Flipside

Chapter 12 – The Coercion Conundrum

"If I were a boy…"

Dean walked into the room and threw her keys on the counter. "Did you seriously just sing that?"

A clunking sound reverberated through the hotel room as Sam dropped the brush she had been singing into and a dark blush rose to her cheeks as she looked down at Dean from her position atop one of the hotel beds, with scant clothing on besides her white night-shirt and underwear.

"I mean don't get me wrong," Dean continued as she took off her jacket and hung it on the back of one of the hotel chairs, "I respect Beyonce, I do – who wouldn't when she has an ass like that? But If I Were a Boy? Seems a bit ironic even for you."

The younger Winchester lowered herself off the bed and pulled her hair tie off her wrist. "I was bored, okay?" She began to tie her hair up, all the while desperately trying to avoid direct eye contact with Dean.

Dean flopped herself down in the chair she had hung her jacket on. "Yeah, well next time you want to do that at least sing some Van Halen or something. Anyway, Bobby rang me when I was out refuelling baby, said he should arrive here any minute now."

Sam looked at Dean as she pulled her jeans on. "Great, a little warning would have been nice. I'm not exactly ready for someone to walk in the door."

Dean laughed. "Yeah, I saw. Nice underwear by the way, I didn't know you wrote your name on them."

"Haha, very funny." Sam shot Dean glare and picked up her plaid shirt before walking into the bathroom. "Jerk!"

"Bitch!" Dean watched her disappear into the next room before turning her attention to the scratchie she had bought while she was out. Sam didn't like it when Dean needlessly wasted their money on things like this, but Dean didn't care. It was the most positive excitement she got, besides a good meal once and a while, so she was going to indulge. She scratched away the coverings and found that she had won twenty dollars. Not much, but if she was to be honest who ever really won big? She stashed the ticket in her wallet and made a mental note to pull it out next time she went to get gas to claim her prize.

There was a knock at the door and Dean's ears perked like a dog's at the sound. She stood and answered the door to find Bobby, sweating and tired, had arrived like he said he would. "Hey."

"You just gonna make me stand out here in this blistering heat?" Bobby asked, taking his cap off and wiping the sweat from his brow.

Dean stepped aside and let him through just as Sam exited the bathroom. "Oh, hey Bobby. Did you have an okay trip?"

"If you call sweating like a pig and having my brain numbed by extremely boring radio music, then yeah, my trip went just fine." Bobby sat down at the table and inspected the room while Dean and Sam got together their duffle bags.

"We've pretty much dug up all we can so far. Went out and made the proper investigations already, talked to the witnesses, they didn't tell us anything we don't already know – except that a new girl moved to town a few weeks ago and started picking up all the chicks. We think she might be our vampire," Dean explained as she slung her duffle bag over her shoulder.

Bobby nodded. "A lesbian vampire, huh? This job never gets dull."

Dean smirked and picked up her keys. "No, but we have the car trips to make up for that."

Gabriel peered through the window of the empty hotel room. Sam, Dean and Bobby had left a few minutes prior, and the only remnants of their presence were the maps and newspaper clippings pinned to the wall from their research. He sighed and threw a gumball into his mouth. Not only was he becoming a pathetic, hopelessly infatuated dong, but this was also starting to get incredibly boring. He thought the Winchester's would have fought against him more, or at least for a bit longer anyway. Instead they seemed to be determined to get on with their usual routine to spite him – and spiting him they were. They weren't letting him have his way at all. He was just trying to have a little fun, just trying to get a bit of Sam's attention. Was that so bad? Gabriel didn't think so. He didn't see himself as the bad guy - but they did. They always did, despite the fact he had proved to them on multiple occasions that he was just trying to push them in the right direction.

The right direction.

Now there was a laughable concept. Seemed like any direction taken by the Winchester's was inevitably the wrong one: so trying to set them right was redundant. In fact Gabriel was pretty convinced that the only reason they hated him so much was that his good intentions always led them to screw themselves over again - just like everything else did; and it was just so much easier to blame him for their downfalls rather than admit that maybe he was actually right and their screw ups were their own damn fault. I mean, it's not like they tried that hard to avoid screwing themselves over. The concept of self-preservation seemed to be completely lost on the lot of them – and that included Cas. So why was he stuck with the big 'enemy' sign continuously slung around his neck? Why was destiny's hatred of the Winchesters on him? Hate the game, not the player.

Still, for what it was worth they had been pretty tolerant this time around, all things considered. They could have very well thrown the biggest hissy fit in the universe until he got sick of listening to their whining and turned them back. Once upon a time they probably would have, too. However they elected to let him have his way without much fuss, which showed just how much they had matured over the years. Gone were the times of reckless deal making – well, completely reckless deal making anyway – of the Winchesters. Finished were the pointless hours of angsting over blows of fate of which they had little say in and no control. Now they were finally lying in the beds they had made for themselves when they had let their ridiculously attractive faces become infamous amongst the hosts of heaven and hell. Gabriel was just revelling in the aftermath.

So now that Gabriel had justified to himself his innocence and pondered over the Winchester's growth, there was but one unanswered question left on his mind – how was he going to woo Sam? The girl was too smart and too classy for cheap romancing, too disdainful of him to simply talk to and too indifferent to make threats (not that Gabriel would stoop to that level, he was better than that, or he at least liked to think he was). So where did that leave him? At a loss, basically. For once in his life this was a situation that couldn't just be remedied with his angelic powers; for the first time, he was at the mercy of a human. While kind of kinky, it wasn't something he was particularly happy about. The waiting game was one he was loath to play. And waiting guaranteed nothing anyway. The ball was in Sam's court, and Sam didn't even know she had a court or a ball in it for that matter. At this rate, he was going to get nowhere.

"Staring in peoples windows is creepy, even by human standards."

Gabriel turned around and found Cas staring at him with a hard expression. "Leave me alone."

Castiel ignored him and walked forward. "I've told Dean."

"Told Dean what, genius?" Gabriel popped a bubble of gum in Cas face and waited for her to respond indifferently.

"That you want our help to get Sam interested in you. Personally I think this would have been more suited to the cupids but I guess even you have higher standards than those guys." Castiel smiled, for some reason finding her comment about the cupids quite funny.

Gabriel accidentally swallowed his gum in shock. "YOU WHAT? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?"

Cas frowned. "I thought that was what you would want."

A gust of wind rushed between the two angels and ruffled their hair. Gabriel sighed and tucked some of his golden locks behind his ear. "Just because I tell you doesn't mean I want something from you."

"Oh."

"Oh." Gabriel started pacing up and down in front of the window. "You outed me and all you can say is 'oh'. Dean is definitely going to tell Sam, and then what's she going to do? Laugh in my face, probably, or start trying to hit on me so I think she's interested so I'll turn them back, and then as soon as I do drop me like a hot coal."

"Why would Sam do that?" Cas asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Because that's how women work," Gabriel replied, saying it slowly as if this was common knowledge to everyone.

Cas straightened her head and knit her eyes together. "But Sam isn't a woman, you changed her into one. I don't think all women are that shallow anyway, though."

Gabriel stopped and looked at Cas. She was right; Sam was a guy not a woman. "Hmm, I don't know then."

"I haven't exactly got Dean to agree to help yet, but I think I have him at least half-convinced," Cas added.

"And how did you manage to do that?" Gabriel queried, genuinely surprised Cas could even slightly convince Dean to let Sam have anything to do with him.

Cas shrugged nonchalantly. "I have my ways."

Gabriel grinned and laughed. "Oh, I'm sure you do Cas."

"Anyway, I think I have a plan," Cas continued, moving the conversation along.

Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Cas pointedly. "Okay, shoot. I'm all ears."

"Dean, watch out!"

Dean whipped her head around to see the vampire leaping towards her. Clutching the butchery cleaver she had acquired from the kitchen in a moment of desperation, she swung it as hard as she could while squeezing her eyes shut. She felt blood squirt over her face and heard the thud of the girls head hit the floor, followed by a large crash as the body fell after it. Sam gasped as she tried to catch her breath; exhausted from the goose chase she had had with the vampire that had gone around the entire house.

From the corner Bobby got up off the floor and dusted off his vest. The vampire had knocked him unconscious for a few moments while he and Dean had been attempting to tackle it to the ground so it would stop chasing Sam. He saw the head and body and straightened his cap. "Well, are we gonna clean up this mess or leave it for the cops?"

"Leave it for the cops. I'm taking the cleaver though, it's too obvious," Dean said, tucking the weapon into her inner jacket pocket. "We don't need the pigs on us again."

The three hunters quickly retreated from the house. Dean and Bobby went to retrieve the Impala while Sam stayed behind to do once last scope of the place in case they had missed any other vampires that may have been lurking around. Luckily it hadn't been a nest, only a single vampire, but it never hurt to double check. After all, a half-assed job was really a job not worth having done.

As she walked around the side of the house, looking at the bushes in case anything was concealed amongst them, she walked directly into somebody who she hadn't seen. Startled, she jumped back and raised her gun, only to pause and lower it straight after she had done so. "Cas, what are you doing here?"

"I wanted to take you somewhere," Cas said, eyeing the pistol in Sam's hand.

Sam flicked her ponytail over her shoulder behind her back. "Where? And what about Dean and Bobby - how will they even know where we are?"

"You'll find out when we get there, and I left a note on the car for Bobby and Dean. They think I'm taking you to buy dinner." Cas stared unblinkingly at the hunter.

Dean and Bobby would never buy that, and neither did Sam, but she thought she'd play along to see where this was going. "We're going to buy dinner like this?" Sam gestured to her dirty clothes. Cas walked forward and touched her: instantly washing her of the dirt, rips and blood that had covered her a moment before. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"So do I get a say in this?" Sam asked, slipping her gun into its holster.

Cas shook her head. "No, not really." And before Sam had time to object, Cas had pressed her fingers to Sam's forehead and they had vanished, leaving a few kicked up leaves in their wake.

To Be Continued…

Hello!

I just want to let you guys know that in 2 days I am going in for some jaw surgery. While I'm pretty sure it will be quite minor and I'll recover fairly quickly after it's done, I'm giving notice that for the next 2 weeks at least there is a good chance I will not be updating this regularly.

I am not discontinuing the story, nor am I putting it on hiatus. This story has been in progress for quite a long time, through the previous surgery I had about 6 months ago, and I would have completed it sooner had my personal life not been so shaken at the time and my health so critical. In light of this (specifically to those who have been reading from the beginning and have stuck with me through the long gap in between updates during this time) I am going to try my best to see this through to the finish without any more prolonged breaks. However I cannot account for how I will be feeling after the surgery, so I am leaving this authors note as a fair warning that while I fully want and intend to keep updating, there may be unforeseen circumstances in the next few weeks that prevent me from doing so.

Thank you for understanding, my lovelies.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter and hope to see you soon after my surgery!

Amber***