I don't own Supernatural. If I did Gabe would be back and as sassy as ever.
It had been a week since Dean had left Castiel at the convenience store and aside from one less maladjusted angel in the world, not much had changed. Day after day it was the same routine. Castiel would wake up, roll up his sleeping bag and prepare for the day. (It might be worthy of note that he had finally learned how to properly brush his teeth thanks to a toothpaste commercial he had seen). He was always prompt, opening at 7:30 each morning. From there, it was a blur of microwaving food, refilling the coffee and Slurpee machines, and cleaning up the occasional "accident" in the bathroom.
Despite this humdrum normality, Castiel was content. He had begun to learn how to be more "human", though it had taken some effort. He only just recently learned that many times what he considered to be "friendly" was considered to be "creepy" by the normal human populous. As such, he began to rehearse in his head what he would say to people before he said it. Currently, Castiel stood at the counter rehearsing to himself what he would say to Jake, the Pepsi delivery guy. Castiel had seen him walk into the back to stock the fridges, now he was just waiting to sign the delivery form and hopefully, if all went well, they would have a perfectly normal human conversation. The man strode up to the counter, keeping his head ducked, and handed Castiel a clipboard.
"You're not Jake." Castiel squinted suspiciously. A look that soon shifted into a rather panicked surprise. The man in front of him looked familiar, too familiar.
"Hello to you too, Cassie" the man smirked looking up, his golden eyes glinting michiously.
"But… you're dead… Sam and Dean told me. Lucifer killed you."
"Yeah about that, I'm not quite dead yet." Gabriel wiggled his eyebrows.
"I don't understand that reference."
"Of course you don't," the shorter man sighed, leaning back on the counter.
"How did you survive?"
"That? That was easy. Trick I learned from the real Loki. Bit of smoke, couple of mirrors, half a gallon of cranberry juice, some old school mumbo jumbo. You know..." Gabriel shrugged. "He needed to disappear for a bit so I happily took his place."
"Gabriel."
"Basically, the spell took and put me in the DVD I gave Dean and Sam. Kinda a digital copy kinda thing. Sounded like a good idea at the time, but I forgot how hard it was to change back. It's not like your two yahoos could help so it took longer than I expected."
"Three years?"
"Hey, I'd like to see you be able to do that."
Gabriel strode down the aisle to the Slurpee machine, picking the the "Giant Gulp" size and filling it and walking back to to the front.
"Right, so where's the two chuckle heads anyways? I was under the impression that you three were a set now. Unless…" Gabriel squinted.
"You in the witness protection program too?"
"I guess you could say that," Castiel mumbled.
"Great! A partner in crime." Gabriel slapped Castiel on the back. "So tell me Bro, what'd I miss while I was out?"
Special thanks goes to tales-of-a-tardisgirl for making the gif set that inspired this little fic. You should go check her out.