At almost midnight on Saturday, Gabriel snuck back into his house via the tree. He threw his overnight bag next to his bed and headed for the bathroom, intent on taking a shower since he hadn't had the chance to since Friday morning.
He thought that the hunt had gone well, especially considering that it was his first one. On Friday night, he and Sharon had gone to the library to check out the situation. They'd encountered the ghost, Gabriel had gotten thrown into a wall, and then they'd gone back to their motel room to plan. It had been uncomfortable for him, sleeping in the same room as a complete stranger, but he hadn't gotten murdered in his sleep, so he counted it as a win.
Saturday was spent locating the ghost's grave. Becky could only get so much information over the phone, so they'd had to pose as reporters in order to interview the woman's daughter. After it got dark, Gabriel went to the local cemetery to salt and burn the ghost's body while Sharon broke into the library to distract her.
It hadn't really worked, though, and the ghost showed up at the grave site, thrown Gabriel into a headstone, and then tried to kill him. It was only dumb luck that had allowed him to toss his lighter into the grave, and then he had gotten the hell out of there without even watching what he was sure had been a pretty awesome light show.
Sharon had insisted that he stay overnight with her at the motel room, but Gabriel hadn't wanted to give Chuck reason to be suspicious, so he'd driven an hour back home, even though all he wanted to do was sleep.
Once he got to the bathroom, he made sure that the door was closed all the way before stripping himself and stepping into the warm spray. His back hurt with a dull ache that let him know that he had some pretty gnarly bone bruises. Most likely from getting thrown around like a rag doll. Stupid ghost.
He stayed in the shower as long as he dared, and then he stepped out in front of the mirror to survey the damage done to his body. As he'd suspected, his upper back and shoulder blades were a mess of tender purple skin. They kind of looked cool as a background for those weird markings on his right side that still hadn't gone away, but they hurt like a motherfucker.
He flicked off the light and padded back to his room, and slipped naked under the covers of his bed after locking his door and window. His sleep was, thankfully, dreamless that night.
A loud banging noise woke him up the next morning, and it took him a few moments to wake up enough for his brain to recognize that the banging was actually Chuck knocking on his door.
"I'm up!" he called, voice cracking as he yawned halfway through the last word. His phone let him know that it was eight thirty in the morning. That was when he usually woke up on weekends for his daily run, but now he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep and not wake up until he stopped hurting.
"Gabriel, come on," Chuck said, voice muffled by the door. "I already let you sleep in half an hour, and I can't let you slack off too much. You can go back to sleep after your run."
Groaning loud enough that Chuck could hear him, Gabriel pulled himself out of his warm bed and over to his dresser. He pulled on boxers, basketball shorts, and a loose white t-shirt and then grabbed his phone and earbuds. Chuck was waiting for him by the front door with two water bottles in his hand.
"Ready?" he asked.
"In a minute," Gabriel replied. He snatched a granola bar from the counter and ate it in two quick bites, then joined his father. "Now I'm ready."
Chuck set a pretty fast pace, and Gabriel struggled a little more than he normally did. Whereas he could normally do a six and a half minute mile, he got almost eight minutes this time. His back was killing him, and swinging his arms only made it worse. Chuck cast him worried and slightly suspicious glances the entire time, and by the time they got back to the house, he had figured out that something was up.
"What the hell was that?" he panted as he walked into the kitchen. He threw his empty water bottle into the recycling bin, grabbed a new one from the fridge, and downed half of it before speaking again. "That was terrible compared to your usual times."
Gabriel leaned against the doorframe and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to let any of his pain show. It really, really, really hurt, but he knew that Chuck would be livid if he found out Gabriel had gone on a hunt and gotten hurt. But he'd never been a very good actor, and when he opened his eyes again, Chuck was right in front of him, searching his face for something.
"What happened?" he asked, eyes narrowing. "I know something happened."
"Nothing happened," Gabriel said. "I just… fell and bruised my back, that's all."
"Let me see," Chuck demanded. Gabriel froze. The marks. How was he supposed to explain them? Chuck would know that they weren't normal tattoos, that they were something obviously supernatural, but Gabriel had no idea how the man would react. He turned around so that Chuck wouldn't see him biting his lip. Slowly - mostly to stall, but also because ow - he grabbed the edge of his shirt and started to pull it off.
Chuck's phone rang.
Oh, thank God.
Chuck frowned, but left to answer it, and Gabriel almost ran up the stairs. Almost. Because, again, ow.
He grabbed his laptop and locked himself in his room, then looked up ways to speed up the healing of bruises. Ice, elevate, apply heat, Google told him. Gabriel frowned. To get ice, he'd have to go downstairs. Where Chuck was.
...Maybe a cold shower would work.
He closed his laptop and found a relatively clean smelling towel in his closet, then he crept towards the bathroom. He turned the knob in the tub all the way to cold, then shed his clothes and braced himself.
The water was colder than he'd anticipated, and he almost jumped out, but then his extremities started to go numb, and he was more or less fine. His body had always produced just a little bit more heat than was normal, especially for someone of his size, and so he managed to stay under the spray for longer than he'd thought he would be able to.
His back was pleasantly numb when he finally stepped out and dried himself off, and he threw his sweat-soaked clothes into his hamper and pulled on a pair of (warm) sweatpants and a hoodie. He hadn't heard anything from Chuck in the last fifteen or so minutes, so he thought it safe to go back downstairs and get some breakfast.
He was so, so wrong.
"Hello, Gabriel," came a voice to his right when he walked downstairs, and Gabriel turned and found Chuck sitting on the couch, a deadly calm expression on his face and murder in his eyes.
Gabriel gulped.
"Hey," Gabriel wheedled. "What's up, Dad?"
"Did you know," Chuck started, "that I know a woman named Becky? Well, of course you do, because apparently, you've started working for her and going out on hunts with some crackhead hunter named Sharon!" Chuck was yelling at this point, and Gabriel flinched at the tone. "I taught you how to be a hunter so that you'd be able to defend yourself, not so you'd go out and actively try to kill yourself!"
"In my defense, Becky can be very persuasive," Gabriel said. "She guilt-tripped me, man."
"Don't 'man' me," Chuck snarled. "And trust me, I have had words with her. But you should've known better. I mean, how stupid can you be?"
"Hey!" Gabriel protested.
"Is this why you were falling behind in your mile today?" Chuck demanded. "Are you hurt?"
"It's just a few bruises," Gabriel said. "Nothing serious."
"Let me see," Chuck said, and Gabriel's eyes widened.
"I'd really rather not," he said. Chuck eyed him suspiciously, but didn't press. He seemed to deflate suddenly, and sank back against the couch.
"At least you're okay," he said softly.
"Yeah, well, it was only a ghost," Gabriel told him.
Very slowly, Chuck's hand reached up and started massaging his temples.
"I have a headache," he said. "I'm going back to bed. Goodnight."
"It's nine in the morning," Gabriel pointed out.
"Goodnight!"
"Does this mean I have the rest of the day off?" Gabriel asked. Chuck flapped a hand at him without looking as he walked up the stairs, and Gabriel texted Sam to see if he wanted to hang out. And then, because he had apparently adopted a 'what's the worse that could happen?' attitude after almost dying at the hands of a murderous ghost, he added one last question.
Gabriel: hey, Sam. wanna go do something if you're not busy?
Gabriel: as, like, a date?
It was only after he had hit send that he'd realized what he'd done, but by then it was too late to take it back. For a few minutes, nothing happened. And then the icon that meant Sam was typing appeared.
Sam: sorry no im straight
If Gabriel was in his right mind, he'd have noticed that Sam hadn't texted with the impeccable grammar and punctuation that he always used. As it was, Gabriel was just a little too preoccupied to bother with such things.
As soon as he'd read that first word, his heart had nearly stopped. His chest constricted painfully, and his breath came in harsh pants, indicative of a sob building up. He seemed to be in physical pain, and he was just coherent enough to realize that this was not normal.
He hadn't even been this upset when his grandparents had died, and he knew for a fact that he could handle rejection, so why did this hurt so much? Apparently, he'd cared more about this than he'd thought.
Turning off his phone, he managed to stumble to his feet and then to the stairs. The tears finally spilled over, making it nearly impossible to see as he made his way to his room. What little he'd eaten that morning was threatening to make a reappearance, and he clapped a hand over his mouth and took a few deep breaths.
"Gabriel?" Chuck called from his room. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Gabriel lied, voice thick. "Just not feeling very well."
Chuck, thankfully, left him alone, and Gabriel closed and locked the door of his room. He shoved a towel into the crack between the door and the floor, then flopped face first onto his bed. And only then did he release the hurt that had building up within him. He pressed his face into his pillow to muffle his sobs and hoped to god that Chuck wouldn't somehow hear him. The last thing he needed was to explain why he was crying in his bed over something as small as a rejection.
But rationality took a backseat to his emotions, and he thought of nothing except for how much he wanted Sam.
His shoulders shook hard, but the pillow muffled the noise, thankfully. For what seemed like hours, but could only have been one, he cried. The amount of tears he could even shed at one time surprised him.
Eventually, the tears dried up and he was left a hiccuping, puffy-eyed, red-cheeked mess. He tried to calm his breathing, to ignore the pain in his chest, and it must have worked, because he fell into a fitful doze.
He was visited by another dream while he was asleep. Unlike the others, which left him feeling happy and safe, this one was full of fear and despair. He saw Sam again, but this time he actually spoke to Gabriel.
"I don't want you," he spat, eyes burning with hate, and Gabriel woke with fresh tears streaming down his face. The clock on his bedside table told him that it was nearly nine o'clock at night. He'd slept the entire day away.
He should probably get up and eat something.
He went back to sleep.
He didn't dream that night, thankfully, but the next morning he woke up feeling worse than he had before. Chuck came by around six and knocked on his door softly.
"Gabriel, you okay?" he asked, voice muffled through the door. "You need to get up if you're gonna make it to school on time."
"'M not going," Gabriel mumbled. "Don't feel well."
There was a pause. "Okay," Chuck said. "Let me know if you need anything, alright?"
Gabriel didn't reply. He laid in his bed and closed his eyes, but unfortunately, sleep wouldn't come. His stomach was growling insistently at him, hunger gnawing at his insides and making him clutch weakly at his stomach, but he didn't want to get up and go search for food.
No, that wasn't true. He wanted to eat, he really did, but he just couldn't find the motivation to get out of bed. So he laid there, staring at the ceiling, the wall, the clock, all the while thinking of Sam. Of how Sam looked when he was concentrating, smiling, laughing; of his stupid adorable dimple and his stupidly kissable lips; of his stupid silky hair and his stupid hazel eyes that couldn't decide on a colour.
But thinking of Sam made his chest ache even worse than his stomach was, and so he thought of other things. Of how pathetic he was, lying in his bed like a depressed twelve-year-old girl pining after their favourite movie star. Of how abnormal this was for him. Of how special Sam must be to have initiated this kind of reaction in him.
The day dragged by and around seven, Chuck came back and knocked on his door again.
"Hey, since you haven't eaten all day, I brought you dinner," he said. Gabriel perked up slightly at the mention of food, but he still couldn't muster the energy to get up and unlock his door. He didn't have to worry about it, though, because a few moments later, something was inserted into the lock and then the door swung open.
"I knew that key would come in handy one day," Chuck said as he walked into the room. He was carrying a tray in one hand and a small golden key in the other, but he put both down on Gabriel's desk when he saw Gabriel lying near comatose in his bed. "Hey, are you okay?"
Gabriel whined low in his throat and turned his face into his pillow, curling into a ball underneath his blankets. The last thing he wanted right now was for Chuck to see him like this and interrogate him. But Chuck surprised him, sitting on the edge of his bed and placing the back of his hand against Gabriel's neck, and Gabriel remembered that he'd told Chuck that he wasn't feeling well. Well, that explained why he'd let Gabriel ditch school.
"You're a little hot," Chuck murmured, and Gabriel frowned a little in confusion. He wasn't actually sick. Was he? "Here, eat and then go to sleep. We'll see how you feel in the morning and then go from there, okay?"
"Okay," Gabriel mumbled, voice scratchy from disuse. Chuck gave him a small smile as he walked out, closing the door behind him. For a few minutes, Gabriel didn't move. But then the smell of whatever Chuck had brought him (spaghetti and meatballs in marinara sauce, if his nose could be trusted) made it over to his bed and his stomach growled in anticipation.
He pulled himself out of bed, pausing to steady himself when he swayed a little, then made his way over to his desk. He was right about what Chuck had brought him, and he took a small bite. His appetite flared to life after that and he eagerly dug into his meal, draining almost an entire water bottle after he'd finished most of the pasta.
And while he was feeling motivated to take care of himself, he decided to change his clothes. He shucked what he was wearing and pulled on his favourite pair of pajama pants and his softest, oldest t-shirt. Looking at the door, he briefly debated on going out and taking a shower, or at least making it downstairs, but decided against it.
The constant ache in his chest hadn't gone away yet, though it wasn't that painful if he didn't think of Sam. He was surprised that he'd even been able to get up, eat, and change, honestly, because his mind was a dark, dark place just then, full of self-loathing thoughts and pain and despair.
He knew, rationally, that it wasn't his fault Sam had rejected him. He'd said he was straight, after all, but still Gabriel's mind was full of questions.
Not wanting to be alone with his thoughts, Gabriel flopped back down onto his bed and grabbed his phone from his bedside table. As soon as he turned it back on, he was bombarded with notifications. Most of them were texts and calls from Castiel, but there was one from Sam asking if he was okay.
He couldn't help the tears that welled in his eyes at that. Sam still cared about him enough to check on him, even after Gabriel had (maybe) ruined their friendship by asking him out. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to type out a message, but he knew that if he did he'd end up confessing his love to Sam, and that would only make things even more awkward between them.
Instead, he called Castiel. The phone only rang once before it was picked up, and then Castiel's angry voice came on over the line.
"Where have you been?" he demanded. "I've called and texted you so many times today! You could have at least told me you were gonna ditch. There had better be a damn good reason for making me freak out like that."
"It's nice to hear your voice, too, Cas," Gabriel said sarcastically, rolling his eyes even though Castiel wouldn't be able to see him. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed his friend. "And I wish I could tell you there was a good reason why I ditched, but there's not. I'm just…"
"You sound sad," Castiel said softly. "Gabriel, what happened?"
"I… I asked Sam out. Over text," Gabriel said. He heard Castiel inhale sharply.
"And what happened?" he asked. "Wait, never mind. If he had said yes, you would have told me. He said no, didn't he?"
"Yeah," Gabriel said, voice cracking just the slightest bit. He cleared his throat before continuing. "He's straight, apparently. I just didn't want to make things awkward by coming to school today."
"Bullshit," Castiel spat.
"What?"
"Sam is not straight. I've seen the way he acts around you, how he looks at you. He returns your feelings, I know he does. Maybe they're not as strong, but they're there."
"But why would he reject me, then?" Gabriel hated how his voice got small and quiet.
"Because he's an asshole," Castiel said, and Gabriel felt his temper flare, irrational though it was. He had to actually bite his tongue to keep from leaping to Sam's defense. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm dealing," Gabriel lied. "Did I miss anything important today?"
"Not really. We have a quiz next week in math, but that's about it."
"Ugh. Gross. Thanks, Cas."
"You're welcome. Text me if you aren't coming to school tomorrow, okay?"
"I will," Gabriel promised, and then he hung up. He laid back and closed his eyes and tried not to think of Sam. Instead, he focused on how out of shape he was going to be whenever he got out of this funk. It didn't make the ache go away fully, but it helped keep his thoughts away from dangerous subjects.