Weirder things had happened to her. No, really, weirder things had happened to her.

Accepting candy from complete strangers wasn't nearly that traumatizing. It wasn't like the man had come with a creeper van or a story about a lost puppy. Actually, he came equipped with a scarlet Mustang and the puppy was yipping from the back seat, a Jack Russell that appeared hell bent on dragging the man's attention away from her.

Which simply wasn't happening. He had jolly ranchers!

"So, tell me, Samantha –"

"It's Sam." She was too young to even question how he knew her name. She just contently rolled the cherry candy around in her mouth, feeling it stick to her teeth before retreating into the cavity of her cheek.

"– Sammy, how would you like to play a prank on your big brother, Deano over there?"

She followed the stranger's deviant gaze to where her older sibling was being 'cool' and sharing a cig with a few of the older kids. The same older kids that would pick on her and tell her that she wasn't a girl at all but just a really ugly boy.

He was only twelve years old. Bobby wasn't going to be happy with him if he figured out what he was doing.

Sam looked from him to the stranger who had crouched down to be level with her. "What kinda prank?"

His smirk couldn't have been wickeder. "I just need you to get him to scooch two feet to the left, 'kay?"

She considered it in that way eight year olds consider things. She put half her mind to it, the other half already convinced, and then she nodded with a small covenanted smile.

Her new friend wiped a thumb across her cheek, catching a smudge of oil that must have been from her and Dean's play-tussle in Bobby's salvage yard. How dare her big brother not tell her about it! Then again, she hadn't told him about the stain on the back of his favorite pair of jeans that his 'comrades' were now pointed out to him. "That's my girl. Go get'im!"

She trotted across the street to her brother, cherry candy staining her tongue and teeth, and looked back once.

The mystery man wasn't there anymore. Neither was the car or puppy. But he had said…

She shrugged and decided that it was all part of the prank, dismissing the impossible in the same way she hadn't questioned his knowing her name. Cars didn't disappear into thin air like that. And the man, no matter how short he had been, shouldn't have either. It wasn't like the streets were busy. 'Cause they weren't, not at all.

She poked her brother's side and delighted in the yelp she got in turn. Dean's 'companions' snickered and jabbed each other, as if the only way they were allowed to speak was through causing their audience physical pain, and mocked her adoring brother.

She glared at them, wishing they could play a prank on them instead. They were really the bad ones.

Her glower only made them crack up harder.

Dean shifted a bit, eyes flickering between them and her before staying on her, deciding her to be the more important of the two options. "What's up, Sammy?"

"It's Sam." Why was everyone calling her Sammy?

"Whatever, Samuel –"

"It's Sam –"

"What do you want, Sam?"

"Can you move over there?" She pointed to a spot two feet to his left.

He raised a brow. "Okay… why?"

There was some annoying background noise from the goons, making up their own perverse reasons for why she wanted her big brother anywhere.

Dean, for his part, got that look in his eyes that he would get right before kicking someone's butt. She managed to placate him by grabbing his one hand in both of hers. "Please?" She gave him her best puppy dog eyes, which, she knew for a fact, he couldn't resist.

He growled, said a few interesting curses, and then shuffled obediently to the proffered spot. "Now what?"

She shrugged. "I don't know." She looked up, kinda expecting a piano to fall on her big brother from nowhere. When that didn't happen, she looked all around them. There was no stone being shoved off of the opposite building that would send her brother through the glass windows to their other side, no train coming out of nowhere, and certainly no Bugs Bunny about to pop a hole in the ground. Her toon-inspired mind couldn't find a single thing strange about their surroundings.

She teetered on and off the balls of her feet, clacking the jolly rancher between her teeth before swirling it under her tongue.

Dean narrowed his green eyes on her mouth. "Wait, Sammy –"

"It's Sam."

"– are you eating candy?" He knelt down and grasped her jaw, gently forcing her lips apart so he could peer at the innocent piece of candy. "Where'd you get that?"

She stuck her tongue out at him and then defiantly swallowed the shriveled cherry, luckily dissolved enough that she didn't choke on it. "Don't matter now."

"Like hell it don't!" Because they're kids and their English wasn't perfect. "Sammy –"

"Sam."

"You're not supposed to accept candy from strangers!"

Like 'strangers!' was a code word, an orb of crystal-like luminosity descended from the heavens and crashed with what had to be painful force into Dean, sending both her big brother and the comet through the paved sidewalk with a scream on her sibling's part.

The goons behind her let loose their own sounds of surprise before running. One of was them crying and another whimpered about his suddenly wet pants. 'Cause they're only kids too.

Hopefully, they'll never try smoking again. Hopefully, they'll always remember the light that came barreling towards earth every time they pick up a cigarette in the future.

She was more concerned about her brother, AKA, the preteen who was buried beneath so much torn up concrete and something else she couldn't see for the brilliance of the descending globe that she wasn't even sure if her brother was there anymore.

"D-D-Dean…?" She sniffled, ready to cry at any moment.

A chuckle drew her attention back and behind her was the stranger, nibbling on a Hershey bar and hazel eyes glinting mischievously, as if that wasn't half of the joke.

"Y-you said a prank!"

"I know! Ain't it funny?"

"Y-you killed my brother!" she sobbed into her clenched fists. A sudden epiphany made her pale and then cry harder. "I-I killed my brother! Bobby's never gonna talk to me again and then I'm gonna go to jail and they're gonna do things, y'know, bad things, and then Dean will be dead, and – and –" could it get any worse than that?

"Oh, hush with you." He thrust a grape sucker into her mouth, promptly shutting her up, though she continued to cry silent, rebellious tears. "He's not dead… well, I don't think he is."

She glared up at him. "You're bad at pranks."

He actually gasped, looking as if she had just insulted everything he had ever believe in and lived for. "Take that back!"

"No!"

"Sonofabitch…" Her brother whimpered from the crater, somewhere beneath the mound of rubble and…

Sam rubbed her eyes, wondering if her tears were blurring her vision. When it turned out that that wasn't the case, she admitted that, yes, she was looking at two really, really big wings unfurling, just huge canvases of all the pretty hues found in the sea; deep blues and light ceruleans, murky and bright greens, champagne yellows and night water black. They flashed and danced in the midday sun, like facets of a diamond, each feather changing color constantly until it was almost dizzying, nearly drowning her as if she was really in the middle of the Atlantic. Or Pacific. Whichever was closer.

Following the big, big, big wings down to the back they had flapped free of, she saw a man with a whiskery face; y'know, a beard that wasn't manly enough to be a beard yet. It was like he had just skipped out on shaving for a day. And he had black hair and really intense blue eyes.

He was naked, too.

She seemed to realize that a moment before Dean did.

"HELP! SOMEONE, HELP! PERVERT! PEDOPHILEA!" Sam frowned. Wasn't that supposed to be pedophile? Regardless, her brother went on. "GET THE FUCK OFF ME! SOMEONE, HELP!" He spotted Sam somehow underneath one extended wing. "SAM, get help!"

The winged man was frowning, probably confused.

The candy-addicted stranger was laughing a little harder by the minute. "Cassy, bro – "

"Don't call me that." The creature's voice cracked and then husked. He sounded like he hadn't spoken for a bazillion years.

"Welcome to the US of A! Oh, and that's a boy. Just a boy. Not a cushion. But, hey, you can just keep sitting on him if you want to!"

Dean was wiggling furiously, trying to dismount the 'Cassy' person, but was obviously failing. And then he went still.

The winged man was staring at him, meeting him eye for eye. "Hello, I am Castiel," the comet-turned-angel-thingy murmured softly, as if he was speaking to a skittish animal. Which he might as well have been.

Dean was twelve years old. He liked to act tough, Sam knew that. He liked to pretend that he didn't mind having the world fall on his shoulders occasionally and that he was always in control even when he wasn't. He especially liked to play the part of the badass older brother 'cause he was older than Sam by four years and that seemed to come with some hidden clause stating that he had to be fearless in front of his little sister.

She watched for the first time in her memory, though Bobby had assured her it had happened once before when their mother had died in the fire that had claimed their first home, her twelve year old brother cry.

~ :: ~ Eleven years later ~ :: ~

"Alright, so you've got your cell phone, your mace, your pocket knife…" Dean continued to stroll down the list of things she had bundled into the Impala, slowly edging into the less paranoid side of her cargo. "… Things I won't mention – " AKA, her underwear and tampons, "… and, are you sure you have that stun gun I got you last Christmas?"

She huffed and decided whether or not to just shoot him with the damn thing to reassure him. "Yes, Dean, I have the stun gun. And everything else I will need. We don't need to go through the list a sixth time."

He almost looked sheepish. Almost, being the key word. Her brother was near shameless. "You sure you have everything?" There was a note to his voice, like he knew there was something she was leaving behind. Whether or not he approved of its absence, she couldn't tell. He was just staring her down with his impressive green gaze, leaning forward just a bit towards her. She swore he was even holding his breath.

She had had just about enough of it. "Yes, Dean, I have everything I need! God, I'm not moving to a whole other planet, I'm just going to law school." He opened his mouth and she was quick to cut in. "Which is only a few states over, not continents."

"It's over a thousand miles away, Sammy – "

"Sam."

"It'd take me over a day to get there, about five hours for you to kick me out, and then I'd just have to drive all the way back."

She rolled her eyes at her brother's whining. "Well, you know, you can always get Cas to – Oh… Oh, that's what were you getting at."

Dean actually seemed disappointed.

"Yeah, you should go now."

"What? But we're leaving in twenty minutes!" He scowled.

She gave him her best bitchface. "Dean, go. Or else you're going to see a few things you'll never be able to unsee."

"Seriously? You're my baby sister!" But he left because, eleven years later or a lifetime later, he still couldn't say no to her puppy dog eyes.

She waited till he was out of sight around the corner of the apartment complex, the Impala left behind because it was full to the brim anyway and the diner was only a few blocks away.

She sucked in a deep breath and then smiled deviously. "Gabriel," she purred as she locked the front door. Suddenly, she was very happy she and Dean had decided to get an apartment separate from Bobby's house some years ago. "Gabriel," she hummed a second time as she hastily stripped on her way to the bedroom, like she was already being chased. "Gabriel!" she squealed as she leapt into her bed.

Before she even came into contact with the sheets, the scenery changed and, instead of landing in a swarm of plain white blankets, she delved into a sea of silky red fabric, sensual against her skin.

"And for a moment there, I thought you weren't going to say goodbye." Her candy-giving stranger was pouting from the edge of the bed, his cargo green button-down halfway unbuttoned and blue jeans undone. "You forgot me."

She snorted, completely un-ladylike. "Get over it. It's not like you wouldn't have been able to snap your fingers and see me." She slinked over to him, delighted by just how huge the bed was. It was possibly bigger than her entire apartment. Or what had once been her apartment, all things considered.

Sam had grown to be a rather tall woman, albeit very beautiful and equally tomboyish. The last two factors put aside, she was still freakishly tall.

That was mentioned only to point out just how short Gabriel was. Sometimes, she felt she had a whole other foot on him.

He was such a shrimp. A cute little jokester of a shrimp. Her little funny shrimp.

"If you keep calling me shrimp, I'm going to turn your brother into one."

She smirked as she dropped her head into his lap. "I never called you a shrimp."

"You little liar."

"I never called you a shrimp out loud," she amended.

He tugged at her shoulder-length chocolate tresses before letting his palm slide over bare flesh. His eyes followed his progress and became molten as his thumb teased one blushing nipple. She sucked in a deep breath and then let it out in a sigh. "Gabe…"

"Oh? Did you want something from me?"

"Just a little of this and that and – GOD!" With no forewarning, he was between her legs with inquisitive fingers, startling her excited body. Just as quickly as she reacted, however, he was gliding his fingertips over her inner thigh and then back up her torso to tickle her clavicle.

"Hey now, how come you want my dad? Aren't I good enough?"

She surged her upper body off of the bed and captured his lips in a fiery kiss, instilling all of the passion in her being into the bruising contact. Her love, her annoyance, her want, her wet need – she let him feel all of it with just the press of her lips and the coyness of her tongue.

With the skill of someone who had been around the block for a few hundred years, maybe thousands of years, Gabriel took control of the kiss and put her in her place, easing her back onto the bed and wrapping her endless legs around his waist.

She felt the friction of his cold zipper and rough jeans against her core like a thrilling shock.

Since she was human she had to regrettably pull away eventually for that little thing called oxygen. Gasping for breath, she somehow managed to mutter, "Anything better than you and I might die," which, actually, was a stupid thing to say. He needed his ego stroked like she needed a hole in the head.

Gabriel leered at her and she just knew he was going to make a sexual innuendo out of her thoughts. To stop him, she grinded down on his clothed erection, moaning at the resulting sensations. He bucked to meet her and their foreheads bumped together, his eyes at half mast and hers glazed over with just the first few touches of pleasure.

Being with Gabe did that to her. She couldn't explain it, neither could he, Dean pretended not to notice the chemistry, and Castiel was too busy milking the secrets of human interaction out of her older brother to concern himself with them, even after all these years. Then again, that could just be an excuse to have a one of a kind relationship to the older Winchester.

What could she say? Gabe always made her feel like she was on fire. And, judging by his tense expression, the feeling was mutual. "Gabe, baby, you need to get inside of me, like, now." She clawed at his back, damning the clothes he was still wearing to hell.

"The jeans can go there but I actually like this shirt." In the next second, though, both items of clothing were gone along with whatever else (she hoped) he had been wearing.

His grin told her that her hopes were misplaced. But, of course. When had he last not gone commando?

"Um, never?" he chortled and then proceeded to rid her of her bitchface by worshiping her breasts with his mouth.

She couldn't help but forgive him for being a sicko. She still wished he'd get to the other end of pleasure, though.

"So impatient, Sammy." She didn't even have it in her to correct him.

A strangled sound between a scream and a cry left her as he gently prodded her soaked womanhood with inquiring fingers. Two slipped in easily, thrusting and curling till she shot off of the bed with a howled "GABE!". He kept finger-fucking her G-spot till she climaxed in a fit of sobs, his mouth still firmly attached to her teats. "GABE!"

"Yes, milady?" he purred, the outrageous bastard, and offered a Cheshire grin that would have been Alice in Wonderland to shame. "Did you want something?" He even lifted a curious brow, tilting his head just so to the side for the ultimate innocent expression that couldn't have been faker.

Lips bruised red and face slightly flushed, he sat up and rubbed his erection against her inner thigh, so damn close to where she wanted it and yet so far away. His fingers, slick with her juices, her body limp and quivering beneath him, slid into his mouth. Gabriel groaned and rolled his eyes in that 'to-die -for' manner, like she was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

She licked her lips. Finally, she remembered he had asked her a question and was still waiting for an answer. "I… I want… I want you… in me." Words were failing her. Then again, her brain cells were but fried, so… yeah. Why she was even thinking anymore was beyond her.

"I'm sorry, Sammy, honey, but I don't think I can fit my entire body in your tight-as-fuck self." He was goading her on, testing her, and she was too far gone to care.

She cursed him with words Dean and Bobby had collectively taught her. "I want your cock inside of me!" Never let it be said that she was shy about her wants.

"Oh… I see… What would you give for it?"

She could very well point out that if he didn't put out, he'd be the one to suffer more. She could damn well quit sex but he was a freaking nymphomaniac. She'd like to see him last without orgasm.

But she wasn't coherent enough to believe in that.

"Anything, just, Gabe, anything!"

He considered this with a hum, still rocking against her inner thigh, dampening her skin with precum. She raised her hips, trying to urge him closer to her opening. He pushed her back down with hands on her waist, hardly even seeming to realize her struggles as he clucked his tongue and looked to and fro along the ceiling. "Mm… Okay!" He was pure evil as he looked down at her, something he shouldn't be considering what he was. "I'll just collect our deal…" he slid into her, one delicate inch at a time while she keened high-keyed, "later… Sammy, honey…"

Had he not been holding her so steadily in place, she might have just flipped them over and ridden him like an unbroken stallion. As it was, she was still writhing, wishing she could force the pace. She wanted him so damn bad, she wanted him so deep he would be there always.

He kissed her and she wrapped her arms tightly around his shoulders. She didn't consider that the position nearly had her bent in half to meet him. What he lacked in height, he made up for in other ways… and in other parts of his anatomy.

Sam felt herself be breached, pierced so deeply she wasn't even sure if she felt pleasure anymore. There was a deep, throbbing sensation and her inner walls were clenching down hard on her lover, but her abdominal muscles spasmed in warning and her breath was sucked from her lungs as something was abused far inside of her.

She was almost positive he was screwing her cervix. "G-Gabe…"

He nipped her shoulder. "I feel it." She'd be damned if that wasn't smug pride in his voice. He pulled back and then carefully reinserted himself. The shivers that racked her spine could be felt through her collarbone by his lips.

Slowly but surely, with building fervor, the pace increased. Slow, deep pushes turned into fast and hard, him pulling back just that inch before hurting her before roughly coming back. His hands were leaving bruises on her hips, her legs locked behind his back, and she wasn't sure who was holding onto who anymore as they made furious love.

Her nails were digging into his back, not strong enough to break skin or draw blood, but that didn't matter. As long as she could hold onto something – not just something, him – nothing mattered. Outside of this magical bed with this ethereal being, absolutely… nothing else mattered.

So she held on a little tighter, feeling her muscles strain with the need to pull him as close to her as humanly probable. Her vaginal walls were sucking Gabe's cock deeper, forcing it out faster, swollen flesh fighting an uncertain battle with her lover's erection. She could feel it all, like everything else didn't even exist anymore.

Their choked and huffed breaths, their occasional groan and hiss and praised name, the slick sound of flesh invading flesh over and over again… it was all she could hear, the rustle of sheets beneath them, the wild thumping of her own heart and the echoing beat of his.

She focused on his tawny eyes because, if she had to focus on their bodies and their gleaming, undone glory, she would lose her mind and nothing would be left behind of her. He stared right back at her, thick eyelashes over teasing and heated hazel orbs that were more opaque in that moment than brown or green. There was something else flashing in those eyes, something that had been born when she had kicked him in the shin that first day they had met, the moment she had realized that the initial reason for her big brother crying was him. That something had only grown since then, from her first won spelling bee to her hundredth read book in fourth grade to the day she graduated high school with highest honors. Even more than that, it had swelled with her every step, her every smile and laugh and acknowledgement.

She could never be sure if it was pride or love. She reveled in it anyway because it felt wonderful, her soul basking in the molten pools of his eyes.

"G-Gabe… close….?"

"Very close." His movements weren't as steady as they had been, thrusts sputtering. He didn't seem to be able to stop himself from brushing her cervix any longer, though the strain was obvious in his smoldering gaze.

And then she was there, just like that. She came for the second time that night, with a scream that could have woken the dead, and she was half-off, half-on the sheets as her orgasm clawed at her like a wild thing.

As an afterthought, she felt him climax inside of her, dragging a groan from her numbed nerve endings. His pants berated her ear as he leaned over her, slowly coming down from his high. "Sammy, honey…"

She managed to mumble something. He chuckled hoarsely.

"Sorry, honey, you'll always be Sammy to me."

She mustered up her best bitchface, which horribly failed because she was too full on bliss to actually care. Instead of looking the least bit angry, she appeared to be more the cat that got the canary.

With shaky fingers, she stroked back his light locks, the tresses damp against her palms. "Mmm, baby, I love you…" she mumbled once she remembered how to speak articulately, "but I feel like a pretzel…"

He was still bending over her, her legs lax around his waist, and, again, she was a tall chic. She just wasn't meant to be bent like this.

"You look amazing, though." He kissed her softly and then rolled over, both of them releasing a small sound of euphoria as they separated.

She followed him and pressed her head to his chest.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, absentmindedly petting the back of her neck and her hair. "… What started this, anyway?" He asked the ceiling, though he might have meant to question her.

She huffed, her groggy mind unable to supply an answer. There was somewhere she was supposed to be tomorrow and, somehow, that was vital to today. "I don't know…"

"Hhhhmmm…"

Back in Lawrence, Kansas, Castiel had decided that he would also say 'goodbye' to his lover, though he could just flash his way to Dean at any time and, aside from that, he would be back tomorrow.

He merely considered it another human experience and continued to make love to Dean, delighting in all the little reluctant sounds he made as Cas abused his prostate.

He decided against telling Dean that his promised twenty minutes were long since over.