Gabriel took steady, measured breaths. Underneath the weight of the drunken giant, there wasn't a whole lot of room for his lungs to breathe.

Sam's pungent breath was blowing into his face and his half hard cock was prodding Gabriel in the thigh as he slept. Someone walked down the hall and went into the room next to Sam's. They turned on the TV and the room was filled with the muffled sounds of sitcom studio laughter. Cars drove by on the street, a dog barked from somewhere far away and Gabriel had just been raped.

Gabriel had one talent, one magic power that set him apart from the rest. He was amazingly adept at removing a thought from his mind. He could just, choose not to think about something and his brain would find a detour around it. He could ignore it. Gabriel was really, really good at ignoring it.

And so, he didn't think about how his knees were weak. He didn't think about how sore his eyes were, how tender his cock was, having been stripped so rough and dry. He just cut along the dotted line. Amputated that part of his brain for the time being.

Sam's eyelids started to flutter and Gabriel figured this was as good a chance as any. Gingerly, he began to ease his weight from Sam's clingy spider limbs. It took a few tries, as Sam was very heavy and once Gabriel had made any progress with the arms, the legs and the hips would latch on like a sloth to a tree.

Gabriel stood, finally, tucking his raw cock back into his pants with a wince.

He glanced back over at Sam before he left.

He didn't look like a kid anymore. Gabriel wouldn't have recognized him; all sprawled out and undignified, sleeping a gross, selfish slumber.

Gabriel pitied him all the same.

Gabriel had never really fit in.

He realized that he was an atheist when he was seven years old. His older brother, Michael, was leading a youth church service and Gabriel was in his group.

Michael was sixteen and beautiful, even Gabriel could admit that. He knew, for a fact, that Michael had never picked up his dirty underwear in his life and wiped his tacky orange Cheetos dust fingers on the sofa when he watched TV, but he could admit that, to the outside world, Michael was beautiful. He was tall and strong, captain of the lacrosse and the soccer teams, volunteered with the church on the weekends and worked part time at the grocery store during the week. Everyone knew that the Novaks had a dead-beat dad and people turned into putty when Michael smiled at them and said 'sir' or 'm'am" just as Tennessee southern and polite as you please.

Everyone loved Michael. Michael loved everyone. And, to avoid being accused of playing favorites, Michael pretended to not be his brother in the church youth group. Michael pretended Gabriel was just another kid, and when no one would play with him and when he sat alone to eat lunch, well, Michael just pretended he didn't see. His big brother was very fair like that.

It was the end of the day and Michael sat everyone in a group to ask them what they would say to God if they met him. Everyone sat and thought very hard about what they'd want to say to their heavenly father but Gabriel panicked because he suddenly realized that he was going to have to lie.

Whatever that thing was, inside of Michael, burning so bright and so trustingly full of faith... Gabriel didn't have it. Maybe he'd never had it. Michael said that God's love came from within, it was a fire in your soul that took you above them, above everything. Michael said that God's love was everything, and existed in everyone.

But Gabriel knew for certain that there wasn't anything inside him besides him. No heavenly love, no divine purpose. Just plain old Gabriel. But he couldn't just say that. Not with everyone looking.

It was the biggest lie Gabriel had ever told and he had been seven.

Gabriel's childhood hadn't been anything really worth waxing sentimental over. As the youngest of four, he spent most of his younger years following the group, tripping over jeans that had to be rolled up twice at the ankle and shouting, 'Hey, wait up. Wait for me.'

His brothers weren't the worst assholes. Sometimes they did.

School wasn't much different than church group. The Novaks were the poor kids in school, everyone knew that. Gabriel got the worst of it, he reckoned, with four brothers worth of hand-me-downs and goodwill bargains to make up the difference. Gabriel became accustomed to never having anything that fit properly until he was at least twenty.

No one picked on him, not really. It probably wouldn't have been very satisfying if they did. Gabriel was runty and poor. No one felt like they needed to take him down a peg.

When Gabriel was eleven he came out of the closet to his family, to which everyone responded with; "Yeah, we kind of figured."

It was the one interesting thing Gabriel had in all the din of four teenage boys with a single working mom; the one thing that made him special in his brother's clothes with his brother's toys and them talking over his head. That was the one thing that Gabriel had for himself and everyone already knew and had gotten over it. It could have been worse. There were certainly people who'd had it worse but Gabriel still felt a little something break inside him a the fact that no one seemed to care. They cared when Luc was arrested with all those drugs. They cared when Raphael wrecked the family car. They cared when Michael finished community college. But Gabriel was gay and nobody really even noticed.

But at least he could pretend that he felt victimized in church where a small but vocal minority of the congregation had many opinions on the appropriate places a man could rest his dick. His mom sighed and shrugged, saying he didn't have to go if he didn't want to. So, on Sundays, when the other Novaks would pile into the car and head to church, Gabriel got to watch cartoons without anyone telling him they were stupid and eat PopTarts without having a big brother swoop in and take his second one.

Middle school was rough, but only because he was openly gay and boys made a thing out of it in the locker rooms during gym. So Gabriel changed in the bathroom stalls and ignored the cat calls. Just like his brother, coach didn't believe in playing favorites to the fairy so he pretended he didn't notice when boys would grab their cocks and ask Gabriel if he wanted a taste. 'Hey, fag boy, I'll let you suck my dick if you ask nice.' Gabriel pretended he didn't notice either.

No one laid a finger on him, though, even after all the taunting and the staring. Gabriel supposed that three big brothers protected him from most violent backlash. Gabriel liked to think he'd be able to hold his own if it did come to it; he learned everything he knew from his second oldest brother, Luc, and Luc fought dirty but he always won.

But the name of the game in adolescence is keeping your head down, so Gabriel did. By high school, he discovered weed and the burn-out kids who were almost always game to try anything once. He kissed girls, he kissed boys, he gave his first blow-job in the backseat of Zeke's car parked behind the pizza place where Zeke was a delivery driver.

He and his friend both smoked a bowl and Ezekiel raised his hips off the car seat and raised an eyebrow. Gabriel didn't have anything better to do that night and he certainly wasn't waiting for some big strong man to come and save him from his life in high school. Even at fifteen, Gabriel figured that fairytale love probably wasn't for him.

Zeke and Anna and all his friends had crushes and boyfriends and girlfriends and all these feelings inside of them that took them above, over everything. A fire inside of them, this sort of all or nothing faith inside their souls.

But Gabriel knew that it was just him inside there. No divine purpose, no other person that he might complete. He was just Gabriel.

But he was horny. And stoned. And in this light, he couldn't even see how bad Zeke's acne was or recognize Anna's bobby pins in the seat cushions where he rested his knees as he went down on him.

Zeke ran his hands through Gabriel's hair. He stroked his thumb along his chin, over his lip, down his neck. It was kind of like making love, except Zeke kept saying 'holy fuck' and ended by asking Gabriel not to tell Anna.

Gabriel really didn't care.

It was probably one of those things; more proof that he was a broken person, missing something fundamental inside of him that was supposed to make him feel something when Zeke took Anna to prom. When Anna got pregnant. When they had babies and fell in love and bought a house and got a dog. There was supposed to be something there. Something that wanted that for himself. Love was supposed to make him better, make him want more.

He graduated high school, barely. He was stoned at graduation, and he thought you could tell by the way he looked in the picture on his mother's mantel. Anna and Zeke were falling over each other, Anna's long red hair like some sort of beacon in the sea of black gowns. Zeke had gotten too excited about the part where he would get to throw his hat and so he was already bareheaded, both arms around Anna's waist as she jokingly tried to untangle them. She was mid laugh as the camera clicked. She was very beautiful, Gabriel was as gay as Liberace, but even he had never wondered why Zeke had always been so in love with her. He was so hopeful and she was so teary, hugging Gabriel and crying and forcing him to promise that they were still going to always be friends.

But Gabriel didn't care. And it was, actually, pretty fucked up. Gabriel couldn't fall in love, that much was clear. Gabriel couldn't have friends, either. Maybe some sort of divine punishment; making him live a life of rotting mediocrity. His penance for lying when he was seven years old and not telling anyone that he was born wrong. They had accepted everything from him, all the way down to his little gay self but he knew they'd be horrified to learn that he missed out on that fire of God's love in his heart.

Gabriel was on his own.

And he did, wish, with aggressive fervor that he could believe in God. Faith looked so easy and infinitely rewarding. Who wouldn't want to believe that someone loved them unconditionally? Who wouldn't want to know that there was someone, somewhere, who knew every thought and still had a plan? It seemed nice, to them it seemed easy. 'Giving themselves to Jesus' it was the simplest request anyone could ask. But things that were easy for everyone else was almost always impossible for Gabriel to manage.

He got over it. There wasn't much of an alternative anyway.

Gabriel was no good at school when Anna wasn't around to copy off of. She went to Smith and Zeke got a solid job at an iron shop in Knoxville. They were still going steady. Anna said that Zeke might be 'the one' in one of those postcards she sent. She did that, for a while at least. Gabriel never responded.

Gabriel hung around his mother's house. She had a hacking cough, earned from a lifetime of cigarettes smoked in the diners and bars where she worked before anyone told her they'd ruin her life. Gabriel made her hot tea and watched her shows with her on her days off. She didn't ask him to move out and spared him the judgmental grumbles of three older brothers who thought it was about time he got a real damn job. Honestly, he didn't think she wanted him to leave. Their tiny, cracker box duplex was so clean and quiet now that her rambunctious boys were off being men somewhere. Gabriel thought it was much nicer but the quiet made her anxious.

He got a job working twice a week at the record store. He ended up spending his entire paycheck on eight tracks and records, devoting his shift browsing the aisles and avoiding eye contact with customers, lest they make him actually work. The only reason that Gabriel hadn't been fired thus far was that the perpetually high owner liked to hover over Gabriel's shoulder at closing and mutter filthy things into his ear.

"If a woman wore jeans that tight," Balthazar drawled, british and smoke husky voice sounding so exotic that Gabriel's heart raced. He stood behind the counter, adding up the till and watching Gabriel sweep between dirty blonde lashes. Balthazar had always leered, before. But Gabriel had pretended he didn't notice. "If a woman wore those... why, they'd be tarring and feathering me for sexual harassment."

"You haven't said anything." Gabriel said, holding the broom and looking over his shoulder at Balthazar. It was a good feeling, like hot water being spilled down his veins. It felt like power. It felt like being special. Maybe not a fire, but certainly a flicker of a spark in his gut.

He let Balthazar look his fill, this time unashamed.

"Oh, but the thoughts." Balthazar murmured, "A man could go to jail for thoughts like that."

Gabriel blinked. Balthazar licked his lips and went back to the till.

Balthazar got bolder as Gabriel didn't spurn his attentions, "You make a man want to bend you over," Balthazar would murmur, palming himself behind the counter, "You make a man want to get on his knees."

Gabriel was the first to touch, break that electric fence line that Balthazar had placed there for his own protection. He came up behind Gabriel, leaned in to murmur something about how he wanted to hold Gabriel's ass in his hands when Gabriel leaned into him, let his back mould to Balthazar's chest, let his ass press into Balthazar's crotch.

"Jesus fuck," Balthazar murmured before turning Gabriel and pressing him against the shelves, holding him in place as he kissed the ever loving fuck out of him. Gabriel groaned, spread his legs and let Balthazar fuck against him, fast and shallow and greedy, his hand cupping the back of Gabriel's head, keeping him close.

Gabriel got fucked for the first time that weekend, in Balthazar's apartment, quiet so the neighbors wouldn't hear. The air smelt stale and Balthazar's hands were sweating. The whole time Gabriel laid on his back, he watched Balthazar. It was kind of beautiful, a whole gauntlet of feelings that Gabriel was supposed to be having.

Balthazar kept murmuring how he couldn't believe it was happening, how he'd wanted it for so long. Balthazar touched his face, sucked his lip, slid his fingers into him, so slowly, so, frustratingly, slowly. Balthazar called him beautiful. Balthazar said he could fall for him.

And Gabriel didn't feel any of it at all. He still got off, though.

It actually went on for a while. Him and Balthazar. Gabriel hadn't really meant anything by it. First it was just groping in the back room a few times a week. Then sex. Then all that stuff right before and right after the sex started to sort of look like something. Like a really good friendship. Like love, maybe, if Gabriel was even capable of that.

They started getting stoned before. And they started getting pizza after. Balthazar would talk. Sometimes it was about nothing. Work stuff. Boring stuff. Stuff they might talk about even if Gabriel hadn't had his face in Balthazar's crotch or even if Balthazar hadn't rolled over on his stomach and pushed his ass up, offering.

Sometimes Balthazar would talk about where he grew up. He'd talk about his French father and he'd talk about summers in the countryside. He had more interesting things to talk about than Gabriel did, but he always wanted to listen to what he had to say anyway. It was baffling. But kind of nice. Being doted on, being held and treasured. Being someone besides the littlest one in the ill fitting clothes, calling for his brothers to wait up.

After a couple of months, Balthazar said he loved him. Gabriel said it back, because maybe he did. How was Gabriel supposed to know what that would feel like? He already knew he was missing something; didn't have that fire inside him. God didn't love him, or maybe he didn't love God, so he knew he couldn't love Balthazar like he was supposed to. He obviously didn't love Balthazar as much as Balthazar loved him.

But how the Hell was he supposed to know what to wait for, if he was going to wait for anything at all? It all looked right.

His mother loved Balthazar, almost as much as he loved her. His parents were still in Europe and so he fawned all over her and her tea cozies and her soap operas. For her birthday he managed to get her tickets to see the Mary and John Winchester when they came into Nashville. His mother had loved the Campbells, the nice, clean family band from Gabriel's childhood. They were all so very blonde and Christian, there were entire records they couldn't play anymore because of the deep wear on the tracks. Her favorite song had always been "Angels Watching Over You and I." It was thoughtful for Balthazar to remember.

Gabriel had never been a passionate individual. In fact, probably his most defining characteristic was his complete distaste for just about everything. He hated working. He hated being bored. He thought most movies were stupid but had never finished a book in his life. Gabriel sort of tumbled through life, sticking his nose up at all the things his brothers excelled at, just to have them move out and move and realize there wasn't much else left. Even in this, he was left with whatever his brothers didn't use up first. Besides their mother, he didn't love anything the way they did.

But he did like music.

And so Balthazar took them to the show, disappearing for a few minutes with a wink. When he came back he led Gabriel's mother to the backstage to meet the band. It was thoughtful and kind and so, very appropriate. He looked at Gabriel over his mother's head and there was something there. Something beautiful and bright, faithful and trusting.

In that moment, Balthazar was giving Gabriel something. Everything. It was ferocious and relentless. It was love, the kind of love people had in movies and books. It was the kind of love that people went to war for, the kind of love that everyone else was capable of, burning inside him.

And Gabriel realized, once again, that he was going to have to lie. His whole life with Balthazar. Pretend he had something inside of himself to offer, because Balthazar was just handing him everything on a platter and Gabriel felt none of it at all.

He slipped away as they waited in the hallway by the food table, hoping for Mary or John to walk by. Preferably at the same time. Gabriel's mother always liked the way they looked together. Him so tall and dark while she was so small and light. Like a couple from a fairy tale. It always bummed him out that she said things like that. His Dad was no prince and it seemed to be the only thing she wanted for herself. Gabriel pretended he needed to pee and left them there.

There was a tall black man who seemed to know what he was doing. He barked orders at a man not much older than Gabriel and already too drunk to work. Gabriel saw an opportunity.

"Ought to fucking fire you. It's ten at night and you're already plastered. Where the fuck did your incompetent ass leave the patch chord?"

The drunk man mumbled something indignantly and the older guy grunted. Shaking his head and listing a thousand insults under his breath. "Would fire you if anyone else was stupid enough to want your job."

"I do." Gabriel interrupted. They both looked over at him. "I'll take his job. I can find a patch chord."

"They go on in forty minutes."

"I can do it."

"What's your name, kid?"

"Gabriel."

"You ain't gonna magically produce a chord in forty minutes, Gabriel."

"Yes I can. I can do it."

"Fine. Name's Rufus. Find me when you get the chord."

"And then you'll give me the job?"

"Sure, kid. Why the fuck not." he grumbled doubtfully, turning away and shaking his head. Rufus headed back toward the stage and Gabriel made a mad dash for Balthazar's car. The music store owner had to have a cable, somewhere. Gabriel returned, sweaty and messy from literally climbing into the trunk of a Pinto but he held the chord tightly in his fist like a trophy.

Rufus laughed and called him a crazy little fucker.

Gabriel took it, and he took the job too.

His mother cried but didn't ask him to stay. She packed him a lunch to take on the road and told him to call from wherever they stopped for the night. He almost cried too, when she grabbed him around the middle. He had always been her soft boy. The sweet one. The one that hung around instead of jumping from the nest at the first go. He was her last boy. She was his only mom. He didn't love much in this world, but Gabriel had really loved her.

Balthazar was sweet. Not mad at all, which he probably should have been.

They had dinner and sex the night before he left, and they had managed to go the whole time without talking about it; not admitting the truth that the one thing Balthazar wanted from him, Gabriel would never be able to give.

Balthazar pulled Gabriel into his chest, murmuring, "You could really break a man's heart."

Gabriel didn't pass anyone in the halls, to his massive relief, sure that he'd look terrified or ruined or broken. Sure, he had the magic ability to just remove giant chunks of horrible from his brain but there hadn't even been time to heal over it yet. It was just a gaping hole now. It would get better. Fade with time.

He got to his own room and thought about showering. Washing it all off of him, Sam's stupid drunken breaths. His stupid weight. His stupid words which had been worse than anything else. Gabriel took a bottle of whiskey from the mini bar. For once, ever, Dean could pick up the slack and pay the stupid, impossible mark-up. After all these years of Gabriel cracking the whip over everyone's head about pinching pennies and saving the band's money... well, tonight wouldn't matter so much in the long run.

Oh, Dean. That made it harder.

Whiskey first, shower later. Whiskey first, letter second. Because Gabriel could forget a lot of things but not if he kept hearing them. Not if he kept seeing them. Because, and the fucked up part was, there was something to the things Sam said, some truth in there that Gabriel had only heard inside his own head. It was like a razor to know that Sam had seen through it all along.

Dear Dean, he started on hotel stationary, too white and clean with a little Hilton logo at the bottom. His hand shook, so he drank a little more whiskey. It was nice. The hot burn of it in the back of his throat. It was nice to feel something.

Dean, he tried again.

I have been privileged to work with you for all these years. I've seen you grow up and your father was so proud of you. I'm so proud.

Gabriel had to pause again and take a breath. It was harder than he thought. It was harder than he had ever expected it to be.

You're a good man, now. And I think it's time for you to seek other management while I...

Gabriel crossed it out. Too sappy. Too sentimental. Too hard to think of a life doing something else. To be honest, he didn't know if he had anything else.

Another shot of whiskey. Another thought that he cut along the dotted line and just removed from his memory. He had to remind himself, that he was good at that. That might have been the only thing he was ever actually good at.

Dean,

While I have been honored to work with you and your father, I'm afraid I must ask you to find other representation. I think you will do well, no matter who you work with. I'm afraid I can't stay on for the funeral, but you and your brother will manage.

Good luck, Deano. You were always great.

Gabriel Novak.