Gabriel was sitting in his room under the window with a pen in hand and a newspaper sitting on his lap opened to the classified section. He sighed as he read through another ad for an apartment. Between the sketchy locations and the even sketchier grammar that he's seen, he's pretty sure that he's never going to find a place so that he can move out of Bobby's. He drew an X through the latest ad, closed his eyes and let his head fall back gently against the windowsill behind him.

He stayed like that for a long time, letting the sun play across his face and wondering what he was going to do about moving. He knew that he had to get out of Bobby's place, but he needed a place where Sam felt safe. Where she could come home and let her guard down; where she could laugh and smile. A place where she could feel safe enough to wake up in the morning after a full night sleep and walk around in little to no clothing, and kiss and touch and play...

That is, he needed a place where Sam felt safe if Sam was going to go with him. If she didn't want to leave, he could just buy a place that was cheap and decent enough that he didn't think that he was going to be murdered as an innocent bystander and that would be good enough for him. But he didn't want that. He wanted Sam to come with him. He wanted Sam to to be with him because he know that he could keep Sam safe.

He sighed again and heard the door creak open. Gabriel cracked an eye and saw Sam's face peek around the door frame. "Hey, kiddo," Gabriel said quietly into the room. "Fancy seeing you here. What brings you to the top floor?"

"...Bobby went out for a 'supply run'. I didn't want to be alone down there, so I came and found you..." Sam said with a little bit of hesitation, as though she wasn't sure that it was okay to go to him if she was scared.

Gabriel beckoned her in and she moved to sit close to, but not next to him. She looked at the newspaper that was laying on the floor between them and began to study the blurbs that were crossed out. Her brow furrowed and she turned the paper toward her and began reading all the blurbs on the page.

Gabriel answered her unspoken question. "I'm looking for an apartment, Sam," and as he said that her eyes shot up to meet his and there was a sympathetic look in his eyes. "I can't stay at Bobby's forever. I need to get a job and to have my own place to go back to."

"Ah," Sam said, "I see." There was a detached quality to her voice as she took up the paper and read through the blurbs. Gabriel wanted to tell her what he wanted and he was just getting the wording right when her eyebrows raised as she read through the ads and then decided on one. "This one sounds nice: '1 bedroom'-"

"Sam," Gabriel interrupted her, but she just kept reading.

"1 bath-"

"Sam..."

"Ooh, look, laundry is included, too." Sam said sarcastically.

"Sam!" Gabriel said forcefully and Sam jumped and immediately put her chin to her chest and became as small as possible. Submissive Gabriel's brain supplied. He shook his head in anger, thinking that he was a fucking moron for yelling at her like that, but quietly sighed and turned to face her. He slowly out two fingers under her chin and brought her face up to see his. A tear rolled down her cheek and her face was white, but she still had defiance in her gaze. When he knew that she was paying full attention, Gabriel slowly slid his hand so that his palm was cradling her face and looked into her eyes. "I want you to come with me."

Sam froze. "What?" Sam asked and she dropped the paper next to her.

"I want you to come with me," he told her again. It took all the strength that he had not to let the words that he was thinking tumble out of his mouth. He wanted to tell her that he could keep her safe, that he could make sure that she had a place to heal from what had happened. "I need a haven from everything else, and frankly, so do you."

He wanted to say more, but Sam was in his space. Her face was inches from his, her head tilted to the side in confusion.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked him, and they were so close that her breath danced across his lips. It felt like a warm breeze after a spring rain and Gabriel wanted to get lost in it.

"I didn't want to scare you away," he answered mindlessly.

She closed the last few inches of space and he stayed perfectly still. Sam just swept her lips against his. It was barely a kiss, more of the briefest meeting of mouths, but Gabriel's blood was on fire from it. He desperately wanted more; wanted to pillage her mouth and wrap his arms around her and look at her mouth all red and bruised from his kisses and watch her come undone again and again. But he stayed still for now and just let her kiss him and barely kissed her back.

She drew back, then, and looked into his eyes with a small smile. "You wouldn't have. You make me feel safe," she told him.

Gabriel was exhausted by the time that he fell onto his bed later that night. He and Sam had been going through ads all day and they had made plans to go to all of those apartments within the next two days. Which was okay when there were only a few places. But then there were upwards of ten apartments all over the downtown area, it got a little intense. Thank god Bobby came back when he did, or else he would probably still be looking through ads.

Bobby was really good about the whole thing, too. When Gabriel pulled him aside to tell him that he was looking at other places to live, Bobby just gave him a look that said Well no shit ya idjit, I didn't think that you were gonna stay here forever. When Gabriel told him that he was thinking about taking Sam, Bobby gave him a variation of the same look that said Well no shit, ya idjit, she wasn't gonna stay here with me. Gabriel didn't think before that it was a big deal, but after getting that response from him was a huge weight off of his chest.

So, Gabriel was exhausted. All he wanted to do was to take a shower and to lay down and to sleep for a good week. He had just decided to pull his ass off of the bed and was stripping off his shirt to get ready for a shower when he heard a quiet knock on his door.

"Yeah," Gabriel sighed as he turned toward the door and found Sam there in her pajamas. A short, light pink nightgown trimmed in black lace that he had bought her on a whim what seemed like ages ago. Gabriel couldn't breathe for a moment and Sam looked down at the floor before she spoke.

"...I can't stay in my room," she told the floorboards. It was meant for Gabriel, but Sam couldn't bring her gaze to his. Gabriel made his way over to Sam and tilted her chin up to meet his gaze.

"What can I do, Sam?"

Sam tried to look anywhere but Gabriel's eyes. "I was wondering if...could I stay with you tonight? I'll sleep on the floor, I promise not to take up a lot of space-"

"Sam," Gabriel said and Sam stopped and looked to Gabriel's eyes. "It's fine. Of course you can stay with me. And no, you're not sleeping on the floor. I'm going to take a shower, but feel free to curl up in bed, okay?"

She nodded and Gabriel gathered the rest of his clothing and a towel before heading off to the bathroom. He tiredly turned the water on as hot as it would go, stripped off the rest of his clothing and stepped under the scalding hot spray. He hissed as the water hit his skin and slowly sank into the steady stream, allowing his muscles to relax.

As he ran the bar of soap over his body, Gabriel thought about what he was going to do about Sam. He felt strongly for her, but he wasn't necessarily in the right place to start trying to whisk her off her feet. He was, after all, running from is own demons. Between his missing father and his brothers Mike and Rafe who was equal parts controlling, easily enraged and blindly loyal he realized that he needed to split before someone got killed. So he tucked tail and ran; kept his first name and changed almost everything else about himself. He still didn't know if they were looking for him to drag him back into that life that fell apart so long ago, or if they had just given up and assumed him dead.

He stepped under the spray again to rinse the suds from his body and thought about Sam. She was right, she knew nothing about him. But that was the way that he wanted to keep it for now. She was the one that he was worried about, and if she felt safe with the person that he was now, there was no way that he was going to go back to the blindly loyal pathetic person he was before. She was too important to him to lose.

He sighed then and stepped out of the spray and leaned against the shower wall. He didn't want to get out of the shower yet and deal with his life, so he stayed in the sauna that he had created for himself and let his mind wander. Not surprisingly, he thought of Sam. The way that she smiled around him, the way that she wanted to be near him, the thought that she was in his room right now waiting for him to come back...

His dick gave an interested twitch at the thought of Sam waiting in his bed in that tiny nightgown. The way that it would scrunch up her thighs as she slept, the way that the satin clung to her skin...God she was gorgeous in his minds eye, with sleepy eyes and tussled hair.

Gabriel let his fingertips run down his chest slowly and imagined that they were Sam's; imagining that she would smile and feign innocence when he accused her of being a tease. His fingers trailed lightly down his now fully erect dick and started a painfully slow pace. He still thought of Sam; he thought of her hands, then her mouth around his aching cock; she would be tentative at first, but would gain confidence and his pace got faster and faster according to his fantasy. He came with her name on his lips and a groan of satisfaction as he felt the aftershocks run through his body.

After he was sure that he could get his body to function, he turned off the spray (which was now lukewarm at best) and got out of the shower. He toweled off and slipped into a pair of sleep pants and walked out of the bathroom.

Sam was sitting against the far wall of the hallway watching the door intently with a glint in her eyes and a small smirk on her face.