cywscross | Behind the Eight Ball (Snippet) (Reply)

Fandom: Supernatural

Pairing(s): Sabriel, Destiel

Summary: Raphael is dead. Lucifer is back in Solitary. Michael is sulking in his room. Castiel won’t tear himself away from his Winchester. But someone has to fix up Heaven, and the job falls to Gabriel simply because there isn’t anyone else.

He hates every single minute of it.

After Team Free Will officially pulled the plug on the Apocalypse, Gabriel stuck around for exactly three months. Not that any of them knew he would be taking off, especially since he gave no sign of it in those three months, cracking jokes left and right, inhaling candy like no tomorrow, and – no matter what Dean said – hauling their collective asses out of trouble whenever a hunt teetered on fatal-with-no-chance-of-life, as per usual (or so Gabriel would say and Dean would vehemently deny).

And besides, they had all gotten used to Gabriel’s presence amongst their group. Dean and Sam and Castiel and Gabriel, and it had been the four of them ever since the latter had returned from the dead.

Heck, Sam had gotten used to pairing off with Gabriel whenever Dean and Castiel went off to interrogate witnesses or eye-fuck each other or provide distraction for the latest nest of vampires while Sam and Gabriel snuck up on them.

On hindsight however, Sam could slap himself for not seeing it, for not hearing all the things Gabriel hadn’t said, and the few things he had.

~0~0~

“So, little bro!” Gabriel threw in casually at the end of a long day when they – mostly Dean and Sam – were tuckered out and lazing in their latest crap motel room. He was balancing precariously on the back legs of a wooden chair that had no business staying upright without outside help, which meant that Gabriel was using his mojo. Show-off. “Now that you have all your Grace again, do you plan on hopping back upstairs for a bit? I mean I’ve been back for a quick peek myself, and let me tell ya, it’s a mess. You could come with me the next time, see the sights, kick some asses, suffer through some desperate schmoozing à la all the confused ducklings still looking for guidance; what do you say?”

It was Dean who jumped in with an answer first. “Hell no he isn’t! The angels can sort themselves out.”

“I agree with Dean,” Castiel asserted with a hint of steel. “My place is here. I have no plans on going back.”

Dean looked positively smug. Sam smiled as well at the assurance. Later, he would remember the way Gabriel watched them all with a smirking “That’s my rebel brother!” on his lips that never reached his eyes.

~0~0~

“What? You're leaving?” Sam spluttered, half out of his seat as if he could somehow physically stop the archangel from going anywhere even as Gabriel stocked them up with donuts and pie like he hadn't just tossed them a curveball from out of the blue. Dean actually managed to stop drooling over the food to narrow his gaze on Gabriel with a mixture of alarm and confusion (the suspicion had dissipated months ago). Castiel was staring with wide blue eyes that demanded a reason. Unsurprisingly, Gabriel was wholly unaffected.

“Yup,” Gabriel popped the ‘p’ as he dusted his hands off before stuffing them into the pockets of his slacks. “You don’t expect me to kick back here forever, do you? As much fun as it is to live like fugitives with you chuckleheads, I do actually have a day job to get back to.”

“What, delivering bloody judgement as a Trickster again?” Dean sniped, already on the offensive, and Sam would've rolled his eyes at his brother’s utter ineptitude at expressing concern properly if he wasn’t feeling so uneasy himself.

Gabriel bared his teeth in a grin that wasn't quite as humour-filled as it could've been. “You know me so well, Dean-o. Practically read my mind. The work of a Trickster never ends after all.”

He was lying. They could all tell he was lying. Somewhere along the way, they had learned how to tell the difference between Gabriel’s truths and lies. Well, most of the time anyway. Some of the time. More often than not.

“Gabriel,” Sam rose to his full height, shifting a little under the calmly arched eyebrow that Gabriel directed at him. “I thought- well, we thought... you’d stick with us-”

“-like Castiel?” Gabriel barked out a laugh and half-turned away so that they could only see his profile now. The light of the sunset streaming in through the window wreathed the archangel in streaks of air-spun gold. Sam had to swallow hard and look away for a moment.

“Look, Sammy,” Gabriel continued blithely. “Dad knows you Winchesters are my favourite humans on the planet but you have Castiel watching over you now in all his angelic glory. An archangel tagging along is just overkill. There’s no Apocalypse anymore, remember? And as shocking as it may seem to you, I do have other things that require my attention. You know, reassure some people that I’m still alive, soothe a few ruffled feathers for kicking over their sandcastles during that whole throw-down with Luci and Mikey, thank a few gods for helping out with the Apocalypse, touch base with my contacts – that sort of thing.”

Something unreadable crossed his features for a brief second before it was tucked away again. When he turned to face them again, he only waggled his eyebrows. “Don’t worry; I didn’t say I was skipping out for good. You’ll still see my handsome self around. Can’t deprive you of my magnificent presence, now can I? You’d go into depressed withdrawal within the month.”

All at once, Dean snorted, tension leaking out of his frame at the familiar wisecrack. Castiel too seemed to relax a little at the promise of Gabriel’s return. Sam studied the archangel closely but he spotted no lie in Gabriel’s laidback frame.

“I don’t know, it’d definitely free up some room in the Impala,” Dean snarked back.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Hey, there wouldn't even be a problem in the first place if you’d just let me snap all of you and the damn car to your next destination. You wouldn't even need the car.”

“Not happening. The Impala’s my baby.” Came the expected response.

“But you’ll definitely come back, right?” Sam blurted out, hoping his ears hadn't turned as red as they felt when three pairs of eyes swung around to zero in on him. “When you're finished your business or whatever?”

Okay, so he’d miss Gabriel, so sue him. So would Dean and Cas. Just... maybe not as much as Sam.

“It’s ongoing business,” Gabriel corrected. He quirked an odd smile at Sam, one that Sam couldn’t decipher. “But yeah, I’ll drop by whenever I can.” He clapped his hands together. “Now, are we done playing twenty questions?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean mumbled around the piece of pie he had cut for himself now that the potential crisis had been averted. “Get outta here. We’ll see you in a few days.”

Gabriel grinned cheerily at them, clapped Sam on the shoulder, shared a few quiet words with Castiel that made the angel look less like an abandoned puppy, and then, with a whispery flutter of wings, disappeared from the room.

Sam was already missing the archangel the very next morning when he woke up and there was no Gabriel munching on M&M’s and asking Sam what he wanted for breakfast and making the water turn icy when Dean was in the shower. They bought breakfast burgers instead from the nearby fast-food restaurant before hitting the road. Even Dean frowned faintly five hours into the ride when Gabriel’s typical chatter and complaints failed to fill in the pauses that were supposed to be Gabriel’s in-between Dean and Sam and Castiel’s words.

~0~0~

“We’ll see you in a few days.” Dean had said.

They didn’t see Gabriel again for five weeks.

~0~0~

“I cannot find him,” Castiel announced upon his return, as he had the past dozen times (probably more in his own time) Sam and Dean had asked him to search.

“This is nuts!” Dean growled, stalking over to the lumpy couch to throw his bag down. “Where is that bastard? Don’t tell me he ran away again; there wasn't even anything to run away from!”

“Gabriel was not lying when he said he had business to attend to,” Castiel reminded him stoically but there was a pinched quality in the line of his mouth that said he was worried.

“So maybe he ran into some trouble?” Sam suggested, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to unknot the tense muscles gathered there. He didn't have much luck.

“Trouble that an archangel can’t get out of?” Dean scoffed, though Sam was certain that the same thought had already occurred to his brother. “Might as well bring back Lucifer for Take Two. Only another archangel could take Gabriel down.”

Sam glanced at Castiel. “What about Michael? Could he have gone after Gabriel?”

“...It is possible,” Castiel said slowly. “I have had no contact with Heaven since I Fell, not even after my Grace was restored. I could go check-”

“No,” Dean interrupted fiercely as if he thought Castiel putting one toe back into Heaven would see him clapped in chains or something. Castiel met his gaze, and Sam pinched the bridge of his nose as the two got lost in their own world for several seconds.

He cleared his throat loudly. “Dean, it’s not like Cas is in trouble with the angels. All the higher-ups who wanted the Apocalypse are dead. Except Michael, and Gabriel said he’s been as MIA as God lately.”

“Yeah, but we won’t be with him,” Dean pointed out grouchily. A smile played at the corners of Castiel’s lips as they exchanged a glance again. Sam just wished they would get a goddamn clue already.

“But we need to put out some feelers for Gabriel,” Sam insisted. “Seriously, he hasn't been gone this long since he killed Raphael.”

That had... not been a good time. Gabriel had killed his older brother to save them, and then he’d promptly disappeared for over four weeks (to grieve). The first two weeks he had dropped off the map saw a series of natural disasters spike up all across the States. The number of casualties had been zero though.

Eventually, he had returned but he’d refused to speak about Raphael at all, carrying on as if nothing big had happened. Any attempts at comforting him or even broaching the subject had resulted in increasingly derogatory quips and nasty pranks, so they had ultimately backed off. Well, Dean and Cas had backed off; Sam went out and bought a king’s ransom of as many wacky candy novelties as he had been able to get his hands on, and the sweets had made Gabriel laugh with genuine delight for the first time since Raphael’s death. The next morning, Sam had found an obscure text written in Greek and annotated in Gabriel’s handwriting on his bedside table. He’d tried to give it back at first, citing that the candy was just to make Gabriel feel better even though it was a small consolation for killing his brother (and yeah, the guy had been a grade-A douche, but still, brother), but the archangel had just smiled at him with age-old eyes, and had refused to take it back.

Predictably, Sam had enjoyed the book. He still had it in his bag actually.

“I agree,” Castiel was nodding resolutely. “It will not be dangerous, Dean. I have not returned to Heaven thus far only because I wish to stay here.”

Sam sighed as Dean coughed and grumbled half-heartedly under his breath, more than a little flustered. This was one of the reasons he needed Gabriel here. The archangel would be pelting them with popcorn and inappropriate jokes by now, and dragging Sam into it as well. Sam would probably throw popcorn at them too, even without Gabriel, but he didn't have any on hand.

“Let’s just turn in for the night,” Sam declared, heading for the bathroom. “We can make up our minds tomorrow.”

In the privacy of the tiny dimly-lit bathroom, Sam leaned against the door and silently offered up a prayer for Gabriel’s safety. He wondered if it counted when he was technically praying to a deity for a deity.

~0~0~

Sam woke up the next morning to the smell of chocolate chip pancakes and rich black coffee in the air.

“-son of a bitch!” Dean was bellowing even as Sam tripped out of bed and barrelled into what passed for the sitting room. It was more sitting room plus kitchenette plus unmade sofa bed plus door leading to the bathroom. “Where have you been?! Do you know how much you worried your brother?”

“Gabriel, you’re okay!” Sam jumped in with heartfelt relief, and then abruptly pulled up short when Gabriel – sprawled in one of the rickety seats at the table like it was the most comfortable piece of furniture known to mankind – tipped his head back to look at him.

“What the hell happened to you?” Sam gaped, taking in the dark circles under Gabriel’s eyes and the way even his clothes seemed to droop with fatigue.

“Business, Samsquatch,” Gabriel flicked a hand in the vague direction of the pancakes and coffee and strawberry syrup laid out on the table. “You three gonna eat or what? I swung by specifically to snap up some breakfast for you. No doubt, you’ve been eating nothing but burgers and wilted salads in my absence. Can’t even take care of your own health. How you've survived this long is beyond me.”

“But what business-”

“Do you have any idea how long-”

“Eat, damn it!” Gabriel snarled, shutting everyone up. A long moment of stilted silence ensued in which Gabriel closed his eyes like they were giving him a headache, and then Castiel was there, hands dropping tentatively onto the archangel’s shoulders.

“Brother,” Castiel started softly, and Sam could almost see the angel’s Grace brush against them all before converging on Gabriel like a hug. “Are you well?”

Gabriel didn’t reply but his head did fall back ever so slightly to rest against Castiel’s chest for a minute. Sam exchanged a wide-eyed look with Dean before they both dropped into a free seat without another word.

“Dish ish good,” Dean commented around a mouthful of pancakes two minutes later.

“Best breakfast we’ve had in weeks,” Sam agreed with better table manners. “You weren’t wrong about the burgers but I blame Dean for that.”

“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with burgers!”

As they bantered back and forth, and Castiel remained a solid presence at Gabriel’s side as he also poked suspiciously at a pancake, a glimmer of the good humour that the archangel was – in Sam’s humble opinion – much better suited for came back in tiny increments. He never spoke again that morning, which was weird in and of itself, but at least he was back with them again.

~0~0~

“You're leaving again?” Sam parroted in disbelief as Gabriel snacked nonchalantly on a Snickers bar while Dean finished burning the last body. Castiel hovered nearby, one eye on Dean and one eye on his older brother.

Over the past five days, Gabriel had rapidly regained his mischievous, sarcastic nature, and neither Sam nor Dean had brought up the issue of where the archangel had been again. Castiel had taken to sticking to Gabriel like superglue though, never letting his brother out of sight. Gabriel had borne it with indulgent amusement and pretended not to notice. Other than that however, things had gone back to normal, and it was once again the four of them on the road, tracking down a group of demons, exorcising a ghost, and flushing out an infestation of zombies.

“Which part of ‘ongoing business’ did you not get, Sam-I-Am?” Gabriel polished off his chocolate bar and idly clicked his fingers. A Coffee Crisp replaced the empty wrapper.

“It’s only been five days!” Sam protested.

“Yeah, well, just goes to show how popular I am,” Gabriel smirked. “They can’t do without me.”

“We cannot do without you, Gabriel,” Castiel interjected in that bluntly earnest way of his.

Gabriel chuckled. “I'm flattered, Bro, but you managed just fine for five weeks, and you weren’t too bad off before I jumped onto your bandwagon. I mean, you guys started the Apocalypse, but hey, you also stopped it, so the way I see it, they cancelled each other out, no harm, no foul.”

Castiel’s brow creased in consternation. “I have had no bandwagons for you to jump on-” Gabriel’s smile took on an exasperatedly fond edge. “-nor have I seen any reason for you to do so but that does not change the fact that we would much prefer you to stay. Is this business of yours very important? Are the other pagan gods causing trouble for you now that they know who you are?”

Gabriel snapped his fingers at Dean. The gun he had been carrying as he made his way over disappeared, most likely stashed away in the Impala’s trunk again, and the dust and gore that had previously stained his clothes vanished as well. Dean grunted his thanks but he was eyeing Gabriel like a hawk, clearly trying to figure out what the archangel had been pretty evasive about ever since he had taken off the first time.

“Nah, most of the other pagans are cool with it,” Gabriel surveyed all three of them, and Sam wondered if maybe they looked a bit like they were ganging up on the archangel. It didn't seem to unsettle Gabriel whatsoever though.

“They're my friends,” Gabriel explained with a broad sweep of an arm to encompass whichever pagan gods he had in mind. “Coyote, Anansi, Raven, Michabo, you name it. Well okay, not all of them, but Baldur’s dead, and so is Odin. They weren’t my biggest fans ever. And you know Kali can be a cold-hearted bitch...”

He trailed off, his free hand unconsciously drifting up to press against his chest, eyes distant with memories of that fateful day at Elysian Fields Hotel. Sam stayed silent, as did Dean and Cas. None of them knew how Gabriel had come back, and if Gabriel knew, he wasn't talking. Their theories ranged from Kali having a change of heart and somehow using Gabriel’s blood to raise him from the dead, to God Himself resurrecting His youngest archangel son.

“Anyway!” Gabriel snapped out of it, rocking onto the balls of his feet as he no doubt prepared to take flight. “I’ll be back soon-”

“When?” Sam prodded.

Gabriel exhaled shortly like his patience was running out. Actually, Sam was amazed he hadn't already left. Most of the time, the archangel’s temperament stayed easygoing and in good spirits, letting insults and actions slide past him like water off a duck, or retaliating with amusement ranging from tolerant to vicious depending on whether it was Dean or an enemy in the opponent’s seat. But on occasion, he could become irritably short-tempered in the blink of an eye, especially when it came to being cornered in any way, shape, or form. Like now.

“Soon, Sam,” Gabriel repeated curtly. “Just stay outta trouble while I'm not around, kiddies. I’ll be back before you know it.”

And then he was gone on the sound of a wingbeat, leaving the three of them standing in the gloom of the cemetery.

“Well, no use waiting around here,” Dean grumbled, heading for the Impala. “I swear, if he’s gone another five weeks, I'm trapping him with holy fire until he spits out where he’s been.”

Sam silently approved of this plan. Cas didn't seem particularly inclined to disagree either.

~0~0~

Gabriel wasn't gone another five weeks.

He was gone another two months.