It was a good thing it was a deep couch, because Sam was pretty sure they wouldn't have been able to shuffle around and lie chest to back on anything smaller without one of them falling off.

After the buzzing fog of orgasm faded away, and they were both comfortable, if aching slightly, with Sam's back against the couch cushions and his arm over Gabriel's hip, another silence descended.

"Sam," Gabriel said, at length.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing?"

Sam licked his lips, feeling the silence of the house quietly blanket him, pushing down on him, forcing him to whisper.

"You mean right now, or more in general?"

Gabriel tilted his head to the side so he could see Sam out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't be an ass, I know what we're doing right now, we're spooning. Which I'm not entirely uncomfortable with, and that makes me worry."

"Not a cuddler?"

"Don't change the subject."

Sam smiled, pressing his lips against Gabriel's shoulder, noticing for the first time that he had feathers tattooed across his spine.

"What are we doing?"

"I don't know." Sam moved the hand that was on Gabriel's waist, rubbing his arm instead. "I want to do more of it."

"You do?" Gabriel twisted around, so that he was facing Sam. "Can you promise me something?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how I feel about this. How, I don't want to get attached to you because I can't lose…" Gabriel closed his eyes, took a breath and tried again. "Promise me that, if it gets to a point where it looks like it's either surrender or lose, that you'll make the decision yourself. Promise me you won't ask me to make that choice for you. Because I'll be selfish, and you'll be miserable, and I can't go through that."

A shiver crept across Sam's skin, and he knew it was only partly from the cold air on his naked body. Gabriel stared at him.

"Please. Promise."

"I promise."

Gabriel leant in and kissed him, eyes shut tight. When they parted again, Sam asked the question that had been bugging him for a while.

"What happened to your last fighter?"

"I think we should be at least partially dressed for this conversation." Gabriel pushed himself off of the couch, finding his discarded shorts and jeans. Sam sat up, but didn't follow suit.

"You're going to tell me, though?"

Gabriel pulled his jeans up over his hips and did up the fly.
"Sure. But give me five minutes to cook us up a post-bang brunch, get my thoughts together."

Sam nodded, and retrieved his pants, only flinching for a moment when Gabriel smacked his exposed ass as he left the room.

(-*-)

They stood, leaning against the counters in the kitchen, eating bacon sandwiches. Gabriel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and set down his plate.

"Ok, so my last fighter, before I quit… I probably should have told you this sooner because Dean and Bobby and god knows who else probably knows half the story already… It was about seven years ago. My first ever fighter, the first guy I worked with who got me into the whole thing, he'd died three years beforehand and I was one of the most sought after coaches out there."

"Not to be immodest," Sam quirked an eyebrow.

"It's a fact," Gabriel shrugged. "So anyway. There was this one guy, high school drop-out, steroid-head, wanted to be champion fighter. He went by the name of Thor, and my god, when he fought, he destroyed the competition. And he wanted me as his trainer for the Prize Belt. He was pulling in a thousand bucks a fight, and he wanted to go for the belt. Well, I wasn't going to turn him down, because I figured, if anyone was going to be my champion, it was him."

Gabriel trailed off and started on his sandwich again.

Sam put his plate down on the side, crossing his arms as he did.

"What was he like?"

"As a person? Well the 'roids had him pretty screwed up. He'd be fine like seventy per cent of the time, but he'd get drunk, get angry, get violent. He wasn't a bad person, just got into rages sometimes." Gabriel looked down, laughed, and caught Sam with a wry grin. "Not a patch on your bleeding heart."

Sam smirked back at him, turning around and retrieving two cans of soda from the fridge. He passed one to Gabriel.

"Thanks. So, anyway, the guy gets the go ahead to fight for the Prize Belt and he tells me that he's so hopped up he can't even think straight, so he wants me to make the judgement call about if or when to throw in the towel. And he gets up, and he's up against the reigning champion… Guy who's won every fight for the last fifteen years. Goes by the name of Lucifer, I actually trained him, briefly, before he decided he was too good to be trained… But anyway, Thor gets in the ring, puts up a good fight, but for every punch he throws he gets two times as much hurt dealt back to him. They're both only just hanging in there, and I'm stood there… and I know that if I don't do something, if I don't stop it, he just might die… and I'm thinking, there's the Prize Belt."

Gabriel stared at the kitchen light, as if he was praying for forgiveness from the scuffs on the ceiling. He ran a hand over his face, and closed his eyes.

"The one thing I've never had, the reason I'd been training guys all that time, and I've never been closer to it. And I think, I think if he can just hang in there, just that little bit longer… But he falls. Before I can throw it in, he gets knocked out, Lucifer wins, and me and the medic are rushing him to the hospital. He was in a coma for a week and a half, had to go into rehab so he'd stop taking steroids and could take his pain meds. Turned out, and he never told me about this, but turns out he'd only started taking them in the first place, because… so no-one would notice he was wasting. He was HIV Positive, and he'd gotten hooked on the steroids so he wouldn't… look ill."

"Gabe, man, I'm sorry…"

"He couldn't fight any more. Hell, he couldn't walk. He just sat in a home, used all his money up to put himself in a home for people who are too sick to look after themselves, and he let himself die." Gabriel closed his eyes and bit his lip, tapping his knuckles on the counter.

"Gabe…"

"You have no idea. No… I didn't think anything, after that, I didn't think anything would get me back into this mess. And now you're here, and I like you more than I ever liked him, and… I can't go through that again."

Sam pulled Gabriel into a silent hug.

"I won't let that happen. I won't even go up for the Prize belt, if you don't want me to."

Gabriel wrapped his arms around Sam, resting his head on his chest.

"So are we… are we a thing, now?" Gabriel said, with a sniff. "We've told each other secrets and had sex on a couch, does that mean we're a couple?"

Sam laughed.

"If that's what you need to do to be a couple then I need to reconsider my past relationships. But… let's not be a couple or a thing. Let's just be us."
"Ok," Gabriel nodded, looking up at Sam. "You, uh… you wanna try it on a bed this time?"

Sam looked down at Gabriel, whose cocky grin was firmly back in place. Apparently the emotional moment was over, and Sam barely had time to answer before he was being led up the stairs, his knuckles kissed and his fingers nibbled. He felt he should say something.

"Does this count towards my workout time for today?"