"Hello, kids."

Gabriel watched the Winchester brothers enter the wide room, with his eyes fixed on them. He tilted back in his chair, and his boot scraped along the floor with a shushing sound, and his arms crossed, and he stared at Sam with eyes full of lightning.

Sam looked tired and thin and worn. Drawn. Like a wobbly sketch on translucent paper, with pink cheeks and lank hair.

Gabriel had thought it had been the effects of the whole sacrifice ordeal, before. Thought he only looked sick because he'd been bled and tied down and filled with smoke. Now he realized this was not the case. No, Sam was willowy and purple-eyed and his cheeks were hollowed out and his lips were drier than they ought to have been and he looked a mess with skinny shaking fingers.

"Ga—" Sam frowned. "Loki. Why are you here?" His eyes shone much less inviting than the last time they'd met. Beside him, Dean scowled, protective and fierce and clearly coiled to pounce.

With a shallow sigh—tiny gust of breath from his nose—Gabriel stood.

Behind his little brother, Dean tensed.

"Sam..." Gabe uncrossed and re-crossed his arms. His red shirt creased over his skin, and his jeans felt stiff on his legs. They needed to be cleaned. "Long time no see."

Sam made a strange face, and once he was near enough to the table he sank into a chair with barely trembling legs. "Um... we saw each other pretty recently." He looked far too tired for Gabriel's liking.

"Whatever." Gabriel approached Sam, and waved his hand at Dean—who was orbiting closer with Cas at his heels—dismissively, and leaned on the edge of the table. "I wanna talk to you." He gave Dean a pointed look. "Alone."

Dean rolled his eyes and finally backed off. "You touch him, I kill you. Got it?" His eyebrows shot up and he smiled grimly.

Gabe gave a snort. "Don't worry, Ken doll." He pushed away from the table and settled his hand on Sam's shoulder. "I won't hurt your precious baby boy." He slid his hand down Sam's arm until his fingers could curl around his far-too-narrow wrist and tugged the taller man to his feet. "Promise." So saying, he dragged Sam away. Sam went with no protest. Only a soft breath and a slight stumble.

They fell into the shadows in the back of a long hall with doorways branching into bricked bedrooms, and it was into one of these rooms they slipped. Bare for the most part, with a small photograph of a blue-green eyed blonde woman set on the pillow of the bed. Empty otherwise. Sam grabbed the picture and slipped it into his back pocket and looked at his feet and sat on the bed.

Neither spoke for a few seconds, until Sam opened his mouth and said, "Why are you here?"

"You told me we should meet again." Gabriel frowned. "So... here I am." He did a little twirl, in his dirty clothes, and shoved his hands into his pockets. The cold roundness of his shrunk mask pressed against his knuckles. His face had that calculated composition, with hard lines and tight mouth. Like that time, so many years earlier, in the abandoned warehouse, with artificial rain falling upon him like stardust. And his eyes did what they always did—they showed emotion. And Sam had no clue what emotion it was, only that it was deep and serious and slow-burning and it scared him a little bit. "I thought this was what you wanted, Sam."

Sam covered his mouth and closed his eyes, and breathed through his nose. "...Loki."

"Please, Sam."

"I was confused, last time. Okay?" Sam opened his eyes. They glowed nearly green in the lighting of his room, wide and worn. He swallowed, and his throat moved with it, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. "Drugged, and weak, and full of smoke. I... wasn't in my right mind."

Gabriel glanced to the open doorway. "You said 'yes,' Sam." The door shut with a soft click and a spark. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. "You said 'yes.'"

"I know that, I know and... I just..." Sam gestured lamely.

Gabriel held his hand out, fingers outstretched. "You know I've only asked that question twice in my life?" He smiled. "First to Kali, way back when, trying to save our bacon. It was a joke." He snorted. "Sort of." He raised his head—tilted it back so his throat stretched long and his hair fell away from his face. "And the second time was you, and it was a half-joke then, too, but you went and answered it and you said 'yes'—"

Sam chewed on a thumbnail, nervous. "Gabriel, I—"

"Why'd you have to go and say that, Sam? You weren't supposed to say 'yes,' you were supposed to laugh or push me away in disgust or—I'm just a pathetic... idiot." Gabriel lifted his hands and pressed his palms to his upturned face. "You weren't supposed to say 'yes.'"

Sam stood. "Gabriel, I wasn't lying. But..." He drew closer, so he could almost touch Gabriel. Could hear his breath. "I just can't." He clenched his hand into a fist and looked down at it. "I can't."

"Why?" Gabriel lowered his fingers and his face and met Sam's eyes with a cool gaze, betrayed completely by his eyes. His eyes read as sad and disappointed and a little bit angry.

Breathing slowly and softly, Sam unclenched his hand and held it out, with his scarred palm facing upward to the ceiling. He didn't look away from Gabriel. "I can't forget the things you've done." He reached further and pulled both of Gabriel's much smaller hands into his own and wrapped his fingers tight and broke their linked gazes and studied Gabriel's fingertips.

Gabriel let out a gust of air. "Ah." He shook his head. "That—you're still sore about my practical jokes?" He grinned wide and bitter and it stretched so far as to show his teeth gleaming white and straight.

"That kind of attitude is another reason why I can't."

"Fine." Gabriel pulled his hands away and stepped back, rubbing his mouth. "Fine."

Sam made an aborted attempt to reach out once more, but drew his hand back. "I'm sorry, Gabri—" His jaw clenched. "Loki. Really. I am." He ran both hands back through his hair and it was made evident how much weight he'd lost—how diminished he had become—in the slope of his forehead and the height of his cheekbones and the cut of his jawline.

Gabriel fell very still.

He let out air slow and silent.

Deflated.

"Gabriel."

Sam's eyebrows pinched together. "What?"

"You can call me Gabriel."

"But—"

Gabe's lips twitched into half of a smile.

"I like the way that name sounds on your tongue." He closed his eyes, and seemed small. "It doesn't sound like a dirty word. Or angelic. Or anything. It just sounds... good. For once." He hovered there, in the dim room. And eventually his eyes opened. And they shivered the color of molten tree sap. "For once in my life, when I'm... I just..." He raised a splayed hand and his mouth twisted. Folded his fingers into a fist and spread them again. "Never mind."

Sam watched him slip to the door and out into the hallway, and stood alone in his room.

He looked down at the curved scar across his left palm.

"Someone like me?"

He traced his fingertips along his lifeline.

...

"Chuck." A quiet voice sifted through Chuck's dreams. "Wake up." He grumbled and frowned, and blinked his eyes open to darkness and a slight yellow glow edging the room—the streetlamp outside. He sat up.

"What?"

Michael smiled, and held out a plate piled with eggs and pop tarts. "We made you dinner, with what we could find..." He pressed the platter into Chuck's hands, and it was hot but not too hot to handle, and the eggs steamed with cheese melting on top of them, and the pop tarts' frosting ran. "Lucifer didn't even break anything."

Chuck frowned, bleary. "What did Lu break?"

"Nothing. I said he didn't break anything. Surprisingly." Michael grinned, and settled on the end of the couch. He was careful not to jostle Chuck's feet, and lifted them to sit across his thighs.

Lucifer's head popped round the corner from the kitchen. "I resent that!" He waved a stick of string cheese at them threateningly. He briefly disappeared, and then came out into the living room with a bowl full of yet more eggs and a spoon jammed into his mouth. He threw himself onto the floor in front of the couch and turned the television on with his toe. It crackled and cleared and showed fuzzy cartoons. He leaned back, and his ear barely brushed Chuck's elbow, and he stared at the screen while he shoveled food into his mouth.

Chuck rolled his eyes and ate with Michael watching him.

"Um... aren't you gonna eat?"

Michael twitched. "Hm? No." He shook his head. "I ate the first attempt." His teeth flashed in a grin, and his eyes squinted. "A little blackened but not too terrible." He glanced down at his hands.

Chuck laughed—not a giggle, not nervous, just... subdued and pleased.

Michael's thumb moved in rings against his shin.

Chuck ignored the soft buzz in the back of his head, of things to come that didn't affect the Winchesters. Ignored the things that would happen to him very soon, because he preferred a pleasant surprise to the anticipation of knowing how and what would happen but never precisely when. Only smiled to himself, and picked at his eggs, and enjoyed the warmth of Michael's legs under the backs of his ankles.

When he finished, he tapped Lucifer's head with the plate. "Would you please put this in the sink, Lu?"

"What am I, your maid?" Lucifer scowled, but he dragged himself to his feet and snatched the platter away. Disappeared from the room with silent footsteps.

Chuck watched him leave, and then scooted forward a bit and leaned closer to Michael, to whisper in his ear, "He's surprisingly obedient."

Michael tilted his face so that his cheek accidentally bumped Chuck's nose. "My brother harbors a weakness for the fallen and wounded." His mouth curved in a gentle smile. Beatific, even. As cliché as the term is. Chuck's eyes were drawn to it, as Michael spoke. "He is truly much kinder than he would have you believe. Despite his rare violent outbursts."

"Yeah." Chuck's voice dropped, at the memory. He became hyper-aware of his still-healing cut. "Yeah, I guess that's true. Listen, uh..." He glanced past Michael, to the kitchen doorway. It stood black and empty, with the sounds of clattering dishes sifting through. "Thanks for dinner." He twitched out a smile, and as the water went off in the kitchen, he took a breath, and shifted a hair closer, and pressed his lips to the corner of Michael's mouth—tentative but firm and very sweet and chaste. And he pulled away as Lucifer reentered the room, and lay back down against the arm of the couch.

Michael licked his lips. He stared at Chuck for a moment, then smiled and looked away.

"I saw that." Lucifer dropped down to the floor again. "And I'm just going to say right now—Not fair. I asked first."

Chuck scoffed. "Excuse me?" He sat somewhat more upright to look down at Lucifer, and pulled a face. "You propositioned me, after backhanding me!" He shook his head. "I'm not obligated to do a damn thing for you, anyway."

"Yeah, yeah." Lucifer tilted his head back, resting against the couch cushion, and met Chuck's eyes. His expression was calm and a little amused and strangely soft. "I'm still jealous." He winked, and returned his attention to the TV. As though on a whim, as a last thought, he muttered, "And I didn't mean to lose my temper, when I hit you."

Chuck snorted, and closed his eyes. "Is that a real apology I detect?"

"Shut up."