Title: Waiting for You
Author: OpheliacAngel
Pairing: Dean/Gabriel
Genre: Romance/Angst
Rating: Mature (Just in case)
Summary: At a chance encounter in a bar, nursing a nice cold beer, Dean wonders if he's just come across someone who he used to know. As his suspicion and excitement starts to wax, it's only kindled further by the DVD left behind for him, its contents slightly disturbing but beautiful nonetheless.
A/N: Not really any spoilers, and I guess I would say that this is set sometime during Season 7, even though it is AU. This is something a little new for me, a little bit more explicit in terms of sexual content that I normally would write. Anyway, the words kinda got away from me but I like it too much not to upload it, so happy St. Patty's Day to all who read and I hope you enjoy.
The bar was dark and stuffy as Dean sat on one of the bar stools, nursing his fourth beer and sipping it slowly whenever he remembered to stop thinking about the past and all those he was responsible for losing and just focus on the holiday that was nearly upon him, a holiday that celebrated losing yourself in a delicious drink.
Sam would have refused to come with him, which is why he didn't even bother to ask, and being alone may have originally been a good thing but now, now it was a terrible thing because no one was there to stop him from drinking himself to death, to direct his thoughts elsewhere whenever the forming tears in his eyes were a sign of thoughts he shouldn't be thinking.
The moment where he fully came back to himself was the moment he noticed that his beer surprisingly wasn't green like everyone else's was. Maybe it was because he wasn't in the holiday spirit, or maybe he was just going blind from all these tears and it was green after all.
Anyway, he didn't end up thinking about it for too long before someone slipped into the stool beside him and stole his undivided attention. Yes, undivided… and no one but Sam had been known to have that effect on him.
The miserable thoughts dissipated at a rapid rate as he honed in on amber eyes that almost completely matched…
No, he wouldn't think about that topic again, he had thought about him far too much than was healthy. His state of mind had been deteriorating since that sacrifice, since all those sacrifices (Cas and Bobby and John and Ellen and Jo…) that always meant deaths, losses of life that could do nothing but weigh heavily on his tortured mind.
Besides, this wasn't his common vessel and therefore couldn't be him. Right?
He forced himself to look away despite the fact that it would do nothing, that he would think of nothing else but those eyes for the rest of his night and not to mention many more nights to come. They would haunt him in his dreams and torture him during the waking hours as well, would remind him of everything Gabriel was, of all the moments they had, which really weren't many at all, and all the moments that they could have had if he stupidly hadn't listened to him and ended up getting himself killed for him.
That's the death that weighs the most on Dean, the sacrifice he will never stop thinking of no matter how much he tells himself that it wasn't his fault, and Sam backs him up on that every time he senses his brother's thoughts are drifting into that direction once more.
Thinking that much about someone isn't natural, still, he hasn't breached the line of declaring love yet. Though Sam must suspect it because he's no idiot and deep down inside he must too.
Every breath he dares to take doesn't matter, all the regrets in the world could do nothing, mean nothing because Gabriel is dead and he has been left behind. And even if he does claim, like he so often does, that he wasn't worth saving Sam will try to prove otherwise every single damn time and the very action that Gabriel took for him will prove it also.
That a stupid, worthless human like him, who asked for too much, who wouldn't be settled until someone died for him and Sammy, is still breathing and apparently more valuable than an archangel is too much.
How could he not turn away and try to direct his thoughts elsewhere? How could he…?
"What are you having?"
The voice sounds normal and for another second Dean just leaves it as too good to be true, that the next time he'll look back at those eyes they'll be another color and he can just blame it on the lighting in this damn place.
"Budweiser."
"Nice and simple, my kinda guy."
Dean glances back over on instinct and nearly falls off the stool when he catches sight of the hue of those eyes again. There's no mistaking that they're amber, missing the flecks of gold that would often be seen in the archangel's but still… amber and real and most certainly not a trick of the light.
He swallows very hard and ignores him as he orders, "I'll have two Budweiser's, and make sure they're green."
Like the color would make a damn difference, Dean thinks but also remembers that Gabriel was good with the details as well. The quality of his chocolates and the scent of his roses. Joking around that one time that Dean just had to have the best and that's what it was at the time, a mere joke with no underlying intent to him.
Yeah, he was pretty dense back then, he allows himself to realize.
The human can barely make out what he's saying, that's how much he's panicking, wondering with a heavy heart if there's any chance in the world that this is Gabriel. It can't be, he looks nothing like him, even though the topic of vessels makes that thought pretty stupid, yet the fact that Gabriel is dead makes this all impossible.
He's dreaming, that has to be it, dreaming that someone who has the same mysteriously unique eyes as Gabriel's is sitting with him in a bar and buying him a beer. It's certainly strange enough to dream up but it isn't any less traumatizing than any of his other regularly occurring dreams.
When the beers are delivered and Gabriel's eyes bore into his own, so deeply it's as if he can see right through him in a beyond creepy but also extremely familiar way, the human suddenly can't take anymore and with only one sip taken out of his neglected fifth beer, pushes himself away from the bar in a frantic haze and away from the guy that just can't be Gabriel.
He's breathing hard and panicking and he knows he can see it as he continues to push his body even further away, leads his eyes towards the door because it's too painful to see who he might as well have killed with his bare hands not too long ago at all.
As much as he wants to believe this, he can't stand by and let these thoughts ravage his mind any longer, tear him down unrelentingly and laugh at him and scold him for all the damage he's already caused.
This isn't Gabriel. It's as simple as that.
"Wait", he calls out, a painful word to Dean's ears, leading him to stop in his tracks but also leaving him unable to turn back, inwardly cringing to see what the guy will do next, taunt him, tease him or merely confirm that he isn't Gabriel in the slightest, that he's been an idiot for thinking it for more than a minute.
"Take this", Dean hears him get up and seconds later something that feels like a DVD case is shoved in his hand, giving him permission to get out as fast as he can and head back to the hotel.
All he can think about is that he's nowhere near drunk enough for what just happened, even though he may be stumbling and close to crashing into the nearest telephone pole and certainly drunk enough to refuse to drive his baby back to the hotel parking lot and run the risk of crashing her.
The night is cold and painfully long and his fingers are crushing the case he's stuffed into his pocket with desperation and hope and such sadness that he can barely breathe. Still, he keeps himself up on his feet and walking and holding that case like it's his only lifeline left, telling himself he'll see its contents soon when he's back in warm territory.
Maybe even a little too soon.
~OA~~
Dean's wasted enough to watch the porno that very night, despite the fact that Sam happens to be sleeping in the bed next to him and he never really gets drunk enough to let his guard come completely down and let daring seep into his bones and refuse to abate. He simply plugs in the earphones to Sam's laptop, only thinking for a moment of what he would say if he found out what he was using his laptop for, before the disk begins to play and he can do nothing else but lean closer to the screen to watch with wide and surprised eyes.
To be honest, he isn't quite in the mood to watch this tonight, not when he's dead-ass tired and in bad need of some toothpaste and a decent pillow, but he chooses to watch it anyway because this is Gabriel's trademark after all, or it was the last time, and he needs to hear what he wants to say so much that he can't bear it.
Mostly it's because he wants to see him again, even though he assumes he just had not even an hour before. It's been god knows how long and Dean is craving the archangel's easy smile and his annoying yet awesomely laughable antics. And this is better a night than any.
The porno turns out to be short and sweet, two words that would rarely come out of the elder Winchester's mouth together. Yet what made it sweet to him, he guesses anyway, was that there was one major clue left for him that didn't take much guessing at all, just like the last one hadn't.
When Gabriel had come on top of the delectable redhead, he had called out Dean's name.
Dean's, not the girl's, which he thinks must have been Darla or Strawberry Daiquiri or something like that, but Dean. That was the one word that escaped his mouth, and the fact that it was captured on tape like this, and that he gave it to Dean like it should be no form of embarrassment or secret for that matter, not to mention the way he said it, nearly screamed it left Dean breathless and scrambling for the touch pad where he could rewind it for a brief second and hear it all over again.
He doesn't know how long he ends up doing this, certainly he doesn't abandon it or tear his eyes away from it even when he came himself to Gabriel's heavenly and unforgiving voice. He just watched it over and over and over, particularly that one moment, so it must've been when Sam stirred but refused to fully wake that he quickly slipped the DVD out of its player and hid it under his pillow, close enough to his heart and to his thoughts so he could drift off more easily.
All he could dare to think about was what it meant, if it was just a final goodbye in the form of an 'I love you' porno, or a possible future that Dean would have to choose to accept or neglect very soon, he just didn't know.
But he hoped beyond all possible hope that it was the latter.
~OA~~
The next morning it's gone, but it doesn't surprise Dean all that much for as soon as he crawls out of bed, throwing a quick glance around the hotel room to discover a note that his brother had gone out for breakfast, he finds another DVD on top of one of the bathroom cabinets that he slips into the computer as earnestly and desperately as he had the last.
This one wasn't a porno, instead Gabriel merely told him to head outside and walk into the room to the left of his own. That he would have a surprise waiting for him, a surprise that he would love.
He stood there pressing replay for a while until he realized that he was wasting precious time, that Sam would be back there soon and Gabriel probably wouldn't wait forever, that eventually he would just deem Dean's absence as lack of interest and take off, never to be seen again just like the last time.
Dean can only shudder when he thinks of this, can only justify taking the DVD out of the laptop and slipping it under the pillow before slamming the door shut behind him and finding himself nearly on top of the door next to his, breathing loudly and so unsure, panicking a great deal more than he thought he would as he wonders if he should knock or try the door or just turn around because this is too good to be true and…
And then his hand finally finds the impossible courage to knock, just a tiny knock which makes him wonder if he can even be heard, or if Gabriel's still there or even had been there to begin with.
When the door opens Dean almost labels it as a dream, as his eyes float up to the vessel that he had seen for so little a time, housing the archangel that he had once and still had such deep feelings for, he thinks his eyes are nothing more but instruments of cruel deception and they're capable of doing nothing further than betraying him. When Gabriel's amber eyes tear into his own, just like they had so distinctly the night before, all he can do is stare right back and hope that if he does happen to drown in them that he will be forever sheltered by Gabriel's love and his embrace and never abandoned again.
In that second he knows, last night wasn't a dream, a different vessel but still Gabriel. A Gabriel he had walked out on because he couldn't accept the truth that now slams him straight in the face.
When he absolutely can't take anymore, the lingering doubt that this is real, the regret that he didn't try to stop the archangel when he sacrificed himself, the love that he had to suppress for so long and never share, always fearing what Gabriel would think of him and then when he was gone, who could he ever say something like that to?
Just when he becomes positive that he will collapse with all of this doubt and pain and longing, Gabriel breaches the remaining distance between them and wraps his arms strongly around his shaking with ever thickening desperation form.
Dean happily breaths in his strong and undeniably real scent, lets the arms continue to encircle him and shelter him from the pain of living without him. The hug is everything Dean has ever needed, the last step that had to be taken for their mutual love to collide and entwine like a fire that will never be put out.
It's all over, everything is over and Gabriel is back, to protect him and love him.
"How did you know?" He breaths out uncertainly, hoping his voice won't crack from the relief breaking through and the tears refusing to hold back another moment after all these months of denial. "How is this all even possible?"
Gabriel's hold on him tightens to beautifully intimate proportions as he sweeps Dean into the room he has extravagantly set up and shuts the door behind the two of them. It all happens so incredibly fast that the human can barely keep track. Not that he wants to anyway, Gabriel will have his undivided attention for as long as humanely possible.
"It was written all over your face, Deano. That's why I knew I had to come back."
Dean wants to hate him for leaving like that, for being gone for so long, longer than was necessary but no words will escape him. All that matters anymore as far as he's concerned is the archangel in the here and now, holding him, lips descending upon his own and Dean can't find any piece of him that could ever label this as a dream again.
The words might not heal the two of them completely in the long run, but Gabriel knows exactly what Dean needs in the present moment.
Gabriel smiles, leads his beloved human over to the lavish king bed with the smoky blue sheets and pushes him gently down on it without taking his arms from around his human for a second. He pushes himself closer with only one little thing in mind: letting Dean know just how much he is loved. How much he had always been loved and would always be.
Yeah, Gabriel would come on St. Patrick's Day to confirm that he wasn't dead after all, and he would bring green beer and pie with him, currently on a table several feet away, as a present and a peace offering. And yes, it would be Gabe, the only person that Dean had ever wanted and could ever want, besides Sammy of course, for as long as he managed to live.
Unlike the video, their kiss wasn't short and sweet… and neither was the love that followed soon after.
Dean wouldn't have had it any other way.
FIN