There was something about Sam - something about the life they had, something about Bobby's house, something about the bickering and food fights and petty arguments and staying there and not ding-dong-ditching that lent his life a sort of domesticity that it had never had before. Gabriel had despised domesticity - or at least, he thought he had, but he'd really never experienced it before, either. It'd long since been engraved in his mind as a synonym for 'boring', except this - this wasn't boring. This was a place to come back to, this was a place to call home, this was where attraction became affection and lust became a much more substantial four letter word. It was where he could be; it was where he could lick his wounds and rekindle his friendship with his long-lost brother and be obnoxious and over-dramatic and broody and still be welcomed back, it was where he could find a semblance of a father figure - which was weird, considering he was a few billion years older than Bobby Singer. But the old man was always, unfailingly, the one to clock him upside the head and shove him back on the right track, often against his wishes, if he strayed. And it was nice. It was really nice. This wasn't boring, this was security. And there was something deeply fulfilling about that.
Gabriel peeled his eyes away from the snowscape outside the window. It was chilly, despite the fireplace crackling fifteen feet away - Dean'd fought for the rights to turn that thing on, but that was an epic story for another time - and Gabe's hand felt uncomfortably tingly after using it as a chinrest to stare out at the falling snow for so long. But not even that could steal away his feeling of bone-deep contentment. Sam was asleep, snoring softly, curled in slightly on the couch along with Gabe and covered in a blanket that was much too small for the both of them. The entire house was quiet. Dean and Cas were upstairs on their laptop, the former teaching the latter as much about the idiomatics and regionalisms of American/Winchesterese English as he could be bothered to soak up - which was quite a lot, given that Cas was like a sponge when it came to knowledge that interested him - and so far it was going smoothly, although it was a bit unnerving to hear the slang suddenly creeping its way into Castiel's everyday vocabulary. Bobby was taking a nap, as far as anyone else could tell. Although Gabriel was beginning to suspect that his nap time wasn't being used so much for naps as it was for something else entirely, if the text messages between him and Crowley were any indication.
So, for once, in a rare moment of harmoniousness, the entire house was quiet. Sam's chest rose and fell with each slow, steady breath he took. His expression was utterly peaceful - and it tugged at something in Gabriel's chest, because he never saw Sam this peaceful when he was awake, not really, although it was steadily becoming a closer thing. One of Sam's hands was tucked under his head, sandwiched between his ear and the not-soft-but-not-rough fabric of the arm of the couch, and his hair was slightly mussed, courtesy of Gabriel, from when he'd had his hands tangled up in it earlier. Gabriel decided he'd rather be back under the blanket with Sam than exposed to the air. And so he did just that, shifting back down as gently as he could so he wouldn't wake him and feeling a familiar swell of pleasure when Sam muttered something incomprehensible in his sleep and slipped his hands out from their positions, unconsciously seeking him out. When they found him, they pulled him close. Sam curled around him, nuzzling his nose into Gabe's hair and letting out a contented sigh and Gabriel nuzzled closer too, basking in the warmth that hummed in his very core. He blinked sleepily and watched the fire for a while, following the flames with his eyes as they crackled and danced until the rhythmic slow-quick-slow-quick of the flame became too much for him and he started slipping off.
Finally, slowly, he yielded to it, giving in to the irresistible urge to slip his eyes shut as the fire gave off one last, final flare of burning gold.