to make it back.” He turned his head toward Sam, gauging his reaction before continuing: “See, when I was cast out, I lost all of my power, except just enough for a few...miracles. Three, to be exact. Three miracles. That's all I get.”
Gabe glanced at Sam's arm, and Sam followed his gaze with his own. “My arm...” he mused. Gabe nodded.
“The first,” he said. “Almost five years I've been here, and that-” He pointed at the arm as Sam brought his hand up to study it. “That's the first one I've used.”
Sam stared at him, disbelieving. “But...why?”
“Because you didn't deserve that, kiddo. You never deserved what those bastards did to you. Not one bit of it. And you don't deserve anything this life has chucked at you either. But even after all of it, after all that shit, all it did was make you kind, sasquatch. And after all that, I'd say you deserve a miracle or two, dontcha think?” Gabe smiled at him, hopefully, but Sam still couldn't return the gesture.
“You said...you only get three,” he said. Gabe nodded. “What happens...when you run out? When you use them all? What happens to you?”
Gabe was silent for a long time - too long, Sam thought, and he scooted closer to him. “Gabe...what happens to you?”
“If I can prove to Heaven that I deserve to come back home...then I do. Once I perform my last miracle, I go back.”
“So you'll leave,” Sam clarified. Gabe just looked away sadly.
Sam drew in a ragged breath. “Don't go.”
“What?” Gabe asked, his expression one of surprise. Sam reached for him, cupping his face in his hands and pulling him close.
“Don't go,” he repeated. “If they kicked you out, left you all alone just because you questioned or doubted or whatever...That doesn't sound like the paradise everyone says Heaven is supposed to be. Why go back to a place like that?”
Gabe reached up, running his fingers along the curve of Sam's wrist. “It's my home, Sam,” he said. Sam squeezed his eyes shut.
“I know...” he sighed. “I know it's awful for me to want you to stay here...”
“Geez, sasquatch...” Gabe said, his voice thick with emotion. “I don't want to leave you either, you know.” Sam opened his eyes, looked him over hesitantly.
“Why'd you do it?” Sam pressed his forehead to Gabe's, just rested there a moment. “Why'd you use up a miracle on my stupid arm. It would have healed. Why did you do it...why did you...”
“Because I'm the reason it happened,” Gabe said. “Me and my shop...this place, it's the only home I've got. You know what it means to me, and you got hurt standing up for it, and for me. How many times do I have to tell you that you deserve this before you'll start believing me?”
“Just...promise me you won't use any more on me, okay?” Sam pleaded. “Promise me, alright?”
“As long as you don't get yourself hurt again,” Gabe said with a chuckle.
Sam forced a smile of his own. “I'll do my best.” Slowly, he leaned forward, tentative because unless this was a very vivid dream - and there was still a lingering voice in the back of Sam's mind that said that it had to be, still - then he was about to kiss a freaking angel, and that had to be at least four different kinds of blasphemous.
“Is this...” he found himself breathing against Gabe's lips, “Is this...okay? You and I...together...is it?”
“You don't really believe that asshole preachers who yell about homosexuality up on their soapboxes, do you?”
“Of course not, but...Gabe...”
“I get what you're asking, sasquatch. I do. And trust me, the powers that be aren't nearly as uptight as the Catholic church would have you believe. All that hate...that's people, not God.”
“Wow...” Sam sighed, and he leaned back.
“What?”
“I just...it's good...to hear that, you know?” Gabe's gaze was understanding and empathetic.
“I bet,” he said.
Sam cocked a crooked smile his way and asked, tentatively, “Still think we're better?”
Gabe's grin spoke volumes. “By a longshot,” he answered, and he closed the distance between them. Sam went still, almost frigid as Gabe’s lips moved gently against his. But Gabe was patient, not pushing, just waiting, until finally, slowly, Sam allowed himself to kiss back.
-
The walk home that evening felt like a dream, and by the time Sam stumbled through the door of his and Dean's apartment, he found he could barely remember it save for a few bits and pieces. One minute, he was leaving Gabe's bookstore, his mind spinning, and the next he was home. He dropped his backpack by the door, went to the kitchen sink and splashed some water on his face.
“Dude, late night?” Sam turned just as Dean strode into view. “Lot of work?”
“Yeah,” Sam clipped out. “Had to catch up on some stuff.”
And I found out that Gabe is actually a fallen angel, so there's that.
It sounded so utterly insane to him, and he wondered what Dean would say if he found out. Probably exactly what he'd been saying to himself since he'd first heard the truth: that he was crazy, that he'd lost it, that this couldn't be reality. So he kept his mouth shut, but then Dean's brow furrowed.
“Dude,” he said, stepping toward Sam and squinting. “What happened to your cast, man?”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“I...” He stuttered and stumbled, glancing at his own arm and scratching the back of his neck. He couldn't tell Dean the truth; there was no telling what would happen if he did, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to convince Dean. That was a whole can of worms that he really didn't want to open. So he improvised.
“There was some kind of a...mixup at the clinic. Something about the x-ray being screwed. Turns out it's not actually broken.” He tried to laugh, to pass it off as a weird accident that could happen to anyone. Dean blinked. Something in his gut told Sam that he was being utterly unconvincing.
“Are you kidding me?” Dean scoffed. He ran an irate hand through his short hair. “Son of a bitch! Those assholes don't even know what the hell they're doing!”
Sam breathed an inward sigh of relief. It was a crap story, but it had done the job for the moment, and that was all he could ask for.
“Yeah, well at least I don't have to have the damn thing on my arm for six weeks, you know?”
“Maybe, but we're going to a real hospital next time. Patient First can kiss my ass.”
“I'm hoping there's not going to be a 'next time,' Dean,” Sam pointed out.
“Yeah, same,” Dean agreed. But he still didn't look like he was finished analyzing the situation. He gave Sam a long once-over, looking unsettled. “You okay?”
“What? Yeah.”
“You look like you're about to puke or something.”
Did he? Honestly, that didn't surprise him much.
“I'm fine,” he said, and he grabbed his backpack. The words that had been clambering around inside his head continued to bang against the insides of his skull, louder and louder: Gabe is an angel, Gabe is an angel, he's an angel, angel, angel, angel, angel.
Angels are watching over you, Sammy.
He froze.
Mom told me that. When I was scared. She said angels are watching over us.
Dean.
Suddenly, he was five, having rushed to his brother's bed after a nightmare filled with fire and blood and screams, and Dean was holding him close because their dad couldn't. Suddenly he was crying into his big brother's shirt in the middle of the night, Dean soothing him through his soft, hitching sobs. Suddenly he was falling asleep on his brother's shoulder with the words that he wondered if he'd ever truly believed at all echoing through his head: Angels are watching over you.
“Sammy?”
Dean's real voice, much deeper and rougher now than it had been in Sam's head, cut through the fog, and Sam started. “Man, what's going on with you? Did something happen or what?”
“No, I...I just need to study, Dean.” He pulled away, stalked toward his room.
Dean's hand on his shoulder stopped him: “Hey,” his brother barked. “Just hold up a minute, okay? Dude, you can talk to me. What's going on? Is this about what those assholes did to Gabe's shop? Because they're idiots, Sam. You know that-”
“Yes, I know that, Dean!” Sam snapped, pushing his brother away. “Of course I know that! I'm not five, Dean. I don't need you to baby me!”
He tried to pull back again, but Dean pushed him against the wall, his hands twisting in Sam's shirt. “I'm not babying you, you hear me?” he barked. “I'm your big brother, dammit, and when something's eating at you, I can tell. I've seen stuff eat away at people from the inside, you know I have. And I've felt it too. And I'm not letting that happen to you, Sammy, not in a million years. The day I do is the day I've failed as a big brother, you got it?” Dean's voice was raspy and wrecked by the time he finally fell silent, his grip on Sam's shirt going slack. He rested his palms against Sam's chest.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “Sorry...look, I just...I don't like feeling like you don't think you can talk to me, you know? Cause you can...”
“I know, Dean,” Sam sighed. He let out a long breath, staring down at the carpet.
He couldn't tell Dean the truth, or at least not the whole truth. But he could tell him part of the truth.
“I guess I just...what they did...it doesn't really go away, you know? I keep trying to make it not hurt, but it still does.”
“I know it does,” Dean said, leaning against the wall beside Sam, his hands clasped behind his head. “And you know I would have slammed them both into the pavement if I'd been there.”
“I know you would have,” Sam said, and surprisingly, he chuckled a bit as he spoke. Both of them glanced up at the clock at about the same moment, and Dean sighed. “Late shift?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Dean replied. “Look, Sam...I can be late. I can call in sick. If you need to talk-”
“No, Dean, it's fine. I'm fine.”
“Okay,” Dean relented. He pushed off the wall and went to get dressed. “You okay to cook your own spaghetti-O's tonight, little brother?”
“Yeah, I'm good.”
“Put in a movie, dude. Call your boyfriend. Hell, have him come over. It's a Friday night for Christ's sake. I won't be back until late anyway, and I promise I won't interrupt anything.” Sam did smile at that.
“I think I'll just stick with the movie,” he said. “I'm kinda tired...besides, I got a paper I have to finish by next Tuesday.”
“My brother, the nerd,” Dean teased.
“Almost a college educated nerd, or do I need to remind you?”
Dean punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You never let me forget it, Sammy.”
When Dean had left for the night, Sam did put in a movie, but he didn't watch it. How could he concentrate on Thor when the knowledge of what Gabe was, of what he'd done for him, kept rattling around in his brain? Still, even though he couldn't quite wrap his head around it, as the information settled and calmed like water in a glass, there was part of him that was soothed by it rather than riled up.
It was as if part of him had known for a long time.
That night, Sam crawled into bed early, lying awake as his thoughts buzzed in his mind like a hive of angry bees, and finally, when he was exhausted from turning it over and over in his brain so endlessly, he closed his eyes and didn't sleep, but prayed for the first time in nearly ten years.
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