Hella deposited the bags she had brought with her, created herself a pair of headphones out of thin air and started listening to music. Gabriel scowled at her.
"And you can leave the attitude where you dumped your bags… in the middle of the floor!" Gabriel called after her as she disappeared into the bathroom. He sighed. He was an archangel of the lord. He was cool. Hell, he practically invented cool. And he was not about to lose it because his angsty adolescent daughter was throwing a hissy fit.
So he told himself as he stomped over to the bathroom and hammered on the door.
"Hella? Hel, come out, I want to talk to you."
"Well, I don't want to talk to you."
Gabriel sighed again, just for something to do. He tried a slightly less aggressive tone.
"Hella, if you're mad at me, I need you to talk to me about it."
Silence.
"Is this about me and Sam?"
"No, this is about you being totally embarrassing…" The door opened a crack and Hella stuck her head through, before screaming, "While I'm trying to have a shower!" Then, the door was closed and locked, and the sounds of running water covered up Hella's angry stomping.
Gabriel rolled his eyes, collapsed onto the bed and started counting to ten. He really wasn't sure he could cope with another couple of centuries of her adolescence. He flipped out his phone (or, rather, the phone Sam had bought him to discourage random psychic communication) and sent the younger Winchester a text.
"Get here quick, she'll talk to you. Hope this isn't something inappropriate… does it count as oedipal if it's your dad's bo…"
The cursor stared at him, asking exactly what word he was about to write. Humans did make love so tricky for themselves, he thought, as he changed tack.
"your dad's boink-buddy?"
Gabriel smirked as he sent the text, knowing Sam would blush adorably and dwell on making some kind of response until they got here. He let himself collapse on the bed, and closed his eyes. God, being a parent was exhausting. He thought he'd done the tiring bit already; he'd gotten four of them walking, talking and toilet-trained, and even taught two of them how to transform into animals, which was pretty damn impressive, he'd thought. Maybe he hadn't left on the greatest terms, but one of them had cared enough to bring him back from the dead, so he must have done something right.
People wonder why the pagan gods are so messed up, but really? If you aged at a rate of one human year for anywhere between fifty and a hundred orbits around the sun, that meant you could be in adolescence for most of your life, and really, that would mess with anyone. Gabriel was just glad angels aged differently.
Shit, he thought, maybe that's something to do with Hella's temperament. Angel plus Frost Giant equals two very different aging patterns; that could explain a lot. He'd not seen Fenrir or Jörmungandr go through it, as they'd already been cast out. And Hella had already displayed something of a similarity to her mother... that, if he was honest, was what worried him the most.
(-*-)
Sam stared at his phone for a moment, before losing it and putting it back in his pocket, Dean glanced away from the road to raise an eyebrow at him.
"Text from your boyfriend?"
"Shut up."
"I can tell it's from your boyfriend. You know how I can tell?"
"Shut up."
"I can tell, because you blush like a fat schoolgirl who just had her art teacher tell her he always had a thing for smart girls."
"Jerk."
"Bitch."
Sam grudgingly shared his brother's smirk. He didn't really mind Dean's teasing; it was kind of his way of letting Sam know he approved of the relationship, or at the very least accepted it. It was good, to finally have something they could talk about that wasn't who'd broken the world this time around, or who'd just sentenced themselves to death. This was possibly the closest to normal their lives could ever be, Sam thought, even if it involved teaching a recently humanised angel how to survive and one of them being romantically involved with an archangel turned trickster. Well, perhaps "romantically involved" was a stretch, Sam amended, risking one more glance at the text from Gabriel, and involuntarily blushing again at the sight of the word "boink-buddy".
From his sprawled position across the back seat, Castiel groaned and whimpered in his sleep. Dean glanced in the rear view, and reached around the back of his seat to hit the x-angel's knee.
"Cas? Cas! It's just a dream, buddy. Wake up."
Castiel blinked awake, cast worried glances around the car, and then caught Dean's eye in the rear view.
"I was dreaming again." He said, still half asleep. Dean nodded.
"Yeah. They can't hurt you, Cas, they're not real."
"Yes." Castiel nodded, already drifting back to sleep. "Not real… thank you." And with that, he was gone again. Sam noted the shadow of worry crossing Dean's face, and supposed he had a right.
"He's not been sleeping well since… since he got back." Dean said, focusing a little too intently on the road. Sam wanted to ask how Dean knew that, but he supposed it was obvious. Castiel had followed Dean pretty much everywhere since he had "got back", as then now euphemistically referred to his being torn from both his grace and the haze of souls he had forced into himself. Even Sam, who'd probably spent the least time with him, could tell that the ex-angel had yet to adjust to the idea of four to six hours sleep a night. He looked haggard, his skin even paler than usual, with large dark bags under his eyes and a slightly dead, exhausted slump to his shoulders.
True to form, Sam was a little more worried about the effect Castiel's sleeplessness was having on his brother. Yeah, he felt bad about it, but Dean wasn't going to take care of himself. Not since he'd apparently vowed to spend his waking moments with Castiel as first priority.
"Dude, if you want to get some sleep yourself…"
"No way; we're almost there." Dean smiled, but it was a weak one. "I'll sleep on a bed or not at all."
"If you're sure." Sam shrugged, knowing Dean wouldn't be convinced otherwise.
(-*-)
Gabriel was loath to admit he fell asleep, because falling asleep in the middle of the day was something humans did, and old ones at that, but the next he knew, he was waking up with a weight tucked under his arm, lying next to him on the bed. He looked down to see Hella curled into him, her arms wrapped around his torso.
"Hey there, kiddo." He pushed himself up, slightly, pulling her into a more reciprocal hug. She looked devastatingly sad, and the red puffiness under her eyes said that she might have been crying. Alarm bells rang instantly in Gabriel's head.
"Hey! What's up? What's wrong?"
"Nothing." She sniffed into his shoulder. "I… I might have broken the bathroom mirror, and then I was so shook up I couldn't fix it."
"You broke it?" Gabriel found himself chuckling with relief. "Oh dear, we're going to have to do something about this." He stood, gripping her hand and walked her over to the bathroom, where shard of glass still littered the floor. He snapped his fingers, and the mirror reformed as good as new (motel rust and all). Then, he walked her over to the table, sat her down, and conjured a frankly huge ice cream sundae and two spoons.
"Get eating. I'm not sharing this with Dean."
Hella laughed as she picked up one spoon and started in on the gigantic pile of ice cream and syrup. Gabriel watched her as they ate quietly for a while, gauging her relaxation as the ice cream did it's work. Eventually, he deemed it safe to speak.
"So how did the mirror get broken?"
"I kind of… punched it." She looked down sheepishly, but didn't stop eating.
"You punched it?"
"And I threw some stuff at it too."
"Well… that explains why you were too worked up to fix it. Why'd you punch it?"
"Because." She shrugged, tailing off into a spoonful of sundae. Gabriel raised an eyebrow at her, but said no more. After a while, she looked at him, with the kind of hopeful pleading that he instantaneously loved and dreaded.
"Are my legs ugly?"
Gabriel nearly choked on his sundae.
"Say again?"
"I mean, look at them." She raised her leg so that her bare, blackened foot was visible to him. "That's not the right colour for skin to be. Maybe if I was like that all over… all grey-black and frostbitten…"
"You're not ugly." Gabriel shook his head, reaching across the table to grab her hand. "You're one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen on this Earth. Or in any of the worlds hereafter."
She smiled for a moment, before snatching her hand way and scooping more ice cream into her mouth.
"Yeah, well, you have to say that. You're my dad; you don't count."
"I don't count? Oh, lovely. That's a wonderful thing to hear."
She stuck her tongue out at him, coated honey yellow by the ice cream. He laughed, and smiled at her, coaxing out a grudging response.
"Well, I'd say you're beautiful. And you're even prettier when you smile."
It was then that Dean and Castiel chose to walk into the room, and Gabriel shot a conspiratorial wink at Hella, the sundae quietly disappearing.
"Finally!" Gabriel leant back in his chair, glaring at them. "What did you do, pull over to have some fun off road?"
"Bite me, feathers." Dean advised, holding his hand out. "Where's our room?"
"Right across the hall." Gabriel threw Dean the motel room key, and glanced at Hella. "You sure you're ok to couch-surf?"
"Mhm." She smiled, wagging her fingers at him. "I'll be fine. It might not stay a couch for the whole night, but I'll be fine."
"That's my girl." Gabriel grinned, standing and ruffling her hair, to an annoyed yelp from her. "Where's Samsquatch?"
"He insisted on carrying all the bags by himself. Said we should go on ahead." Dean shrugged. "You know what they say about gift horses."
"Yeah, and you know how he's going to bitch if I don't go down and help him." Gabriel sighed, dramatically, before disappearing with the familiar rustle of feathers, presumably to the car park. Dean scowled a little, before rattling the motel room keys and gesturing to Hella's bag. "Let's get you over to the right room then."
The other motel room had two single beds and a couch, which Hella promptly turned into a small four poster bed with blue and black curtains. Dean eyed his lumpy motel mattress with contempt.
"Don't suppose you could…"
Hella smiled, and happily improved the motel's beds by at least two stars. Dean grinned at her.
"You're way more useful than your dad."
Castiel, who was already lying on his bed, gave her a weary smile.
"I agree, you use your powers to a far greater good than your father."
Hella smiled back, before looking cautiously at Dean. Dean, who had been raiding the mini-bar, and was taken by surprise when he noticed this sudden scrutiny, looked right back.
"Yeah?"
"You're a guy."
"Uh, yeah." Dean nodded, opening the bottle of water he kind of wished was a beer. "Does it show?"
"Are my legs ugly?"
Dean choked on his water, and Hella scowled. She was starting to get a little sick of guys choking on things when she asked them that.
"Uh… You mean with the…"
"With the fact that I look rotten from the waist down." Hella snapped, her jaw set in a scowl. "Whatever, forget it."
"No, wait, I just wasn't… I mean you surprised…"
"Hella." Castiel turned his head, and fixed her with one sleepy eye. "There is a common misconception, especially amongst humans or those who have spent a lot of time around them, that 'different' is the same as 'ugly' or 'unattractive'. What they mean, when they use those words, is 'unexpected', because the human mind doesn't like to be surprised. Beauty, however, true beauty, is always surprising, and it takes a mature, understanding, intelligent mind to understand that. If a person thinks another 'ugly' when what they mean is 'different', they are not aiming to offend. They simply cannot comprehend what is meant by 'beauty'."
Hella stared at him for a moment, considering this, before hugging him and turning a brilliant, bright smile on Dean.
"I can go get dinner, if you like? Chinese?"
"Sounds awesome." Dean nodded, as she disappeared from the room. Dean collapsed onto his bed, happy to just relax for a while. He turned onto his side to look at Castiel. "Is that true?"
"What?"
"What you just said to Hella?"
"Why should I lie to her?" His lips twitched into a smile as he turned weary eyes on Dean. "I wish everyone to be happy. Because if they are happy, they'll be quiet and let me sleep."
Dean laughed a little, and nodded.
"Point taken." He lay back, and let himself rest.