This was a request from Pepper72. ( u/3164450/)

She asked for a Sabriel story with an "imaginary friend" theme running through it, plenty of fluff, and sex at the end. She asked for this in September of 2013. So...I feel really, really terrible about how long it took. I've been awful about requests lately. But I couldn't let this story go, and I couldn't make it short (there was just too much to cram in, story- and fluff-wise), so I finally, finally finished it. I hope it brings both the requester and any other wandering Sabriel fan joy. Sabriel isn't my OTP, and Gabriel's character was tough to nail down at first because he's in so few episodes compared to, say, Sam, but I enjoyed this anyway.

WARNING: Contains Sabriel.

...

Wow, that's it. I can't believe it.

Wait, there's also a lot of angel headcanon.

Requests are currently closed until further notice. Sorry.

UPDATE: Now translated into French! s/10360957/1/Ton-Ange-Gardien

Gabriel neatly folded his invisible wings, after a single flap of them carried him to a cheap motel in eastern Kansas.

He squinted under the harsh glare of the neon and outside lights, their buzzing starting to get on his nerves, even though he'd only been there a few minutes. Walking across the cracked and faded asphalt of the parking lot, he grimaced at the building's peeling paint and the tarnished room numbers on the doors. He knew his soon-to-be charge's dad was shattered, desperate, and all but flat broke, but, seriously, this place? Who would honestly choose to stay here? Especially with a couple of kids as young as he knew his were. Couldn't be good for them.

Gabriel sneezed, the mixed scents of cheap alcohol and pot and sex - all kinds of sin that, admittedly, piqued some small part of his interest - irritating whatever grace lay in his vessel's nose. He could make this place into a paradise with a single snap of his fingers. A Hilton, a replica of any resort in the world...hell, even another Garden of Eden, if he was feeling particularly nostalgic. But that'd probably draw a little too much of the wrong kind of attention. And, besides, there was a black Impal parked up ahead, in front of one of the rooms. He'd found what he was looking for.

The door was locked, and there was a line of salt laid down in front of it. Neither were really an obstacle for him, though. Gabriel just fluttered the very tips of his wings, and he was in, standing in the middle of a dark room that held two beds and one rickety-looking crib. A man, with the build of a soldier and the aura of a trauma patient, was sprawled on top of the covers of one of the beds. John Winchester. Gabriel could smell copious amounts of booze, and did his best not to snort derisively. John was hurting, and thought he was doing the right thing. Not all that different from Gabriel. "Judge not," and all that.

The other bed held a little kid, curled up tight. Shaggy dark-blonde hair, a splash of freckles, a cute face screwed up tight with fear that wouldn't even leave him while he slept. Dean...Michael's intended. Gabriel had no real interest in him, but he was just a tiny little boy, only about four years old. He deserved some rest. So he extended a wing and brushed one of his primary feathers over his forehead on his way to the crib, and Dean relaxed.

Gabriel stood over the crib, which was pressed against the wall, and looked down at the tiny bundle of blankets inside. This was the one he'd come for. Samuel Winchester. Son of Mary and John...and Lucifer's destined vessel. Gabriel sighed deeply, and closed his eyes for just a second, as he felt the kid out. He'd come expecting what he was finding in him, knowing that it had to have happened, but...he knew that some part of him had hoped that Samuel would still be pure. Unmarred. That'd obviously been a pipe dream, seeing as he was, without a doubt, tainted, with demon blood pumping through his veins right alongside the normal stuff. Lucifer's creepy little priest (or whatever Azazel was calling himself this century) had done his job.

Everyone upstairs was probably really freaking happy about that.

The kid stirred suddenly in his blankets, whimpering as he squirmed against the thin mattress of the crib. Obviously having a nightmare. Gabriel could easily guess what it was about. He spread his wings slightly, the movement unconscious and spurred by a long-buried protective instinct, before reaching into the crib. He cupped a hand over Samuel's head, feeling a mess of soft, warm curls.

"It's okay, kiddo, I'm here," he murmured. Dad and brother wouldn't be able to hear him, or see him, so he wasn't worried about waking them up. He'd taken great care to cloak himself to everyone but the baby he was currently comforting.

Samuel (okay, that was too formal, and, besides, it sounded too much like an angel name - Gabriel resolved to call him "Sam" or "Sammy" or something from now on) slowly quieted under Gabriel's touch, his tiny movements fading away. He might've cheated a little, let some angelic grace brush against his soul, but, hey, if it let the little guy sleep...though he was opening his eyes now.

"No, don't wake up...c'mon, I was trying to do you a favor, squirt," Gabriel whispered. Sammy Winchester had some big eyes, just barely gone a striking hazel. Or maybe they'd been that way for awhile. Gabriel had walked among men for long enough to know that their paler babies were all born blue-eyed, but he wasn't sure how long they took to change color. He saw his silhouette, the vague shapes of his wings included, in Sam's eyes.

The baby cooed, wriggling under his hand for a moment, then closed his eyes again. Gabriel smirked a little, rubbing a thumb over his velvety-soft forehead.

"Yeah, this isn't gonna be so bad," he said softly. "You'll be fine. I probably came all this way for nothing. I mean, you wouldn't believe what they've got in mind for you...but, somehow, I can't see you living up to all that." He honestly couldn't. Really, how could anyone expect such a small (and admittedly cute) baby, who'd just lost his mother, to grow up to basically destroy the world? Some wires must have gotten crossed in Heaven, because Gabriel couldn't imagine Sam ever being a threat.

But he didn't open his wings and fly back to one of his many hiding places. He'd lived with other angels for awhile, and he knew that they almost never made mistakes - except for that one, he was pretty sure his name started with a C. He was needed here. Or if he wasn't right now, then he would be, in the years to come. Azazel would be watching, grooming and guiding his master's future weapon, and Raphael and Michael would be trying to push Sammy in the "right" direction, too. So that everything would play out exactly as it'd been written.

Gabriel wasn't a real big supporter of that plan, and it was his self-appointed job to make sure that Sam didn't end up playing the part that was intended for him.

Speaking of Sam, he seemed to be asleep now. The archangel took his hand off of his head and prepared to settle down next to the crib - and was rewarded with a questioning whimper. Rolling his eyes slightly, Gabriel sighed and replaced his hand. He'd never thought of his touch as soothing, or seen any evidence that it was, but Sam snuggled gratefully against his palm. The contact put him to sleep within minutes.

He probably hadn't rested well in a long time. Gabriel knew it would make his vessel's muscles stiff in the morning before his grace could rejuvenate them, but he stayed in the position all night.

"No. That's not how you do it."

Gabriel watched, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, as John took the gun out of Dean's tiny hands and loaded it himself. His movements were rough and jerky, frustrated. Weapons in various states of assembly lay scattered over the bed that he was currently sleeping in, along with canisters of salt and newly-made charms, and Dean was sitting on the foot. He bit his lower lip, bowing his head and clasping his hands in his five-year-old lap.

"It's too hard," he said, his voice quiet and plaintive, as if he were expecting to be yelled at. Considering the amount of empty beer bottles in the room's small trash can, all of them discarded recently, Gabriel couldn't blame him. "I can't do it right."

"Well, you're gonna have to learn." John shoved the gun, butt-first, back into Dean's grip. His hands were almost too small for it, and he could just barely hold it upright. Guns (as Gabriel knew from unfortunate experience) were heavy. Even the smaller ones. "If you don't, you'll die. We might all die. Do you understand that, Dean?"

"C'mon, give him a break, he's five," Gabriel called over, wings rustling in irritation. He was on the other bed, Dean's bed, leaning up against the headboard. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and spread to make a "V." Sam, one year old as of several days ago, was nestled safely in that "V." He was pushing himself up from where he was lying on his stomach, all big, dewy eyes and unruly brunette mop, and he burbled curiously when Gabriel spoke.

Of course, he was the only one who actually reacted to his voice. John and Dean couldn't hear him and never would, if he had his way. He wasn't there for them. Though he had grown pretty fond of loudly and enthusiastically berating an oblivious John, for everything from his personal hygiene to his parenting skills. Mostly his parenting skills. Gabriel had been with this family for a little over six months, but it hadn't taken him nearly that long to figure out that John didn't think of his young sons as children. In his mind, they had ceased to be little boys the night that their mother died, and had become warriors for him to mold. Or tools for the revenge that he was so fervently searching for. Gabriel didn't know exactly what went on in John's head, and didn't really want to, either.

"You're holding it wrong," John told Dean, sounding like he was at the end of his rope. Sam made a soft, sad sound, pushing himself up a little further so he could see over Gabriel's knee. He watched his father correcting his older brother's grip with touches that were anything but gentle, and made the sound again, and made the sound again, lifting one minuscule hand in order to press it to Gabriel's denim-covered thigh. If either of the other people in the room had looked over, they would've thought that he was just batting at empty air. Gabriel knew better. Touch was how Sam communicated - he made physical contact in a bid for attention, for food, for comfort. Despite how attuned Sam was to the moods of the rest of his family, Gabriel doubted that John or Dean had spent enough time with him to know that.

"Hey, you're okay," he said softly, reaching forward to ruffle Sam's hair. It was always warm, always soft, and always an absolute mess. Gabriel liked it. "They're just kinda stressed right now, Sammy-boy. Things'll get better. You don't need to worry."

Sam returned his attention to him, eyes troubled. Or at least as troubled as the eyes of a baby could be. He tightened his hand, taking a fistful of Gabriel's blue jeans. He must want to be held. Gabriel had made the mistake of doing that, one night when just laying his hand on Satan's itty-bitty vessel hadn't been enough, and now Sam was constantly begging for it. His family rarely had time to hold him for long, and Gabriel's grace made his arms a pretty soothing location. It was a double-edged sword.

Especially because he couldn't pick Sam up while John and Dean were around. They looked pretty busy most of the time, but he doubted that their youngest apparently floating would escape their notice.

"Hold on, Sam." Gabriel let Sam grab onto his index finger with his free hand, and smirked when he seemed to completely give up on being even half upright and just flopped down onto his chest. With the lower half of his round face buried in the bedspread, he tugged first on Gabriel's jeans, then his finger, and cooed. "It probably won't be much longer."

John slammed a clip into a gun. The metallic sound was loud enough to startle Gabriel, his wings flaring slightly in a defensive display, and Sam began to cry. Gabriel fought duel urges - one to scoop up and rock his charge, stroking him with soft feathers until he calmed down, and another to punish John for having no idea how to act around a baby. De-age him, maybe...but he couldn't do that. He swung one leg over Sam, pulling both his jeans and his finger out of his hands, and scrambled out of the way as Dean climbed onto the bed to comfort his baby brother. He pulled him onto his lap with a sigh, holding him.

"No...support his head," Gabriel commanded. When Dean, predictably, didn't obey him, he sighed deeply and extended one wing. Using the very tip, he kept Sam's head from flopping back too far. Slowly, his sobs faded into miserable little snuffles, and he blinked at Gabriel. Dean followed his gaze, but obviously didn't see anything.

"What're you looking at?" he asked softly, glancing back down at Sam. John patted him on the back.

"He doing better?" he asked. At a nod from Dean, he continued, "Put him in his crib, then. There's a vacant lot across the road...we can work on your aim there."

"Um..." Dean just looked at Sam, seeming reluctant to leave him so soon after a crying fit.

"He'll be fine," John assured him. "We're not going far, and we won't be gone long. I'll put salt down when we leave."

There were a million and two things that salt wouldn't keep out. Things that would love to get their claws or tentacles or telepathic fields on a baby, especially a hunter's baby, and Gabriel wished that he could warn John about all of them. But most would probably be deterred by the mere presence of an archangel, so Sam was probably safe. He'd be safe even if there wasn't a line of salt keeping out demons and ghosts. In the great chess game of the universe, very, very few pieces beat Gabriel.

Dean wriggled off the bed, Sam in his arms, and let his father take him. After wrapping Sam in blankets to ward off the chill that was still present, even in early spring, John settled him in the crib. One pile of salt later, he and Dean were gone. The door was locked and the lights were off. Sam whined softly, afraid of the dark and the quiet.

"Shh, kiddo..." Gabriel was, of course, there in an instant. He'd thoroughly explained his purpose for being here to Sam, every facet, including the names of himself and his brothers. He'd done that specifically because he'd known he wouldn't understand and wouldn't remember, but he still felt like he'd be held accountable for breaking promises if he didn't take care of him. "I'm here."

He lifted Sam out of the crib, cradling him close to his chest and enclosing him in a small cocoon of his wings. They remained invisible to even Sam, but he could definitely feel them, soft and warm whenever they touched him. He always cooed. The holy fire that had burned between Gabriel's feathers in the beginning had long since been extinguished, with all the time that he'd spent on Earth, leaving behind nothing but fluffiness that was almost embarrassing. He'd never been glad about that before, but...now, he definitely was.

Sam's plaintive whines slowly trailed off. He shifted in Gabriel's arms, turning so that his face was pressed into his chest, and took handfuls of his shirt. Gabriel watched him, smiling softly without realizing that he was doing it.

"You gonna be able to sleep soon?" he asked. In response, Sam turned his head so that he was looking up at him. He said something, just infantile nonsense, then said something else. Gabriel's eyebrows rose.

"Gay-abe," Sam said, deliberately. "Gabe-ee-el. Gabiel."

"Sam," Gabriel said in response. It was the only thing he could think of. His soft smile had stretched out into a full-blown grin. Sam said his name again (or at least some version of it), smiling back. "That's amazing. Your first word, huh?" And his family had missed it. But at least Gabriel had heard.

John and Dean would probably wonder just who "Gabiel" was, when they heard Sam talking. Or maybe they would just dismiss it as babble. That wasn't really his problem. He walked slowly around the room, listening to Sam say his brand-new word and chirp and burble, until he finally went quiet and dropped off. Gabriel placed him back in the crib, making sure that he was properly wrapped up. He patted his back.

"'Night, Sammy," he said. As an angel, even one in a human vessel, he didn't need to sleep. He could stand guard over Sam all night. If he wanted to...and he most definitely did.

"Oh, hey, whoa, there." Gabriel stretched out a wing, feeling Sam thud into the back of it as he lost his balance and fell. He was still small for his age, and barely weighed anything at all. To Gabriel, at least. Dean complained whenever he had to pick him up. "Watch out, little guy."

Sam squirmed against the muscle and bone of Gabriel's wing, taking small, fluffy handfuls of his feathers and looking over at him. He poked his lower lip out, then slowly, laboriously pushed himself back up onto his feet. Letting go of the feathers, he jabbed the wing that they were attached to with one index finger.

"Move," he commanded clearly, his voice high and young. Gabriel obliged, folding his wing back onto his upper back. Sam, hearing the rustle of feathers, started forward again, taking shaky little steps. He insisted on walking as much as he possibly could, since he'd learned to. He had a lot of trouble staying upright. Gabriel kept a very close eye on him.

With Sam temporarily balanced, Gabriel looked up from where he was sitting on the floor to watch him, making sure that Dean hadn't noticed his younger brother's fall being broken by something that wasn't there. Lucky for them, he didn't seem to be paying any attention at all to Sam. He was hunched over a worksheet at the small table, focused completely on that instead, one hand awkwardly holding a stubby pencil and the other tugging at his short hair. The elder of the two Winchester boys had just entered first grade, and was finding it pretty difficult to keep up with his homework. Gabriel thought that he might actually be rather bright, and might do well in school if he were given half a chance, but his father wasn't giving him one. In the face of all the training, Dean's grades withered up and died.

It was terrible, but Dean wasn't Gabriel's responsibility. It was his main concern that the same thing would happen to Sam, once he got old enough for school. The kid had already shown signs of being a little genius. Crushing that before it ever even got off the ground would be a crime - one Gabriel wasn't sure he could suffer in silence.

And Sam had tripped again. Gabriel caught him (with his hands this time, rather than his wings), and righted him. Sam batted irritatedly at his knuckles until he let him go.

"No," he said firmly, shaking his head. He was in a pretty independent stage right now. Which vanished the second that he wanted some kind of attention, but Gabriel was willing to indulge him. He liked kids. Granted, human children were pretty damn different from angel fledglings, but the basic principles were the same. "No, Gabiel."

"Who's Gabiel, Sammy?" Dean, apparently ready for a distraction, was watching Sam. His head was propped up on one hand, pencil and worksheet looking forlorn and forgotten next to him.

Sam pointed at Gabriel's face. Dean looked, saw nothing but empty space, and shook his head.

"You're crazy," he announced with all the infinite wisdom of a six-year-old, then went back to his homework.

Sam sat down (well, actually, he just pulled his own legs out from under himself - sitting was a fine art, and one that he had yet to master) and looked to Gabriel. He didn't know what that word meant. He had a pretty big vocabulary for his age, addressing everyone he knew by name and recognizing what a lot of objects were called, but he was still learning. And the letter "r" continued to elude him.

"Doesn't matter, buddy," Gabriel assured him, spreading his wings to be a little more comfortable and leaning back against one of the beds, lacing his fingers together behind his head. Sam, now too big for a crib, slept in this one with Dean. Gabriel perched on the foot and watched him like a hawk for nightmares. "You'll...learn what it means someday." Unfortunately. Being raised as a hunter would be bad enough for poor little Sammy, get him branded as an outcast. Being constantly followed by an angel that nobody else could see would make things about a million times worse.

But it beat the alternative by a long shot. Developing powers that would make him a monster in the eyes of his family, fighting with Azazel's other pet projects to prove his worth, releasing Lucifer, losing himself to him once he said yes, battling his own brother to the death to fulfill a script that had been written thousands and thousands of years before his birth. If Sam learned all of that one day, despite Gabriel's best efforts, then he'd probably be grateful that being called crazy was the worst thing to happen to him.

Sam seemed satisfied by Gabriel's answer. He tried to get back to his feet, lost his balance, and fell down again. Gabriel went up onto his knees and folded his wings in order to pick Sam up into a standing position. He got his hands batted at again for his efforts.

"No, Gabiel," he reprimanded. Gabriel let him go, and Sam abruptly turned his back on him. The uncertain steps he began to take were punctuated by Dean frustratedly tapping his pencil against the laminate surface of the table. "Stop. I can do it."

"You can do it?" Gabriel echoed, frankly delighted by the appearance of a complete, articulate sentence.

"No. I can do it." "I" was Sam, right now. "You" was everyone else. "Don't need you."

"Don't need me, do you?" Sam pitched forward yet again. Gabriel caught him, telekinetically, before his head could smash into the sharp edge of the cheap wooden bedframe. He brushed a chestnut curl out of Sam's eyes when he turned to glare at him. "Lucky for you, I don't believe that."

"What's this?"

The chubby hand of a three-year-old had been buried deep in the feathers on the underside of one of Gabriel's half-spread wings. He'd felt him tugging a little, twisting, but figured that he was just feeling. Something he'd been doing more and more often as he got older, and decided that if he couldn't see the shapes of the soft things attached his Gabriel's (he could finally pronounce the "r") back, he'd feel them out. Gabriel had been letting him touch as he tied his shoes for him, working whenever John and Dean weren't looking over to see the laces by themselves. He cursed himself for that when, after asking that question, Sam ripped out a good-sized handful of feathers.

Gabriel bit back a shriek of pain, and around thirty expletives from various languages. Thanks to John, Sam could already curse an English blue streak. He didn't need to know how to swear in Enochian.

"Don't," Gabriel panted, wings folded tightly after the assault on one of them, "do that. Okay, Sammy? It hurts like he - it hurts really bad, and it takes decades for these things to grow back."

The little brat wasn't listening. He didn't even seem to realize that he'd hurt his guardian. Instead, he was examining the clump of feathers he'd pulled out, fascinated. They'd become visible as soon as they were no longer attached to Gabriel. They were a pure, brilliant white, marking their owner as an archangel, and singed an iridescent gray on the very edges from a close call with Hellfire. And there were little beads of luminescent blood on the end of every calamus. Gabriel was sorely tempted to turn Sam's hair into snakes. Or maybe to just reach over and yank out a chunk of it - give him a taste of his own medicine.

But, of course, he couldn't do that. Even if for no other reason than the fact that he was as old as the universe itself, almost, and Sam was barely three.

"Feathers," Sam announced, sounding pleased with himself for the analysis. "Like a bird!"

"Uh...no." Gabriel considered launching into a lecture on the many differences between bird feathers and angel feathers, then decided that it wasn't worth it. He'd forgotten most of them, anyway.

Hearing John's boots clomping on the thin carpet of the motel room, Gabriel hastily finished up with Sam's shoes and got out of the way. The underside of his wing still stung worse than being rejected by a woman he'd made up himself, but he'd have to wait to hammer home the point that Sam could never pull his feathers out again.

"Did you do this to yourself?" John asked Sam, crouching and taking one of his sneaker-covered feet in his hands. He indicated the tied laces. Sam looked at Gabriel, and nodded. "Dean didn't help you?"

"Daddy, I've been over here the whole time," Dean called from the other side of the bed. There was a little bit of pride in his voice as he said, "He had to've done it himself."

Sam looked at Gabriel again, who raised his eyebrows and pressed his index finger to his lips. Sam giggled. Gabriel helped him tie his shoes, since his littl hands were just a bit too clumsy, still, to do it himself. But they seemed to be dexterous enough to pluck him.

"What's that?" John took Sam's closed hand, and pried it open, exposing all of the angelic feathers. The blood had stopped glowing and been rubbed up by the barbs, and the individual, curving feathers were beginning to mat together with sweat. "Sammy, did you get these out of one of the pillows?"

Sam shook his head and opened his mouth, probably to tell his father where he'd really gotten the feathers, but John didn't notice that he was about to say something. He just scraped them out of his son's hand and tossed them into the trash can. "Don't do that. We might have to pay for it if you take too much out."

Picking Sam up from where he'd been sitting on the edge of the bed, John carried him over to Dean and set him down, watching as his two sons immediately reached for each other to hold hands. Gabriel walked past him in order to stand near them, and Sam looked up at him with big eyes.

"Okay, get your stuff, and head over to - " John began.

"I don't get why we can't stay on our own," Dean interrupted. "I can take care of Sammy."

Gabriel personally had no doubt that he could. Especially with a little bit of help - Sam wasn't exactly a difficult child, just so long as you handled him right. John wasn't so confident in Dean's abilities.

"I'm going to be gone for two weeks." Hoisting a duffel bag onto his shoulder, John opened the door and shoved Sam and Dean out. With a twitch of his wings (one of which still stung), Gabriel joined them. Sam reached up with his free hand in order to hold onto his jeans. "Maybe more. You need to go to school, and Sammy needs somebody to watch him while you do."

The owner of this place, as Gabriel knew from listening to sullen conversations between John and Dean, had volunteered to watch the two younger Winchesters while their father was out of town. He'd never actually gotten close to her himself, or even seen her, but John seemed to trust her. Maybe he just doubted that an elderly woman who owned a cheap motel would be a threat. Probably correctly.

"I'll call you when I can," John told Dean, stepping out of the room and locking the door behind him. "Keep an eye on him." He nodded to his youngest, then turned away from them in order to head for the Impala. Dean crossed his arms over his chest (as well as he could while holding hands with his brother) and muttered something that sounded obscene.

"What're you hanging onto?" he demanded, staring at Sam's other hand. He must have just seen it hanging in midair.

"Gabriel," Sam answered promptly. Gabriel reached down to ruffle his hair, prompting a squeak of surprised pleasure.

"Who's Gabriel?" Dean sounded like he couldn't care less. He just started dragging Sam towards the lobby and the small living space behind it. Sam kept up admirably, and managed to keep his handful of denim at the same time.

"I think he's got wings - like a bird," Sam answered. Gabriel had to take tiny steps in order to let him keep holding onto him. He snorted a little at the next thing he said. "I can't see 'em, but I touched the feathers. And I pulled some out." He looked up at Gabriel, sucking on his lower lip, and his eyes were big with apology. Finally. "Sorry.

"You're okay," Gabriel replied reluctantly. Dean loudly complained that invisible wings didn't make any sense at all, and Sam shot back that the feathers were in their room's trash can and he could dig them out when they got back, and neither one of them paid any attention to Gabriel. They'd reached the motel lobby by the time that their father had pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared down the road. Dean banged on the door next to it with an open palm, still firmly holding onto Sam's hand.

Gabriel felt the prickle of charms and runes and talismans the second that the knob turned, a sensation that crawled across the sensitive skin under his feathers like black ants. Something nasty was doing its best to hide itself and the omens that normally accompanied it. Which would, he guessed as the door opened and he finally caught a whiff of the thing's true aura, be lighting storms and cattle mutilations. It had been millennia since he'd come across a demon, one of Lucifer's pets. He avoided them - they were slimy little wastes of his time, and annoying as, well, the place that spawned them. And they avoided him, instinctively hating any and all angels that weren't the one caged below them.

He still remembered how to deal with them, though. When the one wearing the geriatric proprietress of the motel shuffled to the door, Gabriel's wings flared out to their full span. One brushed the wall of the building with its sword-length flight feathers. The other stretched out into the parking lot. They cast white light down on Sam and Dean, who were both oblivious.

There was another face under the human one, withered scarred, and monstrous. Wreathed in oily black smoke. But, of course, in the presence of an angel, it couldn't keep looking totally normal even on a purely corporeal level. With a flickering sound, the watery blue eyes switched to onyx. Gabriel was only glad that the vessel was still cast in enough shadow to hide them from Sam. He didn't need to know about demons or things like them. Not yet.

"Azazel sent you, huh?" he asked pleasantly. Sam looked up at him, confused, while Dean fidgeted impatiently. The demon bared the very tips of her teeth.

"Your kind don't have any jurisdiction at all here," she spat. Not in English. Both boys under the span of Gabriel's wings cocked their heads in near-identical gestures of bewilderment. "This candidate, like all the others, is ours and ours alone to guide. The angels will not touch him."

"Wow," Gabriel remarked. "That's some kind of early Sumerian dialect, isn't it? You've been around a long time." He reached down to pry Sam's fingers from his jeans, and then held his small hand. He ignored his whispered question about what language he was speaking. "Anyway. You're not laying a single tendril of smoke on this little abomination, sweetie. All the others are fair game, go ahead, but Sammy Winchester is mine." He squeezed Sam's hand, curling his wings protectively around him and his older brother. "I'll burn you to a crisp from where I'm standing if you won't listen to me."

"You've violated the agreement between Heaven and Hell," the demon hissed, voice all but dripping with grave importance and acidic hostility. Gabriel was surprised. Most of the time, these things just turned tail and ran in the presence of a pair of wings; especially when they belonged to an archangel. "Neither Azazel nor Lilith will take this lying down. You must know that."

"Nah, I bet they will...c'mon, kiddo." Gabriel herded Sam in a little closer with gentle touches from his wings. Demons could teleport, and he wasn't taking any chances at all with his charge. "See, I'm not violating the agreement. Not at all."

After he'd spoken and the demon had hissed a little, Dean pulled his hand out of Sam's and crossed his arms over his chest, squinting up through the sunlight and darkness in order to glare at the old woman. There was no way that he could know that he was possessed, or that he was in danger. Or even that a sheet of divine feathers stood between him and a minion of Hell.

"This is weird," he declared, as if bestowing some ancient and perfect knowledge upon everyone within earshot. "Sammy...let's go home."

Gabriel could read the uneasiness in Dean's voice, the guarded fear. His instincts were telling him that something was wrong, and that he needed to get himself and his family out of there - he was gonna make a great hunter. But that wasn't the point right now.

"Hold on, sport," he countered. "Almost done here." He held tightly to Sam's hand, and Sam stayed. Which meant that Dean stayed, too.

"We said we wouldn't meddle with the Sword until he came of age, and you agreed not to - " the demon began haughtily, eyes glossy and hands flexed into bony claws. She must not have known just who and what he was. Or she had such an overblown opinion of herself that she thought he wasn't a threat. Either way, Gabriel was getting sick of her. He cut her off.

"I never agreed to anything," he argued. "I'm a free agent. Haven't set foot in Heaven since a few years after God struck down Lucifer, and don't give a damn about your plans for these kids. My name is Gabriel, and I'm not bound by your piddling little agreement." He brought Sam in front of him, so he was standing with his back to his knees, and crossed his flight feathers in front of him to make a glowing white lattice. No demon would ever get past that. "D'you get it? Or do we need to review?"

The demon was staring at him with her eyes bugging out. The smoke inside her vessel roiled. Gabriel sighed loudly and theatrically.

"Mine," he said very precisely, tapping Sam on top of his tousled head. This time, he didn't look up at him, or move at all, really. He was trembling slightly, as if afraid. Gabriel felt bad about that. "Not yours. Look at him wrong, and I'll smite you so fast your horns'll spin. Spread the word." He smiled brightly. "Now, get - "

The door slammed of its own accord before he could finish his sentence, making most of the building rattle violently. Dean jumped back with a slight cry, then shook his head and said a word that, considering his age, he really shouldn't have known. Sam turned and tightly hugged Gabriel's legs, tucking his face in between his knees.

"What happened?" he asked softly, voice muffled by denim and flesh. "What was that? What'd you do?"

"Nothing you have to worry about, Sam." Gabriel gently shook him loose. "Grab your brother, okay? We'll go back to your room. When your dad gets home, you guys can tell him that the old bag just changed her mind about watching you."

"Um..." Sam was still, very obviously, unnerved as they all shuffled back to the room. So was Dean, but he did a better job of hiding it.

"You're okay." Gabriel cupped Sam's head with a reassuring hand, and pressed a strong wing to his back. He'd been touching him with his wings more and more lately. "You're fine."

The bald patch on the underside of his wing, where the feathers had been ripped out, no longer stung.

Sam's finger stabbed down at the glossy page of the picture book, excitedly underscoring one particular word with swipes of his nail. Once the word had been thoroughly indicated, he moved to its corresponding picture, then back to it. It was only after that that he looked up at Gabriel with a smile that could light up Hell.

"'Horse,'" he proclaimed importantly. "That's what that word is. It says 'horse.'"

Gabriel returned his smile, knowing full well how infectious Sam's excitement could be. With his wings tucked up underneath the flesh of his vessel's back, he was leaning against the wall with his charge, one arm almost-but-not-quite around him. The book that "they" were reading was in Sam's lap, dwarfing it. Gabriel would have held it himself, but John and Dean were both present. And he was no less invisible than he had been several years ago.

"Way to sound it out," he encouraged. "Okay, Sammy. Now..." He nudged Sam's finger out of the way and replaced it with his own, drawing the tip along underneath the three simple sentences on the whole page. "Think you can manage the whole thing?"

Sam gave him a wounded, almost-insulted look before easily reading the whole page. Gabriel had spoken English from the day it became an actual language, and couldn't find any fault at all with his pronunciation or his diction. Or his, well, anything. He still got tripped up on simple words once in a blue moon (like "horse"), but for all intents and purposes, he could ready just as well as someone twice his age. Maybe even better.

Gabriel was absolutely fascinated by that; a well-meaning Dean grabbed simple books for his younger brother whenever he made a trip to the library; John seemed too preoccupied by other things to take much notice. Four years hadn't softened the blow of losing his wife.

"Look at you." Gabriel nudged Sam conspiratorially. "You're a prodigy. Can you do the next page?"

"Yes..." But, instead of reading the few lines on the opposite page, Sam planted his palms against the bottom of the book and shoved it out of his lap. As it thumped against the heavily-scratched wooden floor, John and Dean looked up momentarily. They were sitting at the room's small table, and John had been lecturing Dean on poltergeists as he multitasked by scribbling in the journal he kept. After about a second, they went back to it, disinterested. "I don't wanna."

"How come?" Gabriel was pretty sure he knew the answer. Sam was a bright kid, and he'd been dissatisfied with picture books for awhile now.

"It's boring." Sam folded his arms across his small chest, looking up at Gabriel. "I'm sick of it."

"Okay...can't really blame you, Sammy," Gabriel conceded. "So. What do you wanna read instead?"

"A big book," Sam replied, pointing to the stacks that his father and brother had on the table. Gabriel felt his eyebrows rise. Those were extremely difficult books, old and complicated and stuffed with questionable lore about the things that the Winchesters were learning how to hunt. He was pretty sure that even John had trouble with them.

"I guess you could try," he said doubtfully. He'd been guarding and guiding Sammy Winchester for long enough to know that the kid definitely didn't take no for an answer. When he hit his teen years, he was going to be a holy terror.

Gabriel half-hoped he'd be around to see it, and half-hoped he wouldn't. There might be a chance that he would have completely derailed the written-in-stone plans for Sam by then and could move on.

But he really preferred not to think about the day when he'd have to leave because he was no longer needed. He wasn't sure why.

"I want that one," Sam announced, pointing at a book near his father's chair that had been buried under three others and a bulk package of matches. His fingers and hands were beginning to lose their baby chubbiness, and seemed to be growing faster than the rest of his body. He'd be like a puppy trying to catch up to his own paws, soon.

Gabriel leaned back against the wall, eyeing the title of the book, which was printed on its spine. The Golden Bough, by James Frazer. Well, no one could ever say that Sam aimed too low.

"You wanna go get it?" he asked, turning to Sam, who shook his head. Gabriel sighed deeply, made an exaggerated show of rolling his eyes, and got to his feet.

Retrieving things for Sam when he didn't want to get them himself was always trick. Summoning the book over the seven or so feet that separated them from it would be easiest and quickest; he'd barely need to twitch a single feather inside his wings' sheath. But the sudden disappearance and then reappearance of a fairly-large book was pretty much guaranteed to catch the attention of both older Winchesters. So he had to go over, make the curtains flutter on the other side of the room so that John and Dean looked over at that and not the book being slipped out from underneath its fellows, then make a bulb in one of the lamps spontaneously burn out as he carried it back to where Sam was, then set off a car alarm outside when he dropped it into his lap. Sam beamed up at him as John looked outside and Dean unscrewed the lightbulb.

"Your legs aren't broken," Gabriel complained, settling down next to him and resting his elbows on his knees. "Why do I keep doing stuff like this for you?"

"'Cause I'm really cool." Sam opened the book, leafing past the first few, redundant pages.

"'Cause you're really cool?"

"And 'cause you love me." Settling up against Gabriel's side, Sam situated the book so that it spread across both their laps. It was a little awkward, considering that they were so different in size, but he didn't seem to mind at all.

Gabriel blinked. He opened his mouth to say something, couldn't think of a single word, and closed it again. He was an archangel. He didn't feel the same as a human. He couldn't - in theory. Whatever kind of love he was supposed to be capable of should be directed towards God, then his brother, then humanity. As a whole, not as individuals. And maybe a mate. If he was lucky enough to find one.

But Sam...

He needed to think about this a little more.

"What's that say?" Sam pointed to a certain word on the very first page. Gabriel told him. "Um. What's that mean?"

"How 'bout I just read it to you?" Gabriel took the book from him. Sam relaxed completely. "You can follow along."

"'Kay."

"Sam. Who are you playing with?"

Gabriel started when he heard the voice. Young, female, friendly - he hadn't noticed Sam's kindergarten teacher coming over. He must be getting soft, since his wings were out and everything. He should really try to pay more attention to his surroundings.

Sam, who'd been digging in the dirt with a stick (and self-importantly teaching Gabriel every single thing he knew about earth worms), put the stick down and looked up at his teacher. She was blonde, well-dressed. Really not bad-looking at all, but Gabriel had been sworn off human women (and men) for about a thousand years now. His current tastes tended only towards pagan deities and his own creations. He hadn't sought out either in awhile.

"Nobody." Sam hugged his knees where he was crouching, and the woman didn't stop looking down at him. Gabriel had been there for Dean warning him not to talk to his "imaginary friend" at school.

"People'll think you're crazy," he explained, helping Sam into his jacket. Gabriel had rolled his eyes t first, then reluctantly agreed with the statement, when he was adjusting his jacket so that it fell the way that he knew he liked. It was better if he didn't tell anyone about him.

"I saw you talking," the teacher coaxed. Sam reached for the stick again and began to dig away at the dirt of the playground.

"No." He shook his head, soft, dark hair bouncing, then reached up to wipe at his forehead with one dirt-streaked hand. Gabriel spread his wings. It was a clear day and, consequently, a seasonably warm one. This way, the light would still reach Sam, but he'd be sheltered from the oppressive heat.

Part of the unseen shadow of his wings must have fallen on the teacher, because she blinked, then frowned, and rolled her shoulders uneasily. Taking a step that brought her back into an area where the temperature made sense (a movement that was almost certainly unconscious), she spoke again.

"Wouldn't you rather go play with the other kids?" she asked, bending down far enough to squeeze her hands between her knees so that she was a little closer to Sam's level. "You could make some friends."

Sam just kept up with his digging, getting soil all over himself in the process. Gabriel was contemplating herding him into the bathtub as soon as they got home when he, finally, shook his head. He looked up at the teacher, his eyes a brilliant green because of the tree that was growing nearby.

"My big brother says I don't need to," he told her solemnly. "We're not gonna be living here very long."

When had that happened? Gabriel had left Sam alone for about fifteen minutes yesterday in order to scope out the motel. It was a precaution he'd taken at every single place the Winchesters had checked into since Sam had been three years old, and they'd run into that demon. He just didn't want to be surprised again. Dean must've spoken to him then, about how long they were staying in this particular town.

Gabriel had no doubt that it wouldn't be long at all. John had been drawn here by nothing more than a simple ghost hunt, and he'd gotten pretty good at those in the last five years or so. He'd be done within a few days.

But that was beside the point. Sam was just a little kid. He needed more friends than an angel and his older brother - even if he'd be leaving them soon.

"Kiddo," he said. Sam turned his gaze on him but didn't say anything, just like he'd been coached. "Go play with everybody else, okay? You might turn out freaky if I'm the only one you ever hang around with."

Sam fidgeted in the dirt. Probably grinding it deep into the denim of his jeans, but Gabriel, who had never and would never do laundry, didn't really care. He squeezed his stick, mouth moving slightly as he bit the inside of his lower lip.

"I'll go with you," he offered, folding his wings up against his back and climbing to his feet. After a second, Sam followed, very discreetly taking a handful of his jeans in order to stay close to him. Gabriel ruffled his hair without thinking, then hastily took his hand away, hoping the teacher had just assumed it was a breeze that'd done it.

"I'm going," Sam told her, before leading Gabriel over to the other side of the playground. Once they were safely out of earshot (a kind of distance that Sam had gotten scarily good at judging lately), he looked up at him and pouted mildly, sticking his lower lip out. "Gabriel, I don't wanna - "

"Oh, c'mon, stop whining," Gabriel commanded, unfolding one wing just a little so that he could cup Sam's tiny frame with it. Sam had gotten very used to everything about his wings; he wasn't surprised when he turned his face to nuzzle into the feathers. "It won't be so bad. I'll be right here the whole time."

Sam nodded silently, adjusting his grip on Gabriel's jeans and squeezing as if he'd never let go.

It was Parent's Day for Sam's first grade class.

Predictably, John - tracking a three-hundred-year-old witch through the nearby woods - hadn't shown up. Sam didn't seem very surprised by that. Gabriel knew that he wasn't yet aware of exactly what his father did; both he and Dean had been extremely careful to keep him in the dark about it, and Gabriel wasn't about to take away the opportunity to discover it on his own (and he figured that he didn't need to know about demons to be kept safe from them). But Sam was definitely old enough to have figured out that his family wasn't exactly normal, with no mother, no fixed address, a single father who worked nearly constantly, and a brother who wouldn't tell him what he did even though it most definitely wasn't mechanic work.

"Nope, he's busy. I get it," Sam told Gabriel. Most of the other kids were showing one or both of their parents around the room, talking excitedly. Since he didn't have anyone to show around - Gabriel, having accompanied him every day, was pretty familiar with the layout - he was sitting at his desk, bent over a crayon drawing that he was working intently on. Gabriel was perched on his neighbor's desk, legs folded and wings safely tucked away inside his vessel. "I don't mind."

"Really?" Gabriel raised an eyebrow, skeptical of the statement. "If my dad didn't show up for something like this, I'd be kinda pissed." Back when he'd still lived in Heaven, like a proper angel, and had been tasked with taking care of the Gates, his Father had watched almost every time he'd opened them. That'd felt good.

"Who's your dad?" Sam asked, glancing over at him as he reached for a pale brown crayon. They were scattered all over his desk, a fractured rainbow, and several had fallen on the floor. Gabriel almost levitated them back up so that no one would step on them, but remembered where he was just in time.

"Ehh...doesn't matter," he replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, shaking his head. "Haven't spoken to Him in years, anyway. Him or any of my brothers. Whole family's crazy, trust me."

Sam set the crayon down, then crossed his forearms over his picture to shield it from sight. He gave Gabriel his full attention, eyes wide and clear and blocked slightly by a fringe of brunette hair. He needed a trim. But, for some weird reason, he threw a fit whenever his hair was cut. He just couldn't stand it.

"Is he God?" he asked, voice matter-of-fact. Gabriel felt his wings twitch in shock.

"Why would you think that?" he asked, cocking his head. It was a birdlike gesture, and one that he hadn't made in a long time.

"You've got wings and nobody but me can see you." Sam went back to his drawing, still hunched over it so that Gabriel couldn't see so much as a corner. "So...I think you're an angel."

"How'd you learn about angels?" He certainly hadn't told him.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know." That wasn't that far-fetched. In a society that was predominantly Judeo-Christian, angels were probably just one of the things that kids today picked up almost automatically. "But are you?"

"An angel?" Gabriel fiercely debated whether or not to tell him, and came to a conclusion relatively quickly. He worked one wing out and extended it, stroking Sam's too-long hair with the tips of his flight feathers. "Kiddo...I'm whatever you want me to be. Okay?" Sam blinked over at him. "What're you drawing, anyway?"

He showed him, making a few last marks with several different crayons and then handing it over. Gabriel looked over the waxy figure with a critical eye. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was looking at a portrait of himself. Long hair, brown eyes, big white wings. It was clumsy, obviously drawn by a child, but Sam appeared to have a budding talent for art. In Gabriel's humble opinion, at least.

"Wow." He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"D'you like it?" Sam was looking up at him, expression strangely guarded. Like he was afraid of being hurt. That dissolved into a smile, though, when Gabriel nodded. He shifted, opening his mouth to say something, and another crayon fell off the desk, breaking in two when it hit the floor.

Gabriel put it back together and replaced it without touching it. He didn't care who saw.

"Don't you think you're getting just a little too old to have an imaginary friend?"

Gabriel watched Sam's soft lips thin until they were nearly invisible. Pointedly ignoring Dean, he swept his hair on his eyes and focused on the angel sitting opposite him. "Got any threes?"

"Hmm..." Gabriel examined the fan of cards set in front of him, propped up against a stained and sloppily-repaired motel pillow. Sam had drawn for him and put everything up, since he couldn't hold things in front of Dean without raising every single alarm that the Winchesters had. "Doesn't look like it. Go fish."

He really hadn't had any, which was rare. He'd been known to lift a finger and change his cards so that he wouldn't have to give any up, which was probably why Sam eyed him suspiciously before reaching for the deck.

"I mean, I'm perfectly okay with it," Dean continued, shuffling his own cards. Gabriel knew he was. Before John had left on a goblin hunt several days ago, Dean had spoken to him while Sam slept. Argued with him, really. He'd said that at least he had a constant companion who wasn't his father or his older brother. "But I don't think Dad is."

"Dad's not here," Sam said curtly, laying down several cards. The one that he'd drawn from the deck must have been a three. "'S your turn, Dean."

"Great." Dean raised green eyes to Sam, but his younger brother shook his head firmly.

"No, you've asked me the last two times," he said. He pointed at Gabriel. "Ask him. He's barely gotten to play."

Dean looked over at Gabriel, obviously uncertain. Actually, he looked slightly to the left of him; if his wings had been out, he would've been staring at his primaries, and Gabriel would've had a good reason to slap him. He didn't want to play Go Fish with his little brother's imaginary friend, but he didn't want to end the game, either. He'd already admitted that he had a book report to do and was desperate for any way to procrastinate.

"You, uh...got any sevens, Gabriel?" he asked reluctantly.

Gabriel did, in fact, have on seven. His index finger twitched, and it changed to a four. "Go fish, Dean-o."

Over the years, Sam had developed a real knack for catching it whenever Gabriel used magic. He scowled, folding his arms across his small chest.

"Change it back," he commanded, "and give it to him."

"All right, all right." Gabriel restored the card to its original form. "But you're taking all the fun out of this. I hope you realize that." Sam reached over the top of the pillow and laid his fingers, by chance, on the seven. He picked it up and handed it off to Dean when Gabriel nodded. Dean looked a little impressed by what he probably thought was a parlor trick.

"Okay. Seriously now..." After tucking the new card into his set, Dean cleared his throat and fixed Sam with a steady gaze. Sam pushed his hair out of his eyes again (he was overdue for a cut...again) and stared back guardedly. "It's fine to have an imaginary friend. Just...stop talking to him when Dad's around, okay? He might get mad at you."

"Your dad could use some parenting lessons," Gabriel observed. Sam shot a look at him. "What? He could learn things from my dad, and my dad's awful."

"And don't...don't do that." Dean reached forward, grabbed the top of Sam's head, and turned it so that he was facing him again. He was gentle about it. Gabriel had always admired the way that the elder Winchester handled the younger, the way that he looked out for him. Between Sam's brother and his angel, there was no way that anything would be able to lay a finger on him. "Whenever Dad's home, I think you should pretend that you don't have Gabriel anymore."

Sam hesitated, looking like he was about to argue. Gabriel decided it was time for him to speak up.

"Kiddo," he began quietly. Hazel eyes flicked over to point at him. "He's gotta point. Your dad's not too open-minded, and you are getting a little older. It'd be a good idea to only talk when we're alone."

Sam's eyebrows drew together. He looked back at Dean, and sighed.

"I'll think about it."

Christmas, 1991. A cold and shabbily-furnished motel room. Sam curled up under the blessedly-heavy covers of the bed he'd chosen to sleep in while his father was gone and he didn't have to share one with Dean, and Gabriel perched on the edge of the mattress.

"So he liked it, huh?" he asked quietly, wings tucked away and grace burning low. He was tired, and wasn't feeling much like an archangel right now. Sam nodded as well as he could with his head nestled into a pillow.

"Yeah," he replied softly. His eyes looked dark right now, somewhere between brown and a deep blue, and they were half-lidded with sleepiness. "Think it made him pretty happy. But d'you...Gabriel, do you think I should've given it to my dad?"

He was talking about the amulet (which had a vaguely-intriguing aura to it) that he'd made a gift of to his brother earlier that evening. Gabriel knew that it'd originally been intended for John Winchester. He hadn't actually witnessed the exchange, since he'd been out in the cold - there were demons in this town, and they'd needed to be taught that Sam (and, by extension, his family) was under the fierce protection of something they really didn't want to mess with.

"No," Gabriel assured, reaching forward in order to lay a hand on top of Sam's head and stroke gently. "I think it was a really good idea to give it to your brother. He's probably gonna get more good out of it. He'll appreciate it more."

Sam sighed, eyes dropping fully closed, and pushed himself up against the contact. "'M just worried Uncle Bobby'll be mad at me."

"Bobby?" Gabriel was familiar with the older hunter, his knowledge and his stash of artifacts, because of the sheer amount of time that his Winchesters spent with him. His house was warded against a whole lot of things, but fortunately not angels. He was also the one who'd given Sam the amulet. "Sammy, think about it. You know the guy just as well as I do. I bet we can both agree that he's not going to be mad at you just because Dean's wearing that necklace instead of John."

Hey, that might've been his plan all along. Gabriel certainly wouldn't be surprised. The guy had all the cunning of the coyote spirit that'd been Gabriel's best friend a few hundred years ago, and twice the brains.

Sam shifted a little at the use of his father's first name, but that was his only reaction. With his eyes still closed, he sleepily asked, "Gabriel?"

"Yeah, kiddo?" Gabriel kept his voice gentle, and didn't stop stroking. The hands of his vessel were soft, warm. The guy hadn't ever done much work on his own, and he definitely wasn't developing any calluses with Gabriel wearing him.

"I'm cold," Sam admitted. His legs, drawn up to his chest so that he was just a little lump under the covers, moved slightly. "And I don't wanna go to sleep alone tonight."

Gabriel cocked his head without thinking about it. Sam hadn't asked to be held (by him, at least - Dean was still fair game) since he was very young. He must be feeling pretty lonely.

"Dean - " he began, just to let Sam know all of his options. He was interrupted.

"I don't wanna wake him up." Squeezing his eyes shut tightly, Sam tucked his chin down to his chest, burrowing under the blankets. "Gabriel...please?"

Well, there wasn't any way at all that he could say no to that. Prying off his shoes, he teleported to the other side of the bed, laying down on cop of the covers with his chest against Sam's back. He put an arm over him, then pulled one of his wings out and laid that over him, too. It would warm him up more effectively than any blanket. Sam had been shivering just the tiniest bit when he first settled down, but those jerky movements faded away after only a few minutes. His breathing evened out into the steady, contented rhythm of deep sleep. He was snuffling every once in awhile, a telltale sign of the beginnings of an upper respiratory infection, but Gabriel cleared that right up with a slight movement of his hand. He'd saved him a couple weeks of misery, but didn't think twice about it. Sam was his self-appointed charge, his to protect and defend from demons, angels, and all manner of other threats.

Cuddling with him so that he could get to sleep and curing him of a cold fell well within the parameters of those duties.

Didn't they?

Gabriel had a wing around Sam, holding him close and keeping him wrapped up tight in thick, soft feathers. Inside that invisible cocoon, his arms were wrapped tightly around his jean-clad legs, his forehead rested on his knees, and his shoulders were hitching every once in awhile. As if someone had a hook buried between them and was jerking on the line whenever he felt like it.

"C'mon," Gabriel soothed, giving Sam a little squeeze. "You're okay. Something like this can't hurt you."

Sam didn't say anything. Just hunched his shoulders to stop their moving. Gabriel silently rubbed his alula over the top of his head, feeling the sun-warmed hair, and leaned back against the outside bricks of the motel that the Winchesters were currently staying in.

A soft, heartbroken noise slipped out of Sam, but he managed to keep everything else bottled up inside.

"There's nothing wrong with you," Gabriel assured. "Nothing at all. You're smart, you're tough...nobody gets to tell you lies about yourself."

"If they're lies, then how come people tell me stuff like that every single place that we go?" Sam asked. His voice was muffled because of his position, and thick with tears that, at ten, he considered himself much too old to shed.

"Maybe they're jealous," Gabriel suggested with a shrug. He felt Sam's muscles tighten, incrementally, against the underside of his wing.

"Maybe they're right." A note of bitterness had wormed its way into his dull, defeated tone.

"Hey - no. Cut that out, right now," Gabriel commanded, feathers instinctively ruffled by the mere suggestion. "Some kids in your class called you a couple stupid names. Just because they said you were a freak, or crazy - that falls pretty damn short of you actually being that." Weirdo. Creep. Loony. Shrimp. Fag. Teacher's pet. Brainiac. Sissy. Schizo. Pussy. Freak; that was a favorite. Just like crazy. With every new school that Sam attended, the list of names that he'd been called grew longer and longer. Gabriel found it intensely difficult to just...let it go. Today, he'd had to forcibly remind himself that he couldn't smite fifth graders, or make them all suddenly sprout antennae, and that even cuffing them one by one with the leading edge of his wing wouldn't be a good idea.

"But I'm not - I'm not normal." Sam finally raised his head, frustration radiating off of him so strongly that it almost made Gabriel physically flinch. "Other kids don't know how to use a shotgun. Other kids don't carry a butterfly knife all the time. Other kids don't move around all the time and hunt freaking werewolves."

"Hey, you hunt a lot more than just werewolves," Gabriel pointed out. He realized (a second too late) that that probably hadn't been the correct thing to say in this situation. Sam buried his face again with a low groan. "Sammy-boy, nobody's normal. Trust me on this; I've been around for awhile. Nobody's normal, and nobody's a freak. Least of all you."

Sam's fingers twitched on the faded blue denim of his jeans. He took big handfuls of the loose fabric, squeezing tightly. His shoulders trembled for a second before he raised his head and glared at Gabriel through his primary feathers. Even though he hadn't heard or felt him actually crying, his eyes had gone red and sore around the edges.

"They called me crazy," he began, "'cause they heard me talking to you at lunch." He rested the lower half of his face against his knees, expression brooding. When he spoke again, his voice was so muffled and distorted that Gabriel wouldn't have been able to make it out without angelic hearing. "Gabriel. No one can see or hear you but me, and...that's what crazy people do, right? Talk to stuff only they can see? Stuff that's not real?"

Gabriel's eyes widened in surprise before he could control himself, and his wing loosened slightly around Sam. "You think I'm not real?"

Sam reached up to drag a hand through his shaggy hair, leaving it sticking up in floppy spikes. "I don't know."

Gabriel had to admit to himself that he really should've seen this coming. Sam's IQ was the next best thing to genius-level, and he was bound to start wondering why his "imaginary friend" was still so vivid and had followed him out of childhood. It made sense that he'd start to doubt his own sanity, heartbreaking as it was to watch.

"Sam," Gabriel started, voice quiet and serious, "you're not crazy. I'm not some figment of your imagination."

"If you were fake, you would say that," Sam pointed out sullenly, eyes flicking over to focus on Gabriel.

"I'd say it if I were real, too." His charge must not have been able to find a way to contradict that logic, because he didn't reply. "Does this feel real? Tell me if this feels real, Sammy." He completely enveloped Sam's small form in his wing, cocooning him entirely and burying him in cashmere-soft feathers. Sam gave a muffled exclamation and wrestled himself free, red-faced and laughing by the time he flopped out onto the hot concrete. Gabriel grinned.

"Why do your feathers smell like cake?" Sam demanded, after catching his breath. Gabriel shrugged as he folded his wing back inside himself.

"You are what you eat, I guess. And I've got a real serious sweet tooth." Though he hadn't gotten a chance to indulge it lately, with all of his attention focused on Sam. Funny how he hadn't even missed the sugar.

Sam pushed himself back up into a sitting position, scrubbing at his reddened eyes with the heels of his hands. "Gotta stop looking like I was crying. Dean's out on a date or something - "

"Yeah. I know." Irresponsible little bastard; he was lucky there was an archangel around to pick up his slack. Thought "little" wasn't really the right word for him. At fourteen, Dean was already several inches taller than Gabriel's vessel, which irked him for reasons he didn't expect to ever understand.

" - but he'll be back soon, with the key to the room." Kneeling, he took his hands away and blinked up at Gabriel. He suppressed a sigh: he'd made it worse.

"Lemme help you with that," he suggested, laying one hand across Sam's eyes. When he took it away, the problem had been fixed, and he received a grateful smile from Sam. "So. Did that feel real?"

"Okay. Okay, you're real, Gabriel." Sam rolled his eyes, the gesture highly exaggerated. "Just stop bothering me about it."

It took a dozen human years for the angels to notice what Gabriel was doing with the most likely candidate among Lucifer's chosen.

That didn't exactly surprise him. Azazel and his disciples had probably been bitching about his unplanned involvement ever since he'd chased the first one of them off for trying to "guide" Sam, but his brethren had always had more of a "it'll-work-itself-out" mentality when it came to their Father's great, sweeping plans. They'd likely just been tending to the souls in Heaven this whole time, waiting for someone to tell them that the vessels had come of age and Lucifer's had kicked off the apocalypse. One of them must have finally turned a casual eye to Earth and realized that things weren't exactly following the script anymore.

It was close to summer break, 1995. Dean, leaning back against the pillows of the bed he was temporarily sharing with his brother, had obviously already given up for the year. Sam, propped up by Dean's bent legs, was still knee-deep in homework. His English textbook lay open on his lap, his notebook balanced on one side of it.

"Who was a major author between nineteen-ten and nineteen-twenty?" he asked, looking up and glancing at no one in particular.

"Damned if I know," Dean answered easily.

"Ernest Hemingway," Gabriel suggested. With John out "interviewing civilians" (which was almost certainly code for "getting drunk at the local bar"), he'd smugly claimed his bed, stretched out on top of the covers with his fingers laced together behind his head and his legs crossed.

Sam scribbled down the offered answer with a grateful but undirected nod, though he didn't risk a response. He squeaked in alarm when Dean shifted slightly, reaching back to smack the outside of one small fist against his thigh. His older brother laughed.

"What's wrong?" he teased, wiggling his legs. "Am I bothering you, Sammy?"

Gabriel lifted his head as Sam yelped at the thick, dark marks that Dean's movements had forced him to make on his paper. He could've sworn that, for a second, he'd heard...beating wings. But only for a second.

"Dean, cut it out! This is due tomorrow and we were supposed to be working on it the whole week."

He sat up, his own wings twitching uneasily under his vessel's skin. Something wasn't right. He couldn't sense anything specific, but his grace was crawling. He swung his legs over the edge of John's bed and stood up.

"All right, all right, fine...you're no fun."

Dean had settled back down, eyes closed and arms folded across his chest, and Sam was busily erasing the marks on his paper with a scowl. Gabriel touched the back of his head with the fingertips of one hand. Just like they'd discussed, recently, he didn't react.

"Squirt," he said softly, "I'm gonna be gone for a little while. Something's up."

The eraser end of the pencil paused on the blue-lined notebook paper, and Sam looked up, eyebrows drawn together in obvious concern. He didn't speak, though. He couldn't. Not with Dean around. As tolerant as he'd seemed five years ago, there was no guarantee at all that he'd still be that way now. They'd agreed it wasn't worth the risk.

"It's okay," Gabriel immediately assured him. "Probably nothing. I just wanna check it out. I'll be back in a few."

Very reluctantly, Sam nodded, and returned his attention to his textbook. Gabriel took his hand away, fluttering the tips of his wings to take himself outside, then shoved his hands into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing as he strolled through the darkened parking lot of the motel. He wasn't kept waiting for long. There was a sudden rustle of feathers and when he turned, another angel was standing behind him.

He could see the wings folded up inside of the vessel. Predominantly male (like him), young. He couldn't put a name to the feathers, though. Maybe he'd been out of Heaven too long.

"Well..." Gabriel spread his arms and offered a close-lipped smile. "Looks like you found me."

"It was difficult," the other angel admitted, voice impassive. "You have not made yourself easy to reach."

"Yeah, that was kind of the idea." Gabriel slipped his wings free, but kept them folded behind his back, instead spreading them in what would almost certainly be interpreted as a threat display. He didn't want violence if it could be avoided. But, if it turned out to be inevitable, he had his blade hanging right next to his heart inside of his jacket. Just like always. "So. Lemme guess. Raphael and Michael got their feathers all ruffled over me, right?"

"You are interfering with the Plan," the angel said stiffly. Gabriel could hear the capital letter in there.

"I know I am," he answered promptly. "It's completely intentional, bucko."

The face of the other angel's vessel didn't move. He probably wasn't used to all the different ways you could express yourself with meat. But his grace was roiling inside, the color turning ugly and confused.

"You...know not what you do," he began uncertainly.

"I know exactly what I do," Gabriel countered. "I've staked my claim on Sam Winchester, literally taken him right under my wing. Where none of Azazel's black-eyed creeps can lay so much as a finger on him. He grows up without demonic influence, Lucifer never gets to wear him, Michael never hangs up his harp and gets off his cloud, and the world as we know it just keeps right on spinning." He shook his head. "Have either of my brothers taken a look at Earth lately? It's really not a good time for the apocalypse. Tell them to give it another thousand years or so."

The other angel stayed perfectly silent for several minutes. Bored, Gabriel considered wandering off, but then he spoke again.

"My superiors gave me orders to find you," he said. "I was instructed to convince you to cease all contact with the vessel and the Sword. Should that fail, I was instructed to kill you."

Gabriel cocked an eyebrow, a grin creeping across his face. "Now, um." Just a second. Before you try that..." He shifted his stance, folding his arms across his chest. "Let's stand here and think about it."

The other angel stared at him, eyes bright with grace but otherwise emotionless.

"You're a little baby seraph," Gabriel said, speaking very slowly. As if to a child. "With a dim grace, basic powers, and, down here, a wingspan of about ten feet. Me, on the other hand...well, I'm an archangel. Firstborn. Packed with ridiculous amounts of power. Fitted with a set of wings that, between you and me, prove there really is such a thing as too big. " He felt his secondary pair, which he hadn't unfolded since he'd decided to go with permanent residence on Earth, twitch just a little bit. "If you really want a fight, little brother, then I'll go ahead and give one to you. But I can guarantee that you're not gonna win it."

He felt he'd delivered a fairly-convincing argument. Especially when the other angel's wings folded a little more tightly inside of his vessel. His grace dimmed down to almost nothing, denoting either fear or caution.

"There will be repercussions for your involvement with the youngest Winchester," he said. His voice was still completely devoid of emotion, just like it had been since he'd shown up. "Just because you are an archangel doesn't mean that your actions do not have consequences."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Gabriel said, completely unimpressed. "I'm shaking in my boots. Really. I'll take twenty years for Heaven to mobilize, and a whole lot longer for poor, fragile Mikey to find a vessel who isn't Sam's brother. I think I'll have a plan by then."

The other angel didn't reply to that. Just spread his wings wide, though he hesitated before flapping them. "What fuels your dedication to this human child?"

"Cute kid," Gabriel said. "Doesn't deserve to have his life completely ruined by you winged dick-bags."

"Is that all?"

"Why do you care?"

The other angel flapped instead of answering, and was gone. Probably to a location where he could safely peel himself out of his vessel and head home to report. His superiors wouldn't be happy with him. Hopefully, he'd survive the debriefing.

Sighing, Gabriel fluttered his wings and transported himself back into the motel room. So there were finally other angels looking for him now - great. He'd have to start taking precautions. Concealing spells, discreet sigils carved in hidden places, weaponry that would give him a greater advantage than this primitive blade...

John still wasn't home, and Sam was sitting up against the headboard of the other bed with Dean's arm around him. It looked like he'd finally managed to bully him into helping with his homework while his angel was gone. When he heard the rustle of feathers, he looked up at Gabriel, and smiled.

Okay, the precautions would be a pain.

But oh, man, they were definitely worth it.

"I just really wish we could've stayed a little longer." A sawed-off shotgun loaded with salt rounds lay broken over one of Sam's arms. The other he held straight and steady, a flashlight in his hand to illuminate the dark, dusty hall in front of him. Every step sent up a puff of gray, ash-like powder from the ancient carpet beneath his feet. "I could've...maybe I could've done some more good."

"Your brother seemed pretty eager to get out of there," Gabriel pointed out, following silently. He left no footprints behind. It was a neat little trick that Lucifer had taught him back before his Fall, when the Earth was pristine and uninhabited by anything but sand, lava, and shallow oceans.

"Well, yeah, but that was just because that girl dumped him." Sam paused, and nudged at something on the ground with the toe of his boot. It looked like a crumpled piece of cloth. "Things were different for me."

"I noticed." Gabriel's feathers suddenly bristled. One of the twin poltergeists that the Winchesters had split up to find in this huge house was nearby, and it was pissed to find something living in its territory. "But, y'know, your dad showed up, it was time to get going. There wasn't a whole lot you could've done."

Satisfied that the piece of cloth was just a piece of cloth, Sam moved on. The ghost watched him malevolently from within the walls. Gabriel spread his wings to their full span and protectively shielded Sam with them.

"Gabriel..." Oblivious to both the presence of the poltergeist and the makeshift barricade of angel wings around him, Sam glanced back over his shoulder. "You...heard what that teacher said, right?"

He didn't need to clarify. Gabriel was attuned enough to him to know that he'd been thinking about the advice he'd received from his English teacher at the last school his father had enrolled him and his brother in since they'd left. If his unusual silence around the other members of his family and the fact that he hadn't been sleeping well were anything to go by, he was pretty troubled by it.

"Of course I did." There had been more and more demonic activity around Sam, as well as a few events that seemed suspiciously angelic in nature. Gabriel had become very reluctant to leave him alone at all. "That really stuck with you, huh?"

Sam nodded, staring straight ahead of himself. A vase on a small table, tucked discreetly away into an alcove, moved, and he spun around instantly without a word. The shotgun was snapped together, in his hand, and aimed in seconds. Gabriel hastily got one of his wings out of the way. A blast of salt probably wouldn't do very much damage, but it would definitely hurt, and he wasn't particularly eager to find out just how much. After a couple of seconds of nothing else moving, he relaxed and lowered his gun. He turned his attention back to Gabriel.

"So, d'you think that..." He trailed off, stopping and turning around so that he could look up at him. Gabriel kept him partially surrounded by his wings, just in case. It was easy, since he was still so small. For now. Dean was six-one, John was a little taller, and there was no way that Sam was gonna stay this height. "I don't know. Could I...could I do something else? Something besides being a hunter like Dad and Dean?"

"Dean's gonna stay in this business, huh?" If asked, Gabriel would have shamelessly admitted that he wasn't doing anything but stalling. "Sure about that, Sammy-boy?"

"Well, yeah, of course." Sam shrugged. His eyes appeared to be a pale blue right now, either because of the ambient lighting or what he was wearing or a combination of the two factors. "I mean, you know him, Gabriel. He - he likes it. He's into it. He's dedicated."

Sam seemed to have a fairly-good grasp of his brother's current approach to life and hunting. Gabriel decided to abandon that subject, especially when he was asked, again, "Do you think I could, though? Be something else, I mean. 'Cause I don't like this."

Gabriel took a moment to reassess his self-appointed duties pertaining to Sam. Technically, he'd only resolved to keep him alive and mostly human, so that Lucifer could never take a spin in him and face down Michael. Sam's happiness wasn't any concern of his. Again...technically. He could get away with shrugging and giving him some generic, dissatisfying answer.

Hah. Like hell he could.

"Sammy," Gabriel began, voice quieter and more serious than it usually was. He felt the ghost moving, gathering its strength - all the talking seemed to have made it even more ticked than it'd already been. He automatically raised his wings in order to shield Sam a little better. "I think you're a real smart kid. Smarter than a whole lot of people - your dad included - give you credit for. You're tough. I've never seen you take anything lying down. And you're strong enough to keep on going no matter what happens. So...I think you can do whatever you want to with the rest of your life, Sam. Be a writer. Or a doctor. You could run away and join the circus if you set your mind to it."

That got a faint smirk out of him, and Gabriel felt gratified. Sam shifted his weight slightly, looking around at his surroundings, and failed to pick up on the fact that a wrought-iron bedframe had begun vibrating menacingly in the room next to them. Gabriel ignored it for the moment. It hadn't actually become a threat yet.

"So I'm not predestined to do this kinda thing," Sam stated, obviously looking for confirmation of something he really hoped was a fact.

"Nothing," Gabriel replied with a shake of his head, "is set in stone."

He was an archangel engaged in an act of treason against Heaven. So he knew that better than anyone. It had been written before the births of Cain and Abel that Samuel and Dean Winchester, born from the union of Mary Campbell of a might hunter clan and John Winchester of the clandestine Men of Letters, would be the instruments of the apocalypse. And there was no way that that was actually gonna come to pass.

Sam finally smiled. A wide, real one, relieved and happy and maybe a little bit excited. Gabriel smiled back. Then he clamped his wings as tightly as he could around him without causing serious injury, pulled him hard against himself, and sheltered him from the violent impact of the bedframe as it burst through the dry-rotten wall on one side of the hallway and embedded itself in the brick one on the other. A slight twitch of Gabriel's index finger meant that it just barely missed them. His body and his wings almost certainly could have endured it without a scratch, but he didn't want to terrify Sam any more than strictly necessary. The horribly-loud sounds of twisting metal and crumbling plaster, the choking cloud of dust, and the realization that he was one pair of wings away from being a smear on the bricks already had him shaking like a leaf.

His face was buried in Gabriel's shirt, fistfuls of the fabric clenched in his hands while his flashlight and gun lay forgotten on the ground. Slowly unwrapping his wings and placing a hand on Sam's head to rub gently, Gabriel asked, "You doing okay there, shrimp?"

"Gabriel," Sam complained, voice muffled. "C'mon. Don't call me that." After a pause, he answered the question. "'M fine. It just startled me." He laughed a little, pulling away. "I guess you kept me from being hamburger meat."

"Yeah, and don't you forget it anytime soon." Gabriel folded his wings, but not until after he'd set up a simple filter spell around Sam's mouth, nose, and eyes. There was probably asbestos mixed into all the crap floating around in the air right now, and he'd rather not have to heal fifty different variations of mesothelioma later. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. "Shake a leg, Sammy. I think it's about time we got rid of these ghosts."

"Mm-hm." Picking up his flashlight and gun, Sam started forward again. He spoke, casually, a few minutes later. "Y'know, I don't think your wings smell like cake anymore."

"Really? Then what do they smell like?" Gabriel didn't pay a whole lot of attention to his wings. As an Earth-bound angel, he should preen them every other day or so. He didn't. They were kind of a mess. If the scent of the feathers had started to change, he wouldn't have noticed.

"I think they're starting to smell a little bit like me."

"It's just about time. Hunched in the darkness next to his bed, Sam busily laced up his boots, glancing over at Gabriel with eyes wide because of the lack of light. "Are they still asleep?"

Gabriel didn't even have to check, since he'd tapped a wingtip to the foreheads of both Dean, in the other bed, and John, in the cot they'd paid extra for, as soon as they'd laid down. It was a pretty rudimentary spell, but a powerful one. They wouldn't wake up until the sun rose. Not even if their youngest tripped over his own gangly legs and big feet, sent the small table rolling, put an elbow through the wall, and then broke three teeth when his face slammed into the window. Which he'd actually done a couple towns back. A junior in high school, Sam currently stood at a very unfamiliar six feet tall, and was completely clueless about how to handle his body. He was lucky he had Gabriel around to heal every clumsiness-inflicted injury.

He made a show of checking on John and Dean anyway. Sam would probably whine about it if he knew how many spells Gabriel used daily on his family - he was pretty self-righteous when it came to cheating with magic. "Yeah, looks like it. You ready to go?"

"Yes." Sam scrambled to his feet, overbalanced, and probably would have cracked his skull open on one of the bedposts if Gabriel hadn't extended a wing to catch him. It was like he was two all over again.

"Pretty sure you're gonna kill yourself before you get used to being a giant," Gabriel predicted.

"Lucky thing I've got a guardian angel, then." Using only his fingertips, Sam laid an affectionate touch on Gabriel's secondaries before striding towards the door. He followed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's - " He checked. " - eight degrees out there. You're not taking a coat?"

Putting a hand on the knob and twisting, Sam raised an eyebrow. He would know that Gabriel could easily make out the gesture, even in the near-complete darkness of the motel room.

"Tell me as soon as Carhartt starts making a coat that's warmer than angel down," he replied, opening the door quietly and heading out. Gabriel followed with a twitch of his primaries. "'Cause I have yet to find one."

"I'm not your own personal heated blanket, kiddo." But Gabriel obligingly slipped a wing around Sam as soon as they were out in the silver-frosted parking lot, making sure that his bare arms were covered by the soft underside. The night was dazzlingly clear, the billions of stars in the sky lighting up the thick layer of ice on everything and making it look like a washed-out midday, even in the absence of moonlight.

Sam looked so enchanted by the scene that Gabriel decided against grumbling about how he was freezing his ass off. It wouldn't have been true, anway; his grace kept the weak human flesh of his vessel plenty warm.

"The hill across the road," Sam said softly, pushing a hand through Gabriel's flight feathers in order to point. His breath puffed white in the razor-edged air. "I was looking at it this afternoon. It'll give us a really good view."

Gabriel resisted a strong urge to roll his eyes as they crossed the road. The hill in question was covered with grass, which was, in turn, covered with frost. Sam was wearing sturdy jeans and thick, wool boxer-briefs, but he'd still probably lose both buttocks to frostbite if he sat on that for more than a few minutes.

Gabriel hadn't used his powers of creation very much since assigning himself the task of derailing the apocalypse, but he caved in now. A snap of his fingers caused a goose-down quilt, made of patches of blue flannel in varying shades and very nearly thick enough to be called a mattress, to spread itself out over the frozen ground. A high-pitched (his body may have changed, but his voice hadn't) sound of surprised popped out of Sam.

"How - " he began incredulously, but Gabriel cut him off.

"Magic," he interrupted matter-of-factly, and couldn't stop himself from tacking on a smug, "duh."

They settled down into a position that Gabriel suspected became Sam's favorite whenever they were alone: Gabriel's legs spread, Sam sitting between them and leaning back against his chest, Gabriel's wings and arms wrapped around him, Sam's head tucked neatly under his chin. He was a full-fledged teenager now, and bigger than Gabriel - well, taller, at least; he was still pretty lanky - but he hadn't stopped wanting to be touched and held. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying contact with Gabriel even more now than he had in earlier years. Gabriel couldn't find it in himself to complain. Or even talk about it, just in case it was some kind of unconscious thing and Sam would stop if he realized he was doing it.

Sam snuggled against Gabriel with no hesitation at all. A few minutes later, he felt his heartbeat quicken, as the first meteor of the shower they'd come out here to see streaked across the sky. He knew him well enough to tell that he was beaming, even though he couldn't actually see his face.

"Look at that," Sam whispered, voice full of awe. "Beautiful."

Gabriel's chin was resting on his scalp. Strands of dark hair fluttered in front of his eyes every time Sam made even the slightest movement.

"Yeah," he agreed in a soft murmur. "Beautiful."

John had cut Sam's hair much too short, replacing the usual insane mop of wavy, dark locks with a spiky brush cut. Quite similar to the one that Dean had sported since about age five, actually. But while Dean seemed to enjoy it, Sam kept scratching frequently at his scalp and tugging at the short hair in poorly-disguised annoyance. When asked why he preferred it long, though, he was unable to provide a coherent answer.

"You could wear a hat until it grows back out," Gabriel suggested.

"That'd probably make it worse," Sam muttered, hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders hunched up around his ears. Gabriel, walking behind him, raised a hand to snap his fingers, but was foiled when Sam growled, "If you put some kind of giant, stupid hat on me right now, I'm clipping your wings."

Gabriel very much doubted that Sam would be able to find anything that could cut through his feathers, but he rolled his eyes and lowered his hand anyway. "You're no fun anymore." He paused. "You're still upset about your dad, aren't you?"

"I'm not upset, I'm just...frustrated," Sam said with an explosive exhalation. He had never once attempted to hide his feelings from Gabriel, or to change the subject when discussing them. "He and Dean come out here for the first time in months, they stay for one freaking day, and the only attention the man gives me the entire time is shaving my head."

"Dean was pretty happy to see you," Gabriel said, remembering the fierce, passionate hug that the elder Winchester had smothered his rail-thin brother in.

"He didn't even talk to me while he was doing it. Just held the clippers and moved my head when he needed to.

"All right." Gabriel could see that Sam wouldn't be so easily distracted from the topic of his father. "I agree; you've got every right in the world to be pissed at him, Sammy."

Sam glanced at him over his shoulder as they walked down the dusty drive that separated Bobby Singer's house from the road. His long legs all but ate up the distance. "Well..." He made an exasperated sound in the back of his throat, shaking his shorn head. "I guess I expected at least a handshake, after how long it's been. A smile. A 'Hey, son.' I don't know, just something."

"Well, you're the one who wanted to spend your senior year in one place," Gabriel pointed out reasonably. "You knew that they weren't gonna be around much."

"Yeah, but I didn't know Dad was gonna silently make the decision to disown me while he was gone." Sam kicked a rock, watching it skitter out of the dirt and onto the asphalt of the nearby road. "Though I guess I should've expected it. I mean, you saw how he reacted when I first brought up the idea of staying put this school year." He strode up to the mailbox, yanking it open. "He probably would've yelled less if I'd told him a werewolf had bitten me a few months back."

Gabriel spread a wing over Sam, shielding him from the mid-April sunshine, as he pulled out a bundle of male and began sorting through it. He stopped suddenly, though, when he came to one particularly thick, red-and-white envelope. There was an odd expression on his face.

"What's up, Sammy-boy?" Gabriel asked, invisible feathers rustling.

"This one's for me," Sam said slowly, sounding uncertain.

"Dean?"

"No." Glancing over at Gabriel, he held the envelope up to show him. "Stanford University. As in, the Stanford University. In Palo Alto." He slipped a thumb in under the flap once Gabriel had gotten a good look, pulling it open and digging out a sheaf of papers. "Here, hold this..." Handing over the rest of the mail, Sam unfolded the papers and read. Gabriel shifted impatiently. Sam's growth spurt had left him with a final height of six-four, which pretty much meant that he could hold anything he wanted to out of Gabriel's reach if the mood took him.

"So?" he prompted, after several minutes of complete silence from Sam. "What've you got there?"

"They're..." Sam's heavy eyebrows drew together, and his voice sounded downright disbelieving. "...offering me a full-ride scholarship. Tuition, housing, meals, everything. I wouldn't have to cough up a single cent."

Gabriel blinked in surprise. Well, whatever he'd been expecting, it certainly hadn't been that. He knew Sam's grades were just this side of apotheotic, but Stanford? That was impressive. By human standards.

"So...you'd start this fall, if you accepted?" he asked tentatively. Sam nodded, looking numb.

"I...I can't do this," he said slowly, shaking his head. "There's no way Dad would let me go to college, even if everything's paid for. Dean told me he thinks it's a waste of time. He wants me to be a hunter. They both do. They wouldn't let - "

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa." Gabriel poked Sam in the chest with one alula. "Hold up there, bucko. 'Let?' Nobody's gonna 'let' you do anything." He raised both eyebrows, and grinned. "You're eighteen in two weeks. Your own man."

Sam stared at him, taking that in, then looked back down at the papers. "I..." He shoved them at him. "What should I do?" There was the very hint of a pleading note in his voice.

Raising his hands, Gabriel shook his head. "Nah, I think you're gonna have to figure that out yourself."

"Then I...God, I need to think about this." Folding up the papers, he stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans. He took the mail, all addressed to Bobby, from Gabriel. They were halfway back to the house when he asked, "If I...if I actually went...would you come with me?"

Gabriel snorted.

"I've followed you everywhere else, haven't I?" he pointed out.

"Listen, I want you to stay here tonight."

The dorm room was small and cramped, barely more than a closet, but apparently that was the price you paid for adamantly insisting on not having a roomie. Sam had gone toe-to-toe with the administration about thirty times, in an effort to get his own private space where he could talk to Gabriel and store his "just-in-case" weapons. As a result of the power of whining triumphing, Sam was sitting at his desk, Gabriel was perched on his bed with his wings tucked firmly away, and there was no less than a foot of space separating them.

"Just - just for tonight," Sam elaborated, sounding guilty. He appeared to be actively avoiding eye contact. "I'd rather be on my own."

"Uh-huh...why?" Gabriel, cocking his head, honestly had no idea what Sam was talking about. Then it clicked into place for him: an encounter he'd earlier brushed off as being unimportant. "Oh. Oh. So you really are going out with that girl."

"Jessica." Sam looked mildly offended. "Jess, I mean. She likes to be called Jess."

"Wow, you already know all that, do you?" Legs folded and shoes on the floor, under the bed so that no one would trip over them, both of Gabriel's eyebrows bounced up. "Sounds like true love to me. Let's call up the nearest minister and tell him to get ready."

Sam's offense deepened as he watched, and he immediately regretted both the words and the snarky tone. "It's just a date." Yes, it was just a date. So why was the stomach of Gabriel's vessel going sour with the mention of it and his wings bristling inside of him? He'd thought that he knew every reaction of both the angel and the human facets of his current form, but this was definitely a new one. And he didn't even know what was causing it.

"Yeah, of course," Gabriel agreed, hoping to brush everything off. He leaned forward. "And you've been on...how many dates? In your entire life? About three, right? This girl must really be something special."

"Jess," Sam corrected again, but he'd relaxed. The whole atmosphere in the tiny room seem to have lost a great deal of tension. Gabriel's internal organs, marinated in angelic grace for over a thousand years, were still up in knots, but that probably didn't matter. "And she asked me out." He sounded just a little too proud of that.

"Yeah, she did." Blonde hair, nice smile. Fixated on Sam's eyes and chest as she spoke to him outside of a class they shared, asking if he'd like to grab some dinner tonight. Gabriel, barely paying attention, had stiffened next to Sam and still didn't understand why. Maybe it was related to what he was going through right now. "So. You'd rather I didn't tag along because...?"

"Well - it's a date," Sam pointed out, as if that explained everything. Gabriel made an "elaborate, please" gesture with one hand. "Y'know, Gabriel...just two people. Alone together. I don't need my imaginary friend there."

Gabriel assumed that Sam hadn't meant "imaginary" as a dig, since he seemed to have long-since recognized him as perfectly real, so he let it go. "You took me with you on all your other dates," he pointed out. Two girls, one guy. That last one had been an absolute disaster, with Sam blushing, fidgeting, and stuttering his way through it. Just because he had a fluid sexuality didn't mean he was comfortable with it. Considering his family, that was understandable.

"This is different," Sam contradicted. He was fresh from the shower, so his hair was still damp. His shoes and jacket were on. Judging by the time displayed by the tiny digital clock on his desk, he'd be leaving soon. "This is...real."

"You stopped making sense about five minutes ago, kiddo," Gabriel said.

"Okay, Gabriel...please. I just wanna go out on a Friday night instead of studying the whole weekend, and, for once, spend some quality time with a pretty girl who thinks I'm normal." Sam stood, pushing in his chair. Gabriel leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. "I probably won't be gone more than a couple of hours. When I get back, I'll tell you all about it. All right?"

"Fine, fine." Gabriel rolled his eyes and waved a hand. "Go sow your wild oats. Just remember that I'm not anywhere nearby if something shows up and decides it wants your ass on a platter.

Sam grinned. "I think I'll be okay." He left. His footsteps receded down the hallway.

Gabriel waited until he could no longer sense him inside of the building before snapping his fingers and transforming Sam's dorm room into something that was a more acceptable size. If his charge could head out to indulge himself, then he could sure as hell do the same thing right here. He wove together all the sweets his grace could burn through, then called up a couple of very toothsome illusions to keep him company.

Both were dark brunettes, with hazel eyes and lean bodies.

Sam's quiet sobs and cries filled the motel room right up to the ceiling, as far as Gabriel was concerned. Even sitting on Dean's bed while Sam, curled up on his own, broke down, he was wading in heartbreak. Adrift in sorrow. Drowning in grief.

It had been months but Sam obviously hand't come to terms with the loss of the woman he'd spent the last two years of his life with.

He'd put on a very solid mask for the rest of his world. He was hunting (Gabriel drifting along behind him like a ghost with a double pair of wings). He was sleeping. When Dean offered to go grab dinner, Sam had looked up from his laptop with an easy smile and a nod.

Of course, as soon as his brother had made it out the door, Sam had crawled on top of his mattress, buried his face in his pillow, and completely dissolved. Gabriel was having trouble watching this. His torso heaving, his limbs shuddering, his body twisting and contorting as if to physically express the pain he was feeling inside. It wasn't Gabriel's duty to comfort him, though.

But he slipped off the bed anyway, walking softly across the room. He extended one wing and gently touched the tip to the area directly between Sam's shoulder blades.

"Sam?" he asked softly. The combination of his voice and his touch made the sounds and movements quiet a little, but it was more like they were being stifled than they were fading.

"I don't - want to talk," Sam said thickly, hiccuping in the middle of the sentence. He'd really been bawling. Gabriel smiled down at him, but the expression was twitchy, and it was difficult to keep it on his vessel's face.

"You haven't wanted to talk for about two years now," he pointed out. Sam had been gunshy about having him in the apartment, after moving in with his girlfriend. That was fine. He could understand that. "We don't have to talk if you don't want to...I just couldn't help noticing that you seem to be in a really rough place right now."

"I'm - fine." Sam's voice was muffled by the pillow that he'd been sobbing into. It was standard issue for this type of place: thin, stained, lumpy. It probably smelled funny, too. But Sam was polite enough to cry his eyes out in a way that wouldn't disturb the neighbors anyway.

"That sounds super convincing, buddy." On a pure whim, he snapped his fingers. The pillow swelled and plumped up. Its case brightened to a crisp, snowy white. He knew that its previous scent would have been replaced with something clean and fresh, and he watched Sam lift his head in complete shock. He quieted for a moment.

"Don't," he said dully, after a couple seconds of contemplation, shoving the pillow aside and dropping his head to the mattress. The soft thing made a quiet puff noise as it hit the floor. Gabriel picked it up. "Just wanna be left alone."

"Because that seems like such a good idea, with you trying out for the latest chick-flick tearjerker over here." Still holding onto the pillow, Gabriel lowered himself down onto the very edge of the bed. Sam had to have noticed, even with his face turned away, but he didn't tell him to leave. That was encouraging. "Sammy. When I've done this - tried like this - have you ever once walked away from it feeling worse?"

Sam didn't say anything. His sobs had become quiet snuffles and hiccups, as he did his best to reign himself in. Gabriel tossed the pillow down to the end of the bed, just to get it out of the way.

"I just wanna help you," he told him with, with a shake of his head. Sam's shoulders jerked suddenly at his words, as if he'd been electrocuted.

"'Help' me?" he asked. There was a bitter note in his voice that made Gabriel's wings twitch in distaste. "You wanna know how you could've helped me, Gabriel? Eight or nine months ago?" He rolled over in order to glare at him with eyes that were red and raw from crying. "You could have saved my girlfriend with whatever angel-powers you have. You could've stopped that - that thing from coming into our apartment, and brutally murdering her in front of me. You could have let me keep my life instead of being thrown back into this!"

Sam's voice had risen as he ranted, into something that was almost but not quite a furious yell. Gabriel was shocked into momentary silence. Sam had never once shouted at him. He couldn't even remember his charge ever being angry with him. He'd completely lost it in Dean's direction a couple times, and screamed at John so often that it was just basically how they'd communicated since Sam was about sixteen. But never Gabriel. He was always the one that Sam ran to when he was shaking and crying with anger or hurt, the one he reached out for in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep, the one he called in when he had a problem that he couldn't figure out. Even in these last two years, when Gabriel had had to content himself with standing in the hallway outside of Sam and Jess's apartment to keep watch and exchanging a few words in an empty classroom or a deserted part of campus, Sam had automatically glanced at him as he passed. Looking for approval and reassurance.

Gabriel didn't yell back, even as much as the impulsive part of his personality wanted to. Babysitting Sam for twenty-two years had taught him how to tell when he was badly hurt, and when that hurt was driving him to say things that normally wouldn't have ever come out of his mouth.

He refolded his wings, making unashamed eye contact with Sam. Placing a hand on the bed, he leaned down to speak to him, voice quiet and firm.

"You have no idea how much I wish I could've kept your girlfriend alive," Gabriel began. Sam closed his eyes. They'd been a pale amber in the cheap, dim light of the motel room, only a few shades off Gabriel's own color. Or, well, the color of his vessel, at least. "But, Sam...you can't blame me, and you can't blame yourself, either - I know you well enough to figure out what you've been doing plenty of that. You didn't know, and neither did I. Even if I had...I had to stay with you."

He really did feel bad. Not guilty, exactly, since he'd been doing his job at the time that Jess's life had been winding down, but bad nonetheless. Especially because it really looked like Azazel's handiwork. Slicing open stomachs, pinning people to the ceiling, starting massive fires: he was into kinky stuff like that. Gabriel was glad it hadn't been Sam.

"You had to stay with me?" Sam, no longer crying, slowly sat up. He swiped at his eyes and his face, getting rid of the drying remains of tears, and Gabriel was inches away from using the tip of one of his wings to wipe that whole mess clean when he restrained himself. That might not go over well. "Why, Gabriel? Why the hell am I so special? Why me?"

The answer - the horrible, twisted, truth of it - was on the very tip of Gabriel's tongue. Azazel. Demon blood. Lucifer. The end of the world that he was determined to reschedule. But he stopped himself.

Was the demon blood really why he'd stayed so close to Sam all these years? Really? He could have easily have been a cold and unfeeling guardian to him, not doing anything but warning off angels and demons and pointing him in the right direction when he needed it. But he hadn't done that. It was over twenty years too late to do that, since he'd held him while he cried, and played with him when no one else would, and made sure he did his homework right. He'd been a close and faithful friend to him, and he'd watched him grow up. Every single step of the way. Hazel eyes brighten, dark hair thicken, lean torso lengthen. A work of art in all stages, but this one right here most of all. Even with reddened, puffy eyes and a nose full of snot (he kept sniffing).

"I..." Gabriel couldn't even hope to put all of that into words. Not on such short notice. So he simply reached up, running his fingers through the silky curls of Sam's hair, and cupped the side of his head. He smiled at him, a real one this time, and got rid of the swelling in his eyes and nasal membranes with a thought. "You're just special, Sammy-boy. Especially to me. I'm literally as old as dirt - older, actually - and I've never met anybody who makes me feel quite like you do."

Very, very hesitantly, Sam reached up, and put his hand over Gabriel's. It was warm and callused and big enough to completely cover it. He closed his eyes again, but this time, it looked as if he were doing it in pleasure.

"You...could've left me," Sam pointed out. His voice still seemed to hitch at odd moments, from the vigorous crying. "You should've. I was such a dick to you, those last two years at Stanford."

"Nah, you just needed time with your girlfriend," Gabriel said, shrugging. "I got it." He rubbed his thumb, gently, against Sam's temple. "So. Sammy..." He offered him another smile. "Tell me what you need now. To stop doing this to yourself." He felt his secondary wings tremble and couldn't imagine why as he leaned just a little closer to Sam. "I'm here to help you. Nothing else."

Sam swallowed. Hard. There was something in his eyes, something Gabriel suddenly realized he'd seen frequently there since he was around twelve, warring with itself. His hand tightened slightly on Gabriel's.

"Gabriel..." There was a lot of affection in the way that he said his name, and it was definitely a nice change from the fury of earlier. "I - I think...I need..."

Sam's voice had gotten quieter. Gabriel leaned forward even further in order to hear what he was saying. "What, squirt?"

"I..." Sam hesitated. Gabriel wondered if it was because of the use of the nickname. He hadn't stopped casually tossing them out, despite the fact that Sam was so much bigger than him now.

"What?" Gabriel refolded his wings, searching Sam's face with concerned eyes.

That was about the time that Sam's lips met his.

As far as kisses went, it was far from the best Gabriel had ever received. It was way too wet, Sam hit off-center, and he was moving around so much that he very nearly took off the tip of Gabriel's tongue. And he was only there for a couple of seconds. He pulled back almost as soon as he'd started, eyes wide and a blush blazing its way across his cheekbones.

"I-I," he stammered, pure terror in his eyes. "I'm so - sorr - "

"Oh my God," Gabriel interrupted. Saying the name sent a little zing of power across his tongue.

"Sorry, sorry - "

"Is that seriously how you kiss?"

Sam paused mid-apology, mouth hanging open and framed by those plump pink lips, and just stared at him. "W-what?"

"I can't believe you got yourself a girlfriend with that," Gabriel said, shaking his head. "Didn't anybody ever teach you how to do this, Sammy? Your technique's completely screwed up."

One of his hands was still on the side of Sam's head. He used the other to cup his chin, completely free of stubble, and draw him into a second kiss. He didn't think about what he was doing at all; he'd gotten pretty good at that over the last few hundred years or so. Pressing his mouth to Sam's dead-on, he tilted his head slightly, moved his lower jaw in gentle rolling motions, and guided his lips apart after a few seconds. His wings spread without his knowledge feathers rustling. Sam welcomed his tongue in eagerly, exploring his flavor (he wondered if he tasted like cake to him) as Gabriel explored the backs of his teeth. When instinct told him that Sam would be needing to breathe soon, he pulled back.

"See?" Gabriel smirked. "That's how you're supposed to kiss."

Sam was looking a little...wobbly. Basically just shocked beyond all belief. His gaze drifted above and behind Gabriel, and his mouth dropped open slightly. Gabriel looked, and grimaced when his wings were visible. Blinding white, giving off a soft glow, pearly gray on the tip of every feather.

"Oops." There wasn't really any point in hiding them again, though. He left them as they were.

"You can't..." Sam's voice was soft, almost wistful, before he trailed off. He tried again. "There's no way you can feel about like I - like I think I do about you. You're an angel."

Gabriel cocked an eyebrow. "What? Just 'cause I've got these - " He shook his wings. " - I can't fall head-over-heels for someone I've been around every single day for the last twenty-two years?" He folded them against his back. "Angels mate, Sammy. Part of our biology."

And his biology had very obviously chosen Sam. He was willing to admit that now. It was just pretty damn rare to imprint like this on a human - oh, Lucifer would mount Gabriel's wings above his freaking fireplace if he knew that he'd flipped for a monkey. And then told said monkey (who was chock-full of demon blood and apocalyptic potential) exactly how he felt.

Sam swallowed. "But...I..."

"You've spent the last eight months moping over something that you're never gonna be able to change," Gabriel pointed out. He moved his hands down to Sam's upper arms, squeezing. "So let's try a different approach, and see if we can't make you feel a little better." He leaned forward, and pressed his forehead to Sam's. "Sammy-boy...I. Love. You. Did you not catch that? Do we need to go through that whole thing again? 'Cause my world has shrunk down to one teensy-tiny little point - you - and I'm sick and tired of that point moping around like a teenage girl who got dumped right before prom. I want you to stop hating yourself. I want you to move on. And if doing that means we've gotta - "

"Gabriel." Sam cut him off, but he was laughing - actually laughing. It'd been awhile since he'd heard that sound from him. Sam reached up to slip Gabriel's hands off of his arms, then held both in his own. He only hesitated briefly before saying, "I love you, too." His voice was soft, intimate. "I need you."

Finally...some progress in the right direction. "Need me to do what?"

Sam raised both eyebrows, still looking a little shy and guilty about the whole thing, and Gabriel got it. Oh. He needed him - that had been his whole statement.

"Just...go slow...I..." Sam sighed. "Things are kind of weird for me right now. And. This is my first time with a guy." He smirked a little. "But I'm sure you knew that."

"How could I not?" Gabriel leaned in for a third kiss, and was delighted when Sam met him halfway. "I promise I'll be gentle. Don't worry about it."

He was. Being able to sense Sam's discomfort before he was even really aware of it meant that Gabriel was able to make everything absolutely perfect. He kissed, stroked, cocooned with his wings, and slowly bore Sam down to the mattress, magically plucking away articles of clothing one by one as he went. Sam never told him to stop or slow down. He just nestled into his feathers and looked up at him, eyes bright with attachment and eagerness, and waited for the next kiss. By the time Gabriel had him on his back, he was making some kind of happy mewling sound. The last of his oppressive heartbreak seemed to have lifted.

"Y'know," Gabriel murmured, kissing his way down the long, tan curve of Sam's neck, "I could snap my fingers, and we could do this anywhere at all. In a pile of flowers on a deserted island. Honeymoon suite at the Ritz. King-sized bed under the Northern Lights - and we'd be warm."

Sam's hands were in the small of his back, fingertips tracing looping shapes that Gabriel wasn't familiar with. "No," he told him, with a quick shake of his head and a soft gasp as Gabriel's lips found a sensitive spot. "My very first memories - are of you and me, in a place like this. I wanna do it here."

"Suit yourself." Gabriel's vessel had once been a man who could appreciate both sexes equally - that was one of the many reasons he'd chosen him in the first place. Sam was nothing if not attractive, and he was fully erect. He kept his hips lifted so that there would be any unwanted contact (they were both completely naked by now), but Sam's hands suddenly slid down onto his buttocks, and pushed him down until they were pressed against each other. Sam reached up to cup the back of his head as he made eye contact with him, took a deep breath, and kissed him hard as he began to roll his hips underneath him. The movement was tentative at first, but when Gabriel copied him, he seemed to get a lot more confident. They rocked against each other, Gabriel's wings surrounding them and muffling every cry and gasp.

Foreplay (or whatever this was) went on for awhile, allowing Gabriel to explore every single inch of Sam in a way he never had before. He stopped him when he tried to roll over and bare his entrance.

"Whoa, there." Once Sam was on his back again, Gabriel looked down at him. Sex-mussed hair, dusky nipples, scars that sent bolts of guilt through him. "What're you doing?"

"Isn't..." Sam's forehead creased with confusion as he peered up at him. "...this what I'm supposed to do?"

"No." Gabriel had done it from the back plenty of times with other men. Well, other males, since demigods and spirits didn't necessarily count as "men." But that wasn't the position he wanted Sam in. "Wouldn't you rather be able to look at me?" He smirked a little.

Sam had to admit that that made sense. And when Gabriel conjured up a bottle of lube, warmed it with a snap of his fingers, and then slipped said fingers deep inside of him, that it felt good. (He may have used magic to loosen him just a little, so there would be no chance of it hurting.) He kissed a trail down Sam's hard, flat, deliciously human stomach as he gasped out a concern about his brother walking in on them. Gabriel grinned against his navel.

"He's not coming back until we want him to," he assured Sam, and waited until he asked for it, voice a husky purr, to enter him.

Sam was incredibly tight inside. Since he was still a virgin in this part of his body, that was to be expected, and it didn't make it any less enjoyable. Gabriel kept his thrusts gentle, except when Sam told him to go harder, and punctuated every single one with a kiss or a touch or some kind of verbal encouragement. He told him how intelligent he was, how kind, how special, and held his haze the whole time.

When he felt Sam getting close to his orgasm, his secondary wings shivered inside of him. He picked up the pace, bucking his hips faster, and slowly unfolded them. He swore that the muscles were actually creaking with disuse. This second, smaller pair of wings was anchored right below his main pair, and was even softer, white feathers tinged with purple and pink. Sam's eyes were fixed on them as Gabriel coaxed him closer and closer to climax.

The secondary wings had multiple purposes. They made flight a little faster, they could be used in battle...they were as close to true angelic sex organs as you could really get. Gabriel traced the tips of his over the curves of Sam's chest. With a deep, shuddering breath, Sam came, burying his hands in the primary feathers of those wings. As a direct result, Gabriel wasn't far behind.

Neither the orgasm or the sex itself were earth-shattering, but they happened with Sam, and that was more than enough to bring it into Gabriel's top-ten list. Lying in a puddle of feathers and exhausted mortal, Gabriel held Sam close and trilled like a mother bird. Sam nuzzled into his chest with a contented sigh.

"That was incredible," he muttered, eyes closed and a tired smile on his face. Gabriel reflected on the fact that Sam had not had a lot of sex in his short life.

"No, Sam, that was pretty good," he corrected. "Incredible is what you're gonna get for your birthday."

Sam laughed. Twice in one day - Gabriel could help feeling that he was on a roll. Hopefully, though, he'd start smiling and laughing a lot more now that he had him in this brand-new way.

"I think I've been wanting that for a long time," he explained. "I...feel a lot better."

"Of course you do." Gabriel grunted a little when one of Sam's hands suddenly tightened in his feathers, where it still lay. He was sensitive there.

"You're not, like, gonna leave, right?" Sam's voice was suddenly tense. "You didn't break some kind of angel rule by sleeping with me? You haven't finished your assignment or something?"

Gabriel actually took a couple of seconds to mull the question over. While he'd been just about as close to Sam as he could be without possessing him, he hadn't felt any trace of the monster that the demon blood was supposed to make him into. No hate, no rage, no sadism. He might've been knocked off the track to become Lucifer's vessel ages ago. Gabriel might be able to safely leave him.

Nah. He should probably stick around - just in case.

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised, planting a kiss on the top of Sam's head. "After all, kiddo, I'm your guardian angel. Just where d'you think you'd be without me?"