Author's note: Thanks a lot to Maknatuna, Mello18, AzzaBby, SARA1988, kb18142, keacdragon, Maddy Love Castiel, Larkafree, Musicfeind2392, TheWinchestersBadGirl, FireChildSlytherin5, midnight0211 and one guest for last chapter's reviews.
Edit: Now beta-read by the wonderful Ghastly Eternity!
6
"Brat," Dean mumbled as he put his bag next to the bed that was closer to the door of their motel room.
The baby archangel had decided that he couldn't stand to be in the car any longer about four hours before they would have reached Sioux Falls, so the older Winchester had had to give in and stop for the night. Or rather, Bobby and Sam had forced him to. They hadn't thought that simply turning the music loud enough so Gabriel's little lungs didn't stand a chance anymore was a good option for some reason.
"He's just a baby," Sam sighed once more and tried his best not to damage anything with the portacrib and the bags he had had to bring on top of carrying the infant around, "A little help here?"
Dean snorted, but didn't say anything. It was an argument they didn't have to have that very moment. The older Winchester wouldn't have said that Gabriel was just a baby, though. Even if the little pigeon didn't show it too clearly yet, he had angelic powers in him and that made him more of a disaster waiting to happen than a baby.
He took the crib from Sam and unfolded it for him after a moment, though. There was nothing they could do other than deal with the circumstances as they were, anyway.
Bobby had insisted on his own room this time and neither of the two brothers could blame him for that. Actually, Sam wouldn't have blamed his brother for insisting on getting three rooms or sharing one with Bobby, either.
The younger Winchester put the infant into the crib and was insanely relieved when Gabriel just sat there, his pacifier firmly between his lips and didn't complain. As cute as he was, Sam already started to forget what it was like not to have a baby held against him the entire time and that was unsettling him.
"Can you watch him for five minutes?" the taller man asked a little pleadingly, "I need a shower."
Predictably, Dean wasn't too happy with the request, but he had to acknowledge that he would be the one who would have to deal with his brother's bitching about him not babysitting as well as him stinking up the place.
"Whatever, but don't you go and wash your hair, princess," the older Winchester replied, "I won't be babysitting that long!"
Sam huffed, but only shook his head and said nothing. This was his brother as he lived and breathed and if there was something the younger Winchester craved more than the shower he had just been allowed to take it was some normalcy. He quickly took a change of clothes from the bag Dean had brought for him, just in case.
Before he went to the little bathroom for good he grabbed the toy car Gabriel had made him buy and passed it over to his brother.
"There's something you've got in common, try to bond over it!" Sam suggested with a small grin and closed the door behind himself.
"Dude, it's a bug!" Dean called after his brother exasperatedly. He refused to make a connection with the infant over their love for cars when the archangel's car of choice was a VW beetle!
The older Winchester didn't have a problem with little kids, in general. He liked them well enough and he got along with them mostly. Hell, he had practically raised Sam when he had still been a kid himself.
His problem with the archangel baby wasn't the part where he was a baby, really. Okay, his opinion of Gabriel had changed slightly for the better after the Elysian Fields hotel, but he just didn't trust the bastard any further than he could throw him. Right now, he could have thrown him relatively far though, he supposed.
"You know, you've always been small, but this is ridiculous!" Dean told the baby with an amused snort and patted his head gently once. He immediately took his hand away when the baby angel looked like he wasn't all too happy with the contact, however. The older Winchester really didn't want to be the one to figure out how much of Gabriel's power remained and how he would use it if provoked.
After watching the infant play with the plastic ball with the duck inside and the car some more he decided that he really didn't need to stand there like an idiot and stare at the baby. Instead he grabbed a few things from his duffle bag and started to clean his gun at the ramshackle table the motel had provided them with.
In the meantime, Sam tried to make the shower as quick as possible, but he couldn't quite bring himself to turn the water off. He didn't think he had ever enjoyed a simple shower just as much as he did that very moment. Some warm water couldn't solve his problems, but it made him feel more relaxed and as if all the issues he'd eventually have to deal with were just a little further away. Of course, everything had to come to an end eventually.
The younger Winchester made quick work of drying himself and getting into a fresh t-shirt and trunks to make up for the extra time he had spent in the shower a little, at least.
He looked at the little archangel and smiled slightly. Apparently, Dean had jumped over his own shadow.
"When did you get Gabstiel inside?" Sam asked, slightly amused. He patted Gabriel's head automatically and smiled when the archangel leaned into the touch, looking up at him with adoring eyes. He didn't quite know how he deserved to be looked at like that, but he could barely ask the angel as things were.
"Who or what the hell is a Gabstiel?" Dean replied with a deep frown. He finished putting the gun back together again and turned to look at his younger brother. The two newly resurrected men – one man and a baby, really – made a cute picture. He could admit that much, if only to himself.
"The plush angel. Blond hair, blue eyes," Sam shrugged, "I dubbed him Gabstiel."
Gabriel was indeed chewing on one of his toy angel's wings and Dean tried to remember if the toy had been there before. It was obvious that his younger brother thought that it hadn't been.
"I didn't," the older Winchester answered, "You must have brought the thing."
He still grabbed the keys to the Impala and headed outside. He wasn't quite sure what he expected to find since the toy was clearly inside, but his instincts told him to just go and take a look. Being a good hunter was always part instinct.
When Dean returned not more than a minute later he had a perfect replica of the toy Gabriel was still chewing around on in his hands.
"He even got the pudding stain right," the older Winchester pointed out casually and threw the second plush angel over to his younger brother.
Sam looked at the toy in his hands and then to the one Gabriel was holding and sighed. He had known that something like this could only be a matter of time, but the archangel must have figured out the connection between wanting something and just making it appear out of thin air much faster than the younger Winchester would have thought.
"So, what are you going to call that one? Lucifer?" Dean asked, chuckling. He realized that he had just made a grave mistake even before he saw the expression that crossed his brother's face. Sam put on his mask of detachment just a moment later, even though neither one of them was convinced by it, anyway.
The younger Winchester put the toy next to Gabriel into the crib mainly so he didn't have to look back at his brother anymore and was a little surprised when the archangel's tiny hands reached for his arm. The baby looked back at his caretaker with a quizzical expression and finally leaned in to rub his head against Sam's forearm.
"Talk to me, Sammy," Dean demanded, albeit in a rather soft tone.
The younger Winchester did not turn around and just kept petting Gabriel's hair with his free hand silently for so long that his brother didn't expect to get anything out of him anymore.
"You've been to hell, Dean," Sam replied silently, "I don't think I could tell you anything you don't know already."
Not that he'd really know, because the older Winchester had refused to speak about his time in hell rather adamantly. Bits and pieces had been uncovered over time, but Sam didn't have a clear picture, not by any means.
That was exactly the sort of hypocrite Dean was, too. He wanted to keep his secrets, but his younger brother didn't have the right to do the same.
The younger Winchester sighed deeply and tried to ban those thoughts from his mind. He knew he was being unfair and he knew he didn't want to argue, so he'd better stop winding himself up.
"Fine, but if you want to talk… y'know," Dean stated with a short shrug. He wasn't going to beat Sam into sharing his experiences. Yet. He would if he saw any clearer signs that his younger brother was being eaten alive by holding things inside.
"Yeah, thanks," the younger Winchester replied with a small and rather fake smile. He actually couldn't imagine talking about his time in the cage anytime soon. In fact, there just were so many things he didn't even think he could have expressed in words if he had wanted to. Sure, he had been disappointed when Dean hadn't wanted to confide in him after he had come back from his time in hell, but he had a whole new understanding for the situation now.
"Look, I just want to get Gabe into his pajamas and go to sleep," Sam added after a moment to make sure that it was absolutely clear that no talk about anything important was going to happen that night, if it was for him. Dean should be glad about it, actually. It also meant that Sam wasn't going to ask any questions about the things his brother had done and what the hell had happened between him and Castiel, after all.
It was only the second time that the younger Winchester got the baby archangel into different clothes, but he felt it was much easier this time around. It probably helped that he didn't fear that Gabriel might break quite as much as he used to anymore.
"Did you get him anything at all that isn't all cutesy and girly?" Dean snorted after he had taken one look at the grinning kitten on the pajamas. First the cartoon muffins, now cartoony grinning kittens with huge eyes. The older Winchester would have sworn that the cat was staring at him judgmentally, too.
"Like what? A leather jacket?" Sam huffed and exchanged the pacifier Gabriel was sucking on with the second one, vowing to himself to clean the other one with some hot water before they hit the road again.
"Would be a good start," Dean replied seriously and watched with a mix of bewilderment and amusement as his younger brother cradled the infant, apparently trying to rock him to sleep, "He's a short, sarcastic, class-clown. There's no need to add badly dressed to the list."
The younger Winchester didn't point out that his brother was talking about the Gabriel they had known instead of the baby they had on their hands now, but in his mind he had already started to differentiate between those two versions of the archangel. The infant might have shared a few characteristics with the adult version, but he clearly wasn't sarcastic, that much of a class-clown, or all too short for his age, yet.
"Next time uncle Dean comes along for the shopping," Sam told the baby seriously before he put him back into the crib and handed one of his plush angels to him. He continued to pet Gabriel's hair until he was pretty sure that the infant would stay put and then watched as he closed his eyes, his little chest rising and falling with slow, deep breaths.
"Still with the uncle Dean crap?" the older Winchester asked with a raised eyebrow.
They both knew that he wasn't too comfortable with seeing just how much Sam and Gabriel were latching on to each other and to be completely honest, Sam wasn't sure how comfortable he was with that himself. But that would have to be a conversation for another time, too.
The younger Winchester just shrugged and prepared to go to bed himself. Yes, it would help to evade any discussions, but he also felt very tired. Damn, if there was one thing he had felt more than enough of the past two days it was tiredness. Tiredness and confusion, really.
Dean shook his head quietly and went to get changed, too. When he came back from the bathroom – let's face it, changing in front of Sam was one thing, but changing in front of Gabriel was out of the question – he took a couple of moments to look at his younger brother's sleeping form. The older Winchester felt nothing but glad to have him back, but he still couldn't shake off the feeling that something was very wrong about the entire situation. Well, wrongness he could deal with, not having his brother, not so much.
