Characters not mine.

(Originally written for an "outsider PoV" challenge on comment_fic. Although it wound up being more about Gabriel.)

He was lying low for a little while, for the very sensible reason that even if Lucy was locked back in his cage, his own brother had stabbed him. Lucifer thought he had killed him, and it was only the paranoid planning of the pagan god that had saved his ass. It was not something he could just shake off as though nothing important had happened. He didn't want to come to the attention of any of his brothers just yet, especially not one that might let Raphael know he was still kicking. He had no way of knowing what Raphael might do.

And Castiel appeared to have been promoted in the field, but he had still answered to Raphael somewhere on the chain of command once, and probably dealt with the bastard regularly as it was.

Gabriel was nowhere near ready to show himself to Castiel again.

Still, he couldn't help but watch from a distance from time to time, because Castiel had succeeded in making himself stunningly interesting all of a sudden, and all on account of the stupid human that was usually with him.

Because Gabriel was the one who had been here for a millennium. He was the one who had learned to play human emotions like a harp. He had made a place for himself in the world by figuring out what they wanted and using it against them, and on predicting human behavior in the midst of the unpredictable things he sprung on them in the name of karma. He felt like he knew the human brain inside and out, although occasionally one did manage to catch him by surprise still.

But Castiel, who had only just come down, had managed to figure out one of the few emotions that Gabriel couldn't readily predict - love. And he'd only managed to figure it out because he'd actually fallen for a human.

Still, Gabriel was kind of impressed all the same. Not with the protective zeal he was certain would be directed his way were he to actually appear, but with the ease at which the other angel seemed to take things, when both he and Dean Winchester finally managed to get their heads out of their collective asses. With the way that kind of attachment didn't seem to scare him at all, despite the power it gave another to hurt.

Something like that would certainly scare the living hell out of Gabriel.

It was Sam who noticed him first, who snuck up on him in the back of some crummy bar in Boston. "So what are you planning?" Sam demanded, six-and-a-half feet of protective little brother suddenly looming over Gabriel.

Gabriel was hardly intimidated. "With them? Nothing. You already hunted me down all over the country and threatened me if I didn't fix this, and I try not to do the same thing twice. How else do you think I stay interested in anything?"

Sam snorted and continued to loom. "Then why are you here?"

"Idle curiosity as to how my baby brother is doing these days."

There was a pause. Gabriel didn't bother turning around, but he could almost see Sam trying and failing to come up with a response to that. Eventually, the human settled for, "You're . . . you're not dead."

"Obviously."

"Why didn't you. . . ?"

"I'm not exactly advertising my presence to one of Heaven's big wigs right now. They might want me back."

"Not even to tell him you're still alive?"

Gabriel didn't answer. Sam loomed behind him for a little while, also in silence. Things were getting rather awkward.

"So what are you doing stalking them?" Sam asked finally.

"I already told you."

"Not really."

Gabriel rolled his eyes and glanced over at the pair Sam had accused him of stalking. They weren't talking much, either, although they were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and Dean's examination of the traffic out the window was punctuated by long glances at each other. "So," he said, "Dean-o and my baby brother - "

" - are happy for once," Sam growled. "And . . . and someone help me, Gabriel, if you fuck with that - "

"Easy." The archangel shook his head. "I'm just trying to figure out how."

"They are incredibly dense," Sam answered. "It only took what, two years and an Apocalypse to get them together?"

"In other words, you don't know either."

Sam chuckled. "Yeah. Something like that."