It started not long before Sam re-entered the world of humanity – metaphorically, as he had been raised from Hell some time before.

~.~.~.~

Just when Dean and Cas had given up hope, Death's cruel rejection to help leaving a bitter taste in their mouths, a slightly short and largely annoying miracle invited itself into their motel room. Gabriel strolled in, complete with Fed Ex uniform and large, brown paper parcel tucked under his arm. He offered no explanation as to his reappearance, or apparent resurrection, but only pulled a shining orb from the box, throwing it from hand to hand – an action that succeeded in making Dean clench his teeth and growl lowly – and declared himself to be "utterly invaluable to the team".

It was without much further ado that he plunged his hand into Sam's chest, shoving his soul back into him, gritting his teeth at the sound of the younger Winchester's pained screams.

Dean, Bobby and Cas all watched as Gabriel held down Sam to the dingy motel bed, one hand holding him firmly against the mattress by his shoulder, the other wrist-deep in his torso. According to Castiel, the act of reinstating someone's soul was... complicated. It was also largely unheard of, and the few reports that did detail the experience did not bode well for either Gabriel or Sam. Dean managed to keep his breakfast down, but mostly he relied on the heavy weight of Bobby's arm around his shoulders to keep him anchored. Cas, despite his usual stoicism, seemed to be having a similar problem; the angel kept lurching forward, as if holding himself back from rushing to his brother's aid, his normally unreadable expression replaced with one of frustration and panic.

Eventually, Sam stopped screaming, and Gabriel pulled his hand free. Cas barely made it to his side before he stumbled, throwing a hand out to steady himself before his little brother caught him under the arms. Dean and Bobby were already at Sam's bed, Sam himself slipping in and out of consciousness. The archangel managed to choke out the words "it's done" and "he needs to rest" before promptly vomiting.

~.~.~.~

"You going to tell me what the hell you're doing back here?" Dean demanded, the usual force drained from his voice as he tried to let Sam sleep. Cas was in Sam's usual seat up front, while Sam himself was sprawled across the back seat of the Impala. If Dean had anything to say about his brother sleeping with his head in Gabriel's lap, he didn't say it out loud, which was probably for all their benefits.

"Nope," Gabriel snapped. "all you need to know is that I am, and now your brother has a damned soul, so you better be quiet about it. He needs to sleep. So do I."

"I didn't know angels needed to sleep?"

Gabriel smirked. "They do when they've been soul deep in a Winchester." Dean made a gagging noise but dropped the subject. They had all agreed that some crappy motel room in East Jesus nowhere was just about the worst place for Sam to recover from the whole ordeal, which is why the entire group of them – Dean, Sam, Cas, Gabriel and Bobby – were all on their way to the latter hunter's house. Gabriel, not yet up to taking the Angel Express had decided to hitch a ride in the Impala, something he was equal parts excited and nervous about.

Dean's insistence that he divulge the reason for both his return and his saving Sammy was making him borderline homicidal. Mostly because Gabriel didn't know why he had been brought back, save for the fact he was supposed to do something "proper" and "meaningful" with his new lease on life – older brothers and their lectures got boring really quickly, he had discovered. As for saving Sam, Gabriel had his reasons and he wasn't about to spill his guts to the least emotionally aware of all human beings, especially regarding said human's baby brother.

The pile of hair in his lap made a grunting noise – speak of the Devil's vessel and thou shalt awaken, he thought happily – and twisted slightly in his sleep. The boy was ridiculously tall, and his legs were bent at a weird angle to fit in the stupidly shaped car that Dean loved more than life, but it didn't seem to bother him. At least, he remained asleep. Gabriel twitched, not as content to stay in one position for so long, but rested his head on the back of the seat and closed his eyes once again in an attempt to get some shut eye himself.

"Only another three hours to Bobby's, Sammy," Dean muttered, not looking back, more to himself than his brother. "three hours then you can sleep properly."

Gabriel almost missed the last bit, but it made him bite down a laugh anyway; "you and your damned guardian angel."

~.~.~.~

As it turned out, Chez Bobby was a museum of books, weapons and beer. They shut Sam in the 'basement room' – it was a panic room, no matter what the irritable older hunter called it – claiming it was the safest room in the entire state. Not that it wasn't.

"Try and resist the urge to angel-mojo a sex cave or anything, a'right, man?" Dean said gruffly before shutting the door on Gabriel and Sam. Sam was still sleeping happily, but the angel had discovered that sleeping was utterly boring and didn't allow for anything interesting, and anything interesting that did happen, he missed, like Cas accidentally making a pass at Dean again.

He might have made a smart ass comment about how he already had one prepared for when Sam awoke, or something to that effect, but truthfully, he was too tired. He might not enjoy sleeping but fixing someone a soul was exhausting work, and it was part of the reason he stayed away from the whole soul business – frankly, he thought Balthazar had bitten off more than he could chew – alongside the fact that people with souls were far more entertaining than those without. Not to mention, soulless people attracted hunters and hunters meant trouble and although it wasn't like they could kill him, getting them to chase their tails got boring after a while. It was much simpler to allow a couple of cheating husbands and perverted old men get their comeuppance, and much less paperwork.

So, he settled for conjuring a laptop and watching a bit of porn, because nothing in all the palaces of the imagination could match what some humans would do with their bodies for fun.

It was a few hours before Dean pushed his face up against the window of the door, seemingly oblivious to the fact Gabriel was watching, with some amusement, the contents of his browser history. He would have shared the information he gained with Cas, if he thought his brother would understand the significance and sweet baby Jesus, who knew a human body could bend that way?

The older Winchester obviously thought that the door was either sound proof or he could whisper effectively, yet neither was true.

"Why is he doing this, Bobby?" Dean's voice floated through the door, his familiar stressed tones making Gabriel wince. "What's in it for him?"

"I know you don't want to hear it, Dean, but have you considered that maybe the silly son of a bitch is just doing it for Sam?"

There was a loaded pause. "For Sam? What does he want with Sam?"

Bobby snorted with laughter. "For a boy who thinks with his dick more than his brain, son, you really are blind when it comes down to it, ain't ya?"

Gabriel hid his smirk behind his hand. He'd secretly harboured a soft spot for Bobby for a long time, especially since his resurrection, when he started keeping an eye on the Winchesters. They were polar opposites of each other; Bobby was no hassle, no bullshit and no sense of humour all year round, but he got his job done and he did it well. He also wasn't afraid to clip Dean round the back of the head when he got mouthy, which he appreciated.

"Oh... dammit Bobby!" Dean snapped. "You think an archangel has a crush on my brother?"

"He can move mountains with his mind, travel through time, wipe out whole towns in the blink of an eye, and he's sat in my basement, googling!" snarled Bobby, in what Gabriel had come to recognise as his shut-the-fuck-up-and-listen voice. "There's a war brewing and he died trying to stop it, you really think he's be in there, farting around on the internet, unless something was keeping him there? And I ain't talking about something nearly as complicated as them enochian sigils, boy."

~.~.~.~

Bobby putting the pieces together and figuring out Gabriel's slightly less than healthy feelings towards Sam didn't make it on to his list of Bad Things, and barely even registered on his list of Potentially Bad Things, but it did make the situation slightly awkward. It might have been that the old man was just sick of angels ignoring their feelings for his kind-of-sons but Gabriel was certain he was trying to stare him into Hell or something similar.

Sometimes Cas would wander into the room, looking at Sam in a slightly confused and sometimes sad way, and wander out. It was the kind of vague and meaningless behaviour Gabe had come to expect from his little brother, who had only just started to explore the treacherous waters of human emotion, and who spent half his time feeling absolutely nothing, and the other half feeling everything, and running around in a fit of bewilderment and sexual frustration whenever Dean walked into the room.

Dean would come in nearly every hour or so, usually to take back his laptop and glare. Sometimes he would talk to Sam as if he could hear him, ignoring Gabriel at the end of the bed, and sometimes he would ignore them both. In the six days between Sam regaining his soul and waking up, Dean managed to do two local jobs, and never failed to recount every detail to his little brother. And complain about how he was being lazy and letting him do all the work.

But, when Bobby came in, he came in solely to look at Sam like he was a problem to solve, and to stare at Gabriel.

Like, properly stare.

Eyes squinting, fists clenching, teeth grinding stare.

On the fourth day, Gabriel gave up.

"What the hell do you want?"

Bobby's eyes – if it was anatomically possible – got thinner, his glare more intense. "If you've got some grand scheme for Sam, then get the hell out of my basement now, you feathered idjit. Archangel or not, I will put you down if you so much as touch a hair on his head."

"Are you kidding me?" Gabriel spat. "I walked into Hell to get his soul out of Lucifer's cage, put myself in danger to give him it back, and I've been sat down here with your shitty internet connection for nearly a week just to keep an eye on him, so don't you start with the 'don't touch a hair on his head' shit with me."

The hunter didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. In fact, he looked smug. Like he had gotten a one up on him. Like he'd won something. Gabriel glared at him, racking his brain to think about what he might have done or allowed or said...

For the love of Dad.

"Really, Bobby?" he muttered, slamming the laptop shut. "You could have just asked."

Bobby laughed all the way out of the panic room.

Two days later, Sam began groaning, twisting in his sleep. Gabriel's first reaction was panic, but then he saw the young hunter's eyes start to flutter, hear the creaking and cracking of his bones and joints as he stretched out properly for the first time in days. The archangel had to mentally shove the twisting sensation in his gut down and out of the way, a similar one to the one he felt when he turned his back on Lucifer and Michael down in the cage, the same one that made him feel like he wanted to puke.

Human emotion was a bitch.

Sam pushed the cover off of himself, trying to lift himself up onto his elbows, but found that his head was too fuzzy from days of deep sleep. His eyes were nearly stuck shut with sleep dust, his mouth felt like he'd been chewing cotton wool and it felt like he hadn't eaten in months. He was only half aware of a weight at the bottom of the bed against his lower legs that he was sure shouldn't have been there.

Gabriel watched him regain his senses, knowing with a heavy heart that little Sam Winchester was in for a rough ride. Dreams of Hell would surely plague him in the nights to come, maybe even during the day. Dean would give him a tough time if he didn't come clean – which he wouldn't – and he'd probably get an earful for the stuff he'd done while his soul was rotting in the pit. Actually, that was pretty unfair and Gabriel kind of wished that he had the energy to wipe Sam's memory of the last year, but memory meddling was tricky and fiddly when he was at full capacity; with a less than full battery? Sam would be lucky to remember his name, never mind the last year.

Blowing out one more breath, Gabriel let a hand ghost over Sam's hair, before he disappeared in a flurry of wings and unspoken words.

He cleared his throat, making Dean, Bobby and Cas all look up in surprise. All three men opened their mouths to speak, but Gabriel beat them to it.

"Baby Winchester has awoken."

"Gabe, wait, we need to talk to-"

The rest of Dean's words faded into darkness as Gabriel landed in a forest in China, as far away as he could stomach, just until the boys were hunting again. Someone needed to watch their stupid backs.

~.~.~.~

Back at Bobby's, Dean and Cas made a bet. Dean explained how a bet worked shortly after.

~.~.~.~

Sam didn't sleep for three days after he awoke. In fact, the first thing he did – after, of course, eating enough food to feed an army – was go for a long run. When he got back, he was dripping with sweat and panting like a horse, but he still felt buzzed.

"Sammy!" Dean greeted him, a wide grin on his face and a beer in his hand, when he came back from his second run. He quickly got another beer out the fridge and handed it to him. "Drink something before you pass out."

"I feel great, Dean, I mean it," he shrugged, taking a swig. "A little, you know, awake, but after six days of sleeping, what else can you expect?"

Dean gave a half smile, before taking a sip of his own beer, which was the first tip. Dean wasn't exactly talkative, but he liked to throw his two cents in. Usually, it was a warning, about trying to stay a little safer or not being stupid, or teasing, or pretty much anything, but half answers and silence meant he was hiding something. You don't live in someone's pocket without learning a few of their tells.

What was bugging Sam was he didn't know what he could be hiding. He felt fine. Like, actually healthy. Sleeping in a car when you're pushing 7ft doesn't exactly make for a brilliant sleeping schedule, and neither does hunting, and Sam felt like he was more awake than he had been in years. He was a little too awake, but it would fade with time. He was hungrier, too, but Bobby promised a proper meal that night, so that would be fine as well. All in all, unless a second apocalypse had happened while he was out of it, there seemed to be very little to get his brother down.

"Where's Cas?" Sam asked.

Dean looked up. There was no concern or panic on his face. He didn't swallow heavily or grip the edge of the table in a nervous habit he'd picked up off their dad. He looked fine. "Angel thing. Meeting or something." That meant Cas was fine. Bobby was fine, Cas was fine, he was fine.

What the hell was bothering his brother?

~.~.~.~

A vampire nest shouldn't have been a problem, but it was a big nest. Bigger than usual, and Dean was distracted, looking out for him. It was the first job Sam had worked since he'd woken up. It had taken two weeks – he'd never felt boredom like it – to convince Dean he was up to hunting before he was allowed to handle a gun. It was like being twelve again.

"Sam, behind you!" Dean roared, wrestling with his own vamp. They'd managed to clear most of the nest, and there was just a few stranglers left, fighting to get out. The security of having the cure back at Bobby's, already made, was a nice back-up plan to have, and as far as jobs went, it was fairly straight forward. That was, until Sam found himself trapped between a wall and two angry vampires, teeth bared, snarling at his throat.

The all too familiar sound of his knife falling to the ground, metal hitting concrete with a loud clang, rang in his ears and suddenly he was praying that the cure was 100% effective because Dean was fighting and he was trapped and that was a lot of very sharp teen very close to some major arteries.

Bleeding out on the floor of an abandoned warehouse seemed a bit anticlimactic after being worn by the Devil and jumping into Hell and all that. Actually, Sam thought he would be more disappointed than scared if he found himself killed by a low level vampire somewhere in Minnesota. And Minnesota, of all places to die.

"Close your eyes!"

He didn't see the other figure, or even have time to identify the voice, but he'd spent enough time running with angels to prepare himself when he heard the words. He shut his eyes firmly, throwing an arm that one of the vampires dropped over his eyes, wincing as even then, the light burned into his sight. Dean was yelling and he prayed to someone up there that his brother had managed to close his eyes in time. When the light faded, his eyes snapped open to find Dean shaking his head as if to clear his vision, but his eyes were still there, perfectly intact.

"Sam, you okay?" came a voice. Little orbs of light still floated in his line of sight, but he could make out two, no, three, vampires with fried heads on the floor, and Gabriel in front of him. "C'mon, Sam, talk to me."

"Gabriel... yeah, I'm good-" There was the distinct sound of wings and suddenly, Dean and Sam were alone in the room again.

Dean huffed. "I'm fine as well, since you didn't ask, you over-dramatic ass hole!" When Sam gave him a questioning look, Dean just shook his head. "Damned angels, man. Can't do anything with them."

~.~.~.~

Sam's skin was melting. His bones were alight. The air smelled like sulphur and rotting meat and dead bodies. Another knife. Someone was carving his body up into pieces and there was nothing he could do about it. The flames were all around him, hot and unrelenting as they turned him to ash and charcoal.

"Sam!"

His mouth was filled with blood – his blood – and his throat was raw. Smoke in his lungs, in his veins, in his eyes.

"Sam, open your eyes!"

Lucifer was laughing and Michael was laughing and they were peeling away his skin until he passed out from the pain, and then they would wake him up and start over and it hurt so damned much.

"Wake up!"

A sharp pain on his cheek made him jolt awake, drenched in his own sweat, chest heaving. His hands ghosted over his entire body, as if checking to make sure it was all intact, and while there was a significant amount of scarring and bruises and cuts and probably poorly set fractures, he seemed to be in no worse shape than he was when he went to sleep.

"Gabriel?"

The archangel was looking at him, amber eyes alert and focused, one hand still held loosely at the side of Sam's face. Under any other circumstances, waking up to find someone sat on the edge of his bed with a doughnut in one hand and the other cupping his jaw might have unnerved Sam, but Gabriel seemed to have as much sense of personal space as Cas, which translated into not much. Even odder, Gabriel seemed to be hanging around as much as his younger brother, although Cas didn't have the same inclination to appear only in times of great need and vanish off into nothingness without so much as a by your leave.

"Hey, what time is it?" Sam scrubbed his face with his hands, feeling the loss of Gabriel's touch a little more acutely than he would admit out loud.

"Just gone four," he said blankly, his eyes not dropping. "Dean's gone out to get a soda, I believe."

Sam paused. "Was it bad?"

They'd been here before. Nightmares and visions of his time in the cage still haunted Sam almost nightly. Dean must have had some idea, but he never pushed further than a gruff "you all right, man?" and a scowl. The nights where he began thrashing in his bed, or yelling in his sleep, he nearly always awoke with Gabriel standing over him.

The archangel swallowed, setting his doughnut down on his lap, and picking up Sam's hands to hold in front of his face. His nails were red with blood, his forearms littered with scratches.

"Oh."

Gabriel grimaced, before clicking his fingers, and opening the first aid box that had mysteriously appeared on the bed next to him.

"You don't need to-" Sam started but was cut off when a doughnut was shoved in his mouth. He could see Gabriel trying not to laugh, but it was clear that he was fighting a losing battle. Sam shrugged, taking a bite.

Slowly, Gabriel began going through the steps of cleaning and dressed a wound. First, he dabbed the cuts with antiseptic wipes, glancing up when Sam winced and hissed as his arms started to sting. Slowly and carefully, with a concentration he didn't think the angel was capable of, he wrapped both arms in bandages, and tucked the ends in neatly. It was almost comical to watch him, obviously unpractised in the art of bandaging wounds, even those that would have made it without bandages.

"Why didn't you just click your fingers and do it that way?" Sam asked, taking another bite of Gabriel's doughnut.

He paused. "More efficient that way."

Sam laughed. "You know, you're a worse liar than Dean, and that's saying something."

Gabriel grinned, taking what was left of his doughnut back with a laugh before vanishing again.

~.~.~.~

Gabriel turned up a few more times before Dean got pissy with him dropping in and out like "an indecisive girlfriend". After that, it wasn't unusual to find him stretched out across the back seat of the Impala with his feet in Cas' lap; apparently, the latter angel had finally gotten the message about how Dean felt about being teleported.

~.~.~.~

Gabriel showed up a few more times at Bobby's before the older hunter got annoyed and forced him into the annual family photo. Bobby stood in the middle, Sam behind him, beaming, Dean on a chair in front of him. Gabriel pulled bunny ears behind Dean's head and even Cas was laughing.

~.~.~.~

Gabriel made not-so-subtle innuendos around Dean and Cas before the latter got too curious and asked Dean what they meant. The following row would be referred to as "The Great Lover's Quarrel of 2010" for many months to come. Dean didn't find it amusing, Gabriel would never stop.

~.~.~.~

The four boys were driving to Virginia for a big job when Dean and Cas had their first kiss. Neither Sam or Gabriel were sure who initiated it but Sam won $20 because it happened before they hit the Virginian border. Sam was pretty sure Gabriel could have used his freaky angel powers to win that bet, and he was fairly sure he had let him win.

~.~.~.~

"Gabe, stop kicking my chair or I'll start kicking you." Sam snapped.

"Gabe, stop kicking Baby or I'll kick you into next week." Dean added without looking. Or, he might have looked, but it was far more likely that he was using the rear-view mirror to check on Cas, who was fast asleep in the back seat. Cas' new found love for sleeping both disturbed and amused his companions. Apparently, angels didn't need sleep, but they enjoyed it. Or, Cas did. As far as angels go, Cas was a bit of an outlier anyway.

"I'm bored, can't I just fly?" Gabriel whined.

Dean growled. "Feel free, but if you so much as brush a feather on my car-" There was a horrible swooping sensation, and the Impala landed on the roadside somewhere, presumably, in a different state. "Dammit, Gabriel! Don't you think someone's going to notice a car that just vanishes off the road in the middle of the day?"

Cas, apparently able to sleep through a fire storm, gave a stuttered breath, before falling back into an easy sleep. Sometimes, Sam envied his ability to literally fall asleep anywhere, even standing up, but he was more concerned with the argument brewing between their brothers.

Dean opened his mouth to retaliate but Sam interrupted him. "I think the fact that 90% of the stock of all national Cadbury's factories is going missing is more likely to make headlines. Where the hell do you get it all?" Gabriel shrugged, but threw a bar at him, making Dean scowl.

"Where are we?"

"Just outside of Chico, California, just where we were heading," he drawled, seemingly oblivious to the foul glares he was receiving from Dean. "and if memory serves me correctly, there is a little motel, not even ten miles down the road."

Sure enough, a motel – albeit, one straight out of a Quentin Tarantino movie – sat nestled in a hole in the woodland not even an hour from where Gabriel landed them. The second Dean pulled the car over, Cas started watching him in a way that Sam quickly came to learn meant he was undressing Dean with his eyes and Sam really didn't need to see it.

"She's looking a little low on gas, I'm going to fill her up, if you get us all signed in?" Sam suggested, praying Dean wouldn't press his reasons. Luckily, his older brother just nodded, already transfixed by the angel that looked like he was trying to eyefuck him into the bonnet. Gabriel was already MIA and Sam didn't feel like waiting on ceremony for a guy who could fly half way around the world in the blink of an eye, so he moved into the driver's seat and peeled out of the parking lot before Dean and Cas started dry humping against the side of the Impala.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Gabe!" Sam snapped, almost throwing the cap to the gas tank across the lot. He'd just finished filling up the admittedly half full tank when the archangel decided to appear, leaning up against the side of the car, looking solemn.

"What's up with you?"

Gabriel shivered. "Should have knocked."

"Huh?"

"On the motel room. I should have knocked. I've just seen parts of my brother's vessel that-"

"Oh, man," Sam winced. "I don't need that image. We should never have encouraged them."

"Tell me about it."

Gabriel had been a near permanent fixture in their lives for nearly a year. It had taken maybe two months for him to join them in earnest, but for nearly the past twelve months, he had happily camped out in the back of the car, teased Dean, poked fun at Cas, even joked with Bobby about the state of the world. All in all, it seemed like he fit in almost perfectly. What bothered Sam more than anything, but seemingly was unnoticed by any of the other men, was his reasons. Gabriel was an archangel, one of the most powerful creatures on the planet, and he seemed perfectly content to eat sweets in the back of some old Chevvy, helping out on demon hunts and poking fun at his awkward brother.

Dean never once questioned his motives. Not even Bobby, who was notoriously paranoid and cautious seemed curious as to why an angel of the Lord – Cas was different, everyone knew why Cas had stuck around – was happy to just tail them around. Cas himself sometimes watched Gabriel with a hint of confusion, but that might have just been his face.

"Can I ask you a question?" Sam blurted out. Gabriel glanced up, an eyebrow raised.

"Technically, you just did," he pointed out.

"I meant a personal question,"

Gabriel tilted his head as if it were a concept he had never heard before. "I guess?"

"Why are you, you know, here?"

He gave his best shit eating grin, pulling another lolly out of his pocket. "I'm pretty sure you just asked me not to tell you why I'm here."

"Not here, I mean, why are you travelling with us?" Sam pressed. "Why would you spend your time with us when there is about a thousand other things I know you'd rather be doing? I mean, it can't be duty. You died for us, you were literally killed so we could get away. And, you hate driving. You can't stand being in the car because it's too small and too hot and you hate not being able to move. Gabriel, you're an archangel, like a full-on, actual angel of the Lord so I know it can't mean that much to you, killing a couple of demons. Just... what the hell are you still doing here?"

Gabriel paused for a moment, as if shell-shocked by Sam's outburst. His mouth opened and closed, but he quickly composed himself. "Well, firstly, you have next to no idea what I enjoy doing in my down time, Sammy-boy, so don't even go there. Secondly, you're right, it isn't duty. But I did get brought back to life almost instantly, so the whole dying thing wasn't actually that bad."

Sam opened his mouth to tell Gabriel not to call him that almost on instinct but the angel interrupted him.

"And actually, the car isn't too bad. I mean, driving is slow and dangerous and kinda boring, but it beats walking," he shrugged, pushing off the car and walking slowly towards Sam. "and yeah, the space is an issue, but contrary to your opinion, Dean's taste in music is above average so that's a plus, and I don't feel heat all that much, so I can take that. The not moving, yeah, that's a bitch but I can adjust."

"Gabriel..."

"Furthermore, yes, I know I am an archangel, I've been one for a quite a while."

Sam was at a loss for words. Not because of the verbal assault that had just hit him square in the face, but because of how pissed off Gabriel looked. Like he was actually insulted that Sam had asked, as if he was annoyed he needed to justify his actions, which, in hindsight, was probably the reason.

"I didn't mean to insult you," Sam muttered, incredibly conscious of how close they were; not more than a foot apart.

Gabriel looked like he'd been slapped in the face. "You have no idea, do you?"

He was gone before Sam could answer.

~.~.~.~

Since Dean and Cas had gotten over their respective social issues and jumped each other, the guys had taken to getting two rooms. For one, it gave Sam enough reasonable doubt to sleep at night – in that, he could doubt that his brother was naked, on top of an angel less than three feet away – and secondly, it meant that both brothers had a certain privacy that they hadn't had in years. It worked out well for everyone; Dean and Cas did what they did, Sam got to watch reruns of Friends on his laptop.

When Sam awoke that night, the sky was pitch black and clearer than it had been in weeks, with not a single star in sight. It wasn't entirely unusual for him to wake up to find Gabriel lying next to him, but it was weird for it to happen after a fight, if that's what they could even call it. It was more a miscommunication, not that Sam knew what was being communicated.

"What?" he muttered roughly into his pillow.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said simply.

Sam stifled a yawn. "Whatever, man, just don't steal all the covers, a'right?"

"Sam, I'm serious," Gabriel snapped, his voice more muted than it was usually. "I really am sorry. I just-"

"Gabe," Sam chuckled lightly, still hazy from sleep. "it's fine, whatever it is you think you've done wrong, I forgive you."

"Really?"

His voice was so small, so innocent in the darkness, such a stark contrast to his usual flamboyancy and the extremes that he would never admit made him grin like an idiot. Sam opened his eyes to look at him, lying on his side, staring into space, unseeingly, so... not-Gabriel-like.

"I haven't kicked you out of bed, have I?"

His eyes flickered upwards to meet Sam's, and he gave a small smile. "What if I told you I accidentally wiped Las Vegas off the map?"

Sam shrugged. "A lot of CO2 emissions. You'd have done the world a favour."

"Killed the president?"

"I'll get over it."

"Started the apocalypse?"

He snorted. "Unoriginal. I expect more."

Gabriel grinned, a proper grin that could light up a room and made him seem a little more like himself again, but it faded quickly. "What if I told you I'd fallen in love with someone?"

Sam focussed on Gabriel properly, their friendly back and forth having woken him fully. He looked smaller than usual, but maybe that was the dark playing tricks. His hair was a little messier than usual, his clothes a little more worn looking, but he was still the same Gabriel. Only, he was looking Sam dead in the eye with not a joking smile in sight and that was more worrying than any demonic omen he'd ever come across.

"I'd ask why you needed to apologise for that." Sam said slowly, easing himself up onto one elbow. Gabriel watched him carefully, as if he was about to start yelling and throwing things and the whole thing made Sam very nervous. "What is wrong with you? Why are you being all... not you?"

"Are you being serious?" Gabriel had managed to bypass upset, irritated, annoyed and frustrated from his previous position at slightly uneasy, and had gone straight into really fucking pissed. He was glaring up at Sam like he'd just suggested he were a mere mortal – or a rat – with sheer incredulity all over his face.

"What?" Sam stuttered. "What do you-"Oh. "Wait, do you mean-"Oh.

"Oh," he settled on, although he was likely to look back on that as a decidedly inadequate answer.

"Yeah," Gabriel laughed quietly. "'oh' about sums it up."

Sam slowly rested his head back onto the pillow, ignoring the terrifying mixture of emotions bubbling up in his chest and praying archangels couldn't read minds. The entire situation was somewhat surreal, but he had never been so conscious of the fact he wasn't wearing a top to bed in all his life.

"I walked into Hell to get your soul, risked every inch of my grace to give it back to you," Gabriel said softly, his eyes cast downwards. "watched over you as you slept, watched over you when you started hunting again. I've cast out nightmares from your head, kept you company, kept your family safe. Hell, I've even endured months of Bobby glaring at me like I'm plotting your death-"

The rest of Gabriel's words were lost to both of them as Sam leaned forward, stopping for only a fraction of a second before pressing his lips to Gabriel's. Thousands of years of wisdom and experience drained out of the angel in a matter of seconds, brought to his knees by the simplest of actions. Both Sam and Gabriel simply stayed there for a few moments, seemingly lost in their own respective worlds, before Sam pulled away to rest his forehead against the archangel's.

Gabriel managed to breath out "oh".

"Yeah," Sam smiled lazily. "I guess 'oh' does sum it up."

~.~.~.~

Outside their room, Dean was looking very smug.

"You owe me $20," he grinned triumphantly. "I told you, less than a year. I mean, they cut it close, two weeks ain't very long but I still won."

Cas looked bemused, still trying to understand why arguing seemed to bring people closer to together. He had been informed by Dean that they frequently participated in 'make-up sex', although he couldn't quite tell the difference, but that might have had more to do with the fact that he found it difficult to stay angry at Dean.

"You are aware I do not carry human currency," Cas said finally, both amused and confused by Dean's enthusiasm for 'betting'.

The taller man threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer to him. "I'm sure you can think of some way to repay me," he muttered, pressing his lips against Castiel's temple. The angel wasn't sure why such a simple statement made his knees feel decidedly less steady, but he happily allowed Dean to drag him into their own room, leaving Sam and Gabriel to argue about who was stealing the covers.