As Sam began to return to consciousness, he felt like he must have had a very unpleasant and complex dream. He knew it must have been a dream, because it had involved extreme physical pain, which he was no longer feeling in the slightest. He did feel rather stiff and uncomfortable, though. Carefully, he opened his eyes a crack, and then all the way, blinking.

He was in his own bed in the motel, and Gabriel was sitting on the foot of the bed, in profile to Sam. The archangel wasn't doing anything in particular. Just sitting, as if he'd been there for a while and wasn't about to leave any time soon. At Sam's waking, though, he turned his head – very birdlike, thought Sam fuzzily – and stared at him with intensity, his eyes looking darker than usual. "Oh. Hi."

He sounded almost unsure of himself. Sam wrinkled his brow. "Gabriel?" Memories were flooding back in. It hadn't been a dream – the Piasa Bird had attacked him. Was it dead? "Where's Dean?"

Gabriel's lips drew together tightly for a moment. "Yeah, he'll be glad you're awake. Not that there was any chance of long-term damage, but the guy was fussing like a mother hen. I'll let him know you've re-joined us."

This proved unnecessary, though. As Gabriel was halfway to the door, it opened, and Dean entered, one hand rubbing the back of his neck in a tired, familiar gesture. His eyes brightened when he saw Sam, and he approached the bed with a smile. "Hey, Sammy, you're awake! You all right? How do you feel?"

"Fine. I feel great. Dean, what happened? Did you shoot the Piasa?"

"Yeah, I got it, even though it was damn hard to aim and avoid hitting you. It's dead."

"And the girl?" Sam asked.

"She's fine, she just left." Dean nodded out the window of their room, to where a red Camry was pulling out of the motel parking lot. "She helped me get you into the car and insisted on following us back to the city to make sure we were all right. I guess she felt it was the least she could do after you saved her life in that unbelievably stupid way."

"What did you tell her?"

"The truth." Dean shrugged. "I didn't feel like making up a story. I was too distracted by the prospect of you bleeding to death. All over my back seat, I might add. You're lucky your angel pal cleaned that up, otherwise the reupholstering would be coming out of your pocket."

"Gabriel––cleaned up––" Sam suddenly realized the archangel had disappeared again.

"You, mostly." Dean grinned. "Should've seen the guy. He was clucking around you like a mother hen."

"Funny." Sam gave a lopsided grin. "That's what he said about you."

"Huh." Dean snorted. "I had a right to be worried. You probably would've bled out if he hadn't shown up. That thing really ripped you up."

"So Gabriel healed me?" Realizing he was still shirtless, Sam reached an arm over his shoulder and felt his upper back, but it was smooth and unscarred – well, only as scarred as he was used to.

"Yup. Sent me out of the room first, too. I wasn't sure if he was planning to molest you after he healed you – the guy could barely keep his hands off you – but I figured you'd still prefer that to dying. He only stopped making cow-eyes at your unconscious form long enough to cuss me out for letting you get hurt." Dean grinned. "Like I could have stopped you. You were like a runaway train when you barreled into that girl."

"Heh, yeah." Sam laughed self-consciously. "I guess we kind of did end up reenacting the legend of Chief Ouatoga after all."

Later, Dean headed out to return to the camping site and bury the monster's body. Sam had insisted that he felt fine and wanted to come along, but Dean was adamant that getting half-killed by a man-eating bird meant you had to spend the rest of the day in bed, even after getting healed by an angel. So Sam found himself alone in the motel room again.

"Gabriel." He closed his eyes, but didn't bother beating around the bush this time. "Get down here. Now."

He heard the fluttering of wings almost before he was done speaking, followed by the archangel's admiring tones. "Nice, Sam, very forceful!" His voice was as buoyant as ever, but when Sam opened his eyes, he noticed that Gabriel's gaze was still unnaturally dark, and he didn't seem to have the same confident flair as usual.

"Gabriel," Sam started. "I want to thank you for, uh..." He shrugged. "Well, saving my life, I guess."

"Don't mention it." The angel's stare was really a little too intense. It was making Sam uncomfortable. "Really, though, don't. I'm not going to do it again. And you know why? Because you're never going to do something that COLOSSALLY IDIOTIC ever again!"

While yelling the last sentence, Gabriel had stalked up to Sam, and from these close quarters Sam could sense a silent buzz of dangerous energy coming from the angel, like the feeling you get when standing next to a high-voltage electric fence. Once, when Sam was about six years old, he had licked an electric fence. Luckily it had been a very low voltage, and besides a sharp shock and a weird vibrating sensation on his tongue which had lasted for several minutes, there had been no detrimental effects. Ten-year-old Dean had seen it and freaked out, asking him why the hell he would do something like that. Little Sammy had answered, truthfully, that the urge had just suddenly come over him as he was standing there. It had almost been easier to do it than not to do it. And the quiet humming of electricity was always oddly compelling to him.

Sam recalled this memory as if looking through a hazy summer heat to that day so many years ago, and as Gabriel's mouth snapped shut and his eyes shone with rage and barely-concealed fear and relief, Sam felt a tiny smile steal onto his lips. He bent forward and kissed the archangel. It was easier to do it than not to.

~ fin ~