Title: Follow You Down
Author: OpheliacAngel
Pairing: Dean/Gabriel
Genres: Romance/Friendship/Horror
Rating: Teen
Summary: Gabriel's going off to summer school and all Dean wants to do is follow him.
A/N: Written for SPN Rare OTP Fic-a-Month Challenge for September's prompt 'school.' So this started cute and then kinda morphed into horror, guess it's the month I'm writing it in. Sorry it's late.
Series: Part 1 of Special Things - So this is kinda reversed in that this is Part 1, even though it's for September's prompt, while Part 2 is for August's prompt. Definitely wasn't intentional.
Turning twenty-one wouldn't be much of a milestone for Dean if he wasn't going to leave home and follow a boy he practically grew up with but then again didn't really grow up with. Dean picked up a bottle long before America said it was legal to, and he's tried drugs of every size, shape and flavor that had nothing to do with taste and cigarettes that left a sour taste in his mouth and a hollow feeling in his gut.
Gabriel's family always traveled around like Dean's did. Except Gabriel's family were religious nuts exploring the country in their over-sized motor-home and Dean's were hunters of three that packed into a 67 Impala whenever someone died from strange circumstances and they needed to clean it up, and neither one much cared about the other. Still, sometimes Dean and Gabriel made plans to meet up, if they were a state or two away and Dean could get away from John, think up some good excuse, excuses which sometimes Gabriel would give him. Gabriel never asked about what he did, which made their relationship that wasn't even really a relationship work out so well.
At least that's what Dean believed.
They first met when they were eleven and have managed to meet up about a dozen more times after that. It's not much of a friendship, being long-distance, 'I'll see ya when I see ya.' It was never destined to work but somehow Dean and Gabriel always managed to find one another again, like two bad pennies or something.
The last time they meet Gabriel doesn't tell Dean about his plans but Dean finds out about them anyway. Since Gabriel didn't share anything particularly important, Dean figures he won't need to ask for permission. Especially since he can make his own goddamn decisions and if Gabriel's not happy then he should just end this now.
The fact of the matter is: Gabriel's going off to summer school and all Dean wants to do is follow him.
So he does.
Gabriel's all hard stare and fists clenched to refrain from punching Dean and sulking on the couch he's dragged outside, under the awning of his parents motor-home, when Dean shows up after the first day of Gabriel's so called summer school.
Dean doesn't get it but he doesn't ask either. Gabriel's always been too smart for his own good, too smart for Dean, just like Sammy, so why the hell he's in summer school it just doesn't make a lick of sense. But he doesn't ask because he senses Gabriel's not in the mood for twenty questions, and he doesn't try to convince Gabriel to let him stay either.
He's already been gone for four days without checking in with his dad. John will be pissed, Dean can promise you that, so no trudging back home now is going to make things any better than if he rides the summer out, maybe letting his dad cool down some.
Gabriel's pissed too though. After a few minutes he puts that big smirk on his face to try to hide it, to try to ignore how stupid Dean is, how stupid Dean feels, but Dean would feel it even if Gabriel was up and hugging him right now.
Dean's never been much for watching and waiting, not even when it comes to Gabriel's often unpredictable, even explosive temper. Like Dean said earlier, if Gabriel doesn't like it then he should just say something, or not say anything at all and just leave, or make Dean leave, or tell Dean that he doesn't want any of this anymore, that he doesn't know what he was thinking letting Dean into his life like this, even though the decision was made ages ago.
"What does a guy gotta do around here to get a beer, Gabe?"
Gabriel doesn't complain about the nickname this time; Dean refuses to believe that isn't a good sign.
He's slept next to Gabriel before, though it's always been outside, in the grass and under the stars. Lying next to Gabriel he felt both big and small, big and important and worth something and small enough too so that the world didn't need to fall on his shoulders. Gabriel always had a way of turning Dean's brain off, making him forget about hunting and even people and the world out there that needed him but that he didn't need.
Gabriel could be big and brash and a no it all, but he was reassuring too. Like he knew all about the world.
Like he knew all about Dean.
It didn't even matter that they had never once spent more than five nights together. That they had had sex so many times in the dark but never in a bed or under a roof, always without words, Dean always forgetting what had happened by the next day, only knowing that it had been good and warm and small enough to fit between the two of them.
So to say it wasn't a change that Gabriel let him inside the only home he had ever known would be a lie.
They roll around as much as they can on the twin bed, despite that Gabriel already has a paper due tomorrow that he hasn't put the finishing touches on yet. After they both come and as Dean lays there, at least he can remember it this time, Gabriel sliding into him so easily but with so much power, eating away all the loneliness inside Dean until he feels more hollow than relieved.
He sleeps uneasily for a while. There are shadows on the walls that he can't place, noises outside he's never heard before, thunder rumbling in the distance like a prayer of Dean's that's been answered. It takes him a long time until he realizes that Gabriel isn't there. That's when he sits up, chest still thumping in his hollowed out chest, the echo of Gabriel's moans reverberating around the room that could be mistaken as happening right now, like a trick.
It's like something straight out of a cheesy horror film, which is kinda like Dean's life, but there's a flash of lightning and Dean looks up, despite the darkness claiming the room again. There's a dark shadow on the wall of wings, stretched wide and looming, so big and so black and intent to swallow him whole. There are feathers like sharp, jagged teeth in case he should fight, when he fights. Dean's mouth opens but there are no words, there will never be because he's never seen anything like this, not in all his years of hunting.
There's another flash of lightning and something tells Dean that it was intentional, that all of this is, punishment for Dean being pigheaded and threatening to leave earlier, like he always does when Gabriel ignores him or pisses him off. He knows that it isn't all about school, that none of it is really, that Gabriel uses it as an excuse for something… else. That Dean's already twenty-one years old but he feels so much older, standing in the shadow of that pair of things that looks like wings, that can't be wings. That Dean knows are wings.
He knows that he's been in over his head for a long time now; ignoring that won't pale Dean's ignorance.
The wings flex and then curl, as if waking up. Dean stares at the wall in fixed fascination as he sees the wings coming closer, wrapping him up in their embrace. If he keeps looking hard enough it looks like they're crushing him. Leaving Dad was a bad idea, saying sayonara to the hunting life was a terrible fucking idea.
There's a flash of gold as sharp as the lightning somewhere; Dean can't remember where. And if he keeps looking at the wall there he is, still being crushed, dying in a repeated cycle. There are the brief flashes and the shadows and the I'm so in over my head, in over my head, over my head, over my….
"Gabriel, Dean. My name's Gabriel." As if Dean forgot, as if Dean's hearing it for the first time. Maybe he is.
Dean can't feel himself splitting, suffocating, feels weightless and far above himself and all he thought he was. But not above in a good way, more like choking on the air and drowning in it.
Summer school just started barely a week ago.
Funny, but it feels like Dean's life started then too.
He drops like a stone and the gold follows him down, and where Gabriel will lead him no one knows yet and no one cares.
FIN