Chapter 21: A Feast for Crows
Academics had never been Gabe's forte. He'd bounced between schools too much to be bothered to keep up with the curriculum, and of the teachers that did try to help catch him up, many found him too hyper and flighty to keep focused for long. As such, Gabe held a disdain for schools; high schools in particular. They were the dreariest places to be and the freshest in his memory.
It was hard to believe that Sam came out of a school that looked a step away from a penitentiary with all his compassion intact, but it wasn't so hard to believe that Southview High held the dishonorable title of being a serial killer's dumping grounds.
"It's downright spooky, isn't it?" Donna asked when she met him by the main doors, leading him through the winding, locker-lined hallways that were only partially lit. It didn't escape his notice that they were going in the opposite direction from the trophy room where Mitchell had been found.
"Straight from a horror movie," Gabe agreed, eyes fixed firmly ahead. Looking into the classrooms would only remind him of sitting at creaky desks with nothing but his mind and whatever window was available to occupy him.
At the back of the building, a single flight of stairs was fully lighted and teemed with personnel. Gabe took a glance at the sign by the door and arched an eyebrow.
"The roof?"
"Three flights of stairs await us," Donna sighed, put out, "I hope you didn't eat too recently. This one's different from the rest."
Gabe thought of his date earlier that night with Sam. He could barely remember what he ate, but everything about Sam was vividly etched in his memory. He'd been the best part of the night, and now he was somewhere out there with his knuckle-headed brother, walking the fine line of legality and gathering a collection of bruises that would bloom in the morning.
Sam deserved better than nights full of rushing around for the type of information that loved to slip through sieves, but he was in too deep now to get out even if he wanted to. The dreams he had were proof of that and the signs of Yellow Eyes in the basement…
"Nah, I'll be fine," he replied, bracing himself for a gory scene. Head in the game, and not on Sam.
The raucous cries of crows greeted him along with a stiff wind at the top. They cawed indignantly, wheeling overhead on the off chance that they might be able to take up where they left off before their dinner had been interrupted. Most, however, clung to the edges of the roof, settling in to glare balefully at the people swarming about and the floodlights that lit up every crack and peeling stretch of the roof.
Hoffman laid further towards the end of the roof, some feet away from a vent that would've served as a windbreak if he'd been left closer to it. The killer clearly didn't care how long he was preserved for, and it became clear why as a sickly-sweet smell wafted towards them. Decomposition; a rarity on a case where the bodies had so far been drained of blood and frozen.
The FBI will eat this up. They're always waiting for anomalies like this.
"God I hate them," Jody said when Gabe finally got to the center of the action. Her back was to the body in favor of scowling at the crows, who ignored her disapproval with avian grace.
"You can't fault them for being opportunists," he replied. Crows were an animal that he saw a lot of his past in, and he'd never minded them, bad omens or otherwise.
However, he could fault them for doing a number on Hoffman. Forensics would have a field day with all the cross-contamination due to the birds and the open environment, and the M.E with the fine, precise slices that had opened his skin up in enough places to be disturbing. Gabe could already tell by the discontented faces of the techs that they weren't pleased at all with this newest addition to The Crucifier's victims.
"Theory is that the killer sliced him postmortem so he would attract, um, animals quicker," Donna said queasily, standing outside of the tape. Her pallid complexion appeared downright ghostly in the harsh lighting.
"Explains why he's not tidier like the first few," Gabe said, wrinkling his nose at the thick stench of rot. Hoffman must've died shortly after being snatched from his apartment for him to have decomposed this much, and he'd bet money that it'd been from whacking his head on the windowsill in the struggle. He'd never stood a chance.
So, did the killer leave him here out of anger because he didn't have a chance to manipulate his body the way he wanted? Or was this planned?
"FBI is waiting back at the station, making calls to have their equipment and facilities made available to us. LPD gets the first crack at the scene since he got some of our own," Jody explained as he circled the body, careful to watch the markers set out by the techs.
"I thought it was odd I didn't see fed jackets swarming around. How's the station handling it?" Gabe asked, doing his best to be tactful. Police didn't take kindly to the execution of their own, much less multiple officers lost in one fell swoop to a deranged serial killer.
"Things are…tense," Donna said carefully after exchanging a loaded look with Jody, whose face darkened before she strode off to talk with some of the other techs in an attempt.
Gabe sighed, running his hand through his hair before squatting down and contemplating the remains with an out of focus gaze. This high up, with the dark and light so out of balance, it was as if he was on a one-man island with only a picked at corpse for company.
"All that trouble he went through to get Hoffman, and it ends like this," Gabe mused aloud, looking past the graying flesh and to whatever might lay underneath for clues. "Left for the crows, and with only one phrase too."
In another turn from the established pattern, the killer had written in English with spray paint Gabe was sure he'd filched from somewhere within the school. He could see where the wind had blown some of the paint in meandering droplets, and the speed in the sloppy letters.
MY NAME IS DEATH.
"Your partner was right," Donna said when Gabe backed away from Hoffman to get the whole view with the message. "He doesn't take too kindly to the nickname the press keeps running."
"Among other things," he added, scratching the stubble on his jaw, "He's angry all around. Hoffman died too soon for him to stage the way he wanted, but he couldn't dump him just anywhere. It needed some flair, some effort on his part. Three stories high at his old high school solves that problem."
"And not using Enochian?" Donna asked.
Gabe shrugged helplessly. That deviation concerned him the most out of everything. Hoffman's unceremonious dumping was easily explainable with some thought, but he'd barely touched upon the killer's reasoning for using Enochian. It was all well and good to hypothesis potential religious reasons or that he got off on forcing them to pay attention by using an archaic language, but Gabe instinctively knew that his knowledge of the language could aid in proving a sounder explanation. It was out of selfishness (and maybe a bit of old cowardice) that he hadn't said anything about it through the whole case.
Somehow, he'd have to come clean, but Gabe had no clue how to go about dropping hints that Enochian had a whole double history that the killer could have been made privy to. He already had to deal with the fact that he had a potential suspect he couldn't drop the name of without landing a lot of people in legal hot water.
"It could be anything. Maybe he thought Hoffman didn't deserve it, or he just forwent it to save time," Gabe tossed out to buy himself some breathing room.
Too many things were colliding at once, and he was having a hard time trying to follow where each thread went. One wrong word to the wrong person, and it was all over.
Gabe moved to the edge of the roof, crossing his arms and leaning on the railing to look out over the array of flashing lights below. The crows scooted over obligingly, if a bit suspiciously when he did nothing to make them go away.
"How much do you trust my expertise, Donna?"
He hadn't meant to ask the question, but when it slipped out, it didn't feel as awkward as it could've.
Donna moved to mirror his position about a foot away, close enough that her blond ponytail whipped at the side of his face in the wind.
"You've never led us wrong before. It's always been on the LPD when we don't follow through on your advice."
Gabe side-eyed her with thinly veiled disbelief. Donna had always been one of the kinder and more trusting of the detectives, never taking it badly when he sometimes butted in on cooling cases. Such frank words that painted the LPD out in a negative light were completely out of the blue though.
"It's like with the manholes. We've got people canvassing all the previous crime scenes for nearby escapes through them, and the results only support your theory," she said wryly, rapping her fingers idly and drawing a hollow sound from the rail that made the crows skitter away. "So, lay it out for me. What're your thoughts?"
"He's officially devolving. He tied up the officers at the WM library when he snatched Olsen, but killed 3 to get to Hoffman? Erratic behavior and even more illogical moves will come on his part, which will lead to a serious slipup; more than even this," Gabe said, jerking his head back at Hoffman, "Hell, he could be spotted by a witness or caught on a functional camera. Also, whatever profile the FBI comes up with will be better than anything the LPD comes up with, and the department is gonna have to swallow that pill sooner rather than later."
"You mean Bela."
"Tomato, to-mah-to," Gabe waved off, which earned him a faint smile.
"Jody feels responsible," Donna sighed, "She feels like she has to be invincible because so many people look up to her, and when things don't go right…"
She trailed off. Behind them, they could hear Jody barking out orders, keeping the crime scene going before they inevitably had to start packing it up.
"Their deaths weren't her fault. If we're going to blame anything besides the killer, blame the bureaucratic nonsense that led up to that situation," Gabe said decisively.
"I know. I just wish she knew too. She can be so damn hardheaded," Donna frowned before looking up with wide eyes, "But don't tell her I said that!"
Gabe snickered and crossed his heart with a wink, looking back down at the parking lot. Enough police lights lit up the school grounds that even from up here, he could make out all he needed to.
One particular van turning into the school caught his eye. The dish on the top gave away its status as a news van, something that shouldn't have been possible. Gabe had just gotten the call himself less than an hour ago, and all communications on the serial killer case were on stringent limitations.
There's Lawrence-brand journalism, and then there's that.
"I don't want to be the bearer of bad news," he started slowly, watching as it parked sloppily by the curb, "But you've got a leak in the department."
His announcement drew some attention to the street below. Jody was the first at the rail with a curse.
"I told people that we had a leak, but since I'm the one that likes reporters the least, people chalked it up to my bias. And now look where we are," she grumbled, shaking out two Advil and dry swallowing them with resignation. "I bet its Channel 3, or maybe 6."
One of the crows cawed and shook out its wings. Jody made a face at it before straightening out her crumpled blazer beneath her open winter coat. Even with the obvious signs of fatigue, she still managed to exude a forthright attitude that would pick up well on camera.
"Best to bite the bullet now. Donna, radio down and tell them we'll run interference on them. Let's get this scene processed!"
Everyone hustled back into action. Gabe took one last look at the corpse that the crows still waited on before making his exit, assuring Jody and Donna he'd reconvene with them at the station.
Back in his car, Gabe let out the yawn he'd been holding back, vigorously scrubbing his face with icy fingers. Coffee was in order, but at this hour, nothing would be open save for some convenience stores, and once upon a time, the Roadhouse.
Gabe grimaced as he started the car and cranked the heat up. The Dead Eyes would pay for that somehow. He may have been overly partial towards it because of Sam, but Gabe genuinely believed there'd been no other place like it in Lawrence.
He texted Sam before slipping out of the lot as subtly as he could (driving a yellow Beetle had its cons). Gabe was displeased, but not surprised to find that he was already engaging in activities he didn't approve of. At least he was certified to run around questioning suspicious people as long as they were willing to provide answers; Sam had no authority besides the fucked up moral code his father had instilled in him.
The emptiness of the 7/11 wasn't surprising when he stepped in and neither was the channel the TV mounted up on the wall next to the counter.
"…tensions are rising along with the temperatures as another day passes with The Crucifier on the loose. Authorities say that they're now working in conjunction with the FBI to form a specialized task-force…"
The time on the bottom header of the channel revealed it was a rerun of that morning's broadcast, which the cashier addressed when Gabe paid for his coffee with what had to be a tired and befuddled expression.
"All people care about is the news now, especially if it's on that psycho running around," they said through a jaw cracking yawn, "Management has us running it 24/7 now. You get used to it after a while."
Adaptability. It was a feature every major city had because, without it, they would've never become a city in the first place. The main reason why Gabe hopped around between so many of them was that they were the only places he felt completely welcomed. Smaller places viewed a nomadic P.I with scorn, but a city had room for everyone and cared for none of their comings and goings. Gabe could leave without offending anyone or leaving behind much a mark outside of the cases he solved, and the city would be alright without him.
But that wasn't the case with Lawrence. He'd become critical to the investigation; the sole link between the legal side of it and the vigilantism being conducted in the background. Lawrence would notice his absence if he left, and the thought made Gabe's shoulders itch.
He'd never lived somewhere that would miss him before.
Gabe took halting sips of the scalding coffee at traffic lights, making his way downtown at an uncharacteristically slow pace. Getting back to the station promptly wasn't his prerogative tonight; not when interagency social charades and mountains of information like transcripts from the tip hotline awaited to be sifted through.
Sam had a point earlier. I do a lot for them considering they've been stingy with my commission on this case.
His phone rang-far too common a sound nowadays-but the ringtone wasn't any of the usual ones. It was the default setting for unknown numbers or those he simply hadn't bothered to save, which happened with all the cases he took on sometimes.
Gabe fumbled for it, cursing his career's necessity to always pick up a phone call and his prickling shoulders.
"Hello?"
"Still a night owl, Gabriel?"
If it weren't for the red light, Gabe would've careened into a curb at the sound of the voice at the other end. Luckily, the worst he did was hit his arm on the steering wheel in a knee-jerk reaction of surprise that somehow didn't send coffee everywhere.
"I'm sure it pains you to lose your beauty sleep calling me at this hour," he replied, tone as even as he could make it. No wonder it felt like fire ants were crawling down his back.
"It does, but we must all make our sacrifices."
"You said you'd only call if there was trouble, Balthazar," Gabe said, staring at the red glow cast on the asphalt from the light. He was the only one at the intersection, only heightening the exposed feeling the call gave him. If he looked too hard at the shadows, Gabe knew he'd see the paranoid swirling of runes.
"I did," Balthazar sighed, and sounded truly regretful as he continued, "And I still abide by that promise. Trouble's heading your way, old friend."
Gabe shut his eyes, absorbing the news he knew deep down would come, one way or another. Perhaps he'd always known it would play out like this.
At 18, he'd set out to explore his past, starting with the note in Enochian that had been written alongside the other missive left with him at the church. Gabe knew from his first perusal of his file as a child that it was more than strange that he could not only read the supposedly indecipherable note but that he could speak and write it with scarcely a second thought. Gabe had no knowledge of the language beyond the history alluded to in the note-not even its name- but there was a power to it he couldn't deny, and that power unnerved him.
Balthazar was the only person he'd found at the end of the trail. It was a stroke of luck he'd even found him at all, as he'd been adopted by a French couple who'd promptly taken him out of America to galivant across the European landscape. Despite the wildly different paths their lives had taken them down, both shared a common starting point. Their stories began at a church with dual notes and spanned a lifetime marked by odd occurrences, with every chapter written in Enochian.
"Where are you?" he asked, shoving the shock down to process later.
"Sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow. Dreadfully boring," Balthazar replied, "Do you know how many flights I have to make to get to Kansas? I'll have bags on top of my already existing undereye bags when I reach the little metropolis you've decided to make your stand on."
"You shouldn't come all this way," Gabe said, laughing helplessly at the image of lavish and ludicrous Balthazar with an expensive sleep mask already waiting across his forehead.
"I'm already halfway through this journey. Originally flew out from Moscow when I realized what you've been getting up to. I thought you'd have run by now."
Hide, or run.
It was the two choices they'd been left with what felt like a lifetime ago. They'd parted for a reason and hadn't kept much contact since. A wandering lifestyle didn't make it easy to send holiday cards, and neither of them was great at keeping attachments.
"I can't," Gabe said, the light finally turning green, "I've got too much here. Too many people need me."
Balthazar tsked, but didn't remark on the overt sappiness of his response. Knowing him, he probably already had a solid idea of the specifics and had made his judgments and accepted the situation for what it was. Balthazar was a methodical man beneath the trust-fund baby personality he fronted and had back up plans for his backups.
"You sound like a far cry from the fresh-faced lone wolf I had the questionable pleasure of knowing."
Gabe snorted, lead foot pushing the Beetle past the speed limit to match the stressed racing of his heart. He would've been more critical of his immediate inclination toward panic if it weren't for the faint tremor in Balthazar's voice.
He calls it work and educational travels, but he's been on the run longer than me.
"I did some growing up," he professed, hoping that refining his career skills and learning the ways of the world counted. "Sounds like you did too if you're risking eye bags to assist my sorry ass. How much have your informants told you?"
Balthazar sniffed delicately. "My informants painted out the broad picture I requested. I know the factions at play and the stakes. Your personal life, on the other hand, is a mystery."
"Just as it should be. How bad is it?"
"Well," Balthazar sighed, "The metaphor that comes to mind is a keg. The fuse has been lit, and just about all of it has burned. However, instead of getting far, far away from it, you are sitting on it and I'm the bomb squad coming to the rescue that didn't even finish training."
"There's no manual on this sort of thing, so cut yourself some slack. Besides, you've taught yourself pretty well," Gabe shrugged blasely. His attitude towards Enochian, when he wasn't scared by the repercussions of it, was one of nonchalance that irked Balthazar.
"I suppose. But if I'm riding to the rescue, I should be prepared in some fashion, so I'll have to make some pitstops," Balthazar said firmly, "Now, I must go. Hopefully, this airline has a decent variety of liquor."
"Have a nice flight, Balthie!" Gabe enthused with fake cheer before hanging up and tossing the phone over his shoulder with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere too deep to be anatomically labeled.
Shit.
…
Teamwork did not, in Gabe's opinion, make the dream work.
He groaned, dropping his head into his folded arms to muffle the thunk. Not that anyone would've noticed if he'd cracked his skull open on the conference table; dear Bela was getting into it with the FBI once more, and their voices were rising loud enough that curious graveyard shift officers were craning their necks to look through the half-opened blinds.
I'd rather be talking to Sam, or even Balthazar than be here, he thought tiredly, checking the time on his phone(was it that late already?) and looking at the vacant space where notifications should have been.
The trance-like state Balthazar's call had put him in dissipated like gossamer in a hard wind when Gabe had entered the station. Stepping in sunk him straight into a dizzying stream of information imparted on him while simultaneously fielding questions lobbed at him left and right. There was no time to worry about Balthazar's impending presence and what it meant for him when he had to be caught up on every legal aspect of the case.
He'd been briefed on the news leak and the most tenacious reporters (a work in progress, but they'd concluded the leak didn't come from dispatch) and the mind-boggling fact that Enochian graffiti was slowly but surely being covered up by an unknown third party. The only reason they even knew where some had once been was thanks to the list Garth and Zeke had complied was felt like a century ago. Castiel's apartment was deemed safe by the LPD, and there were talks of bringing him onto the taskforce as well. Funerals for Wilkes and Mitchell were supposed to be held in a few days (Reynolds and Cork had been cremated) and the press coverage on Mitchell specifically had everyone convinced the killer might show up to pay his twisted respects.
But most importantly-at least at that moment for Gabe-was the strange fact that the officers sent out to the history building had found nothing suspicious in the subbasement besides potential code violations.
"There was nothing there?" he asked Garth, who knew the cops sent out and had stuck around to personally deliver the news after they'd finished their shift.
"Nada," Garth confirmed, hands shaking from a caffeine overload around what was one cup too many of it, "Don't get me wrong, they were creeped out, but there was nothing extra creepy."
Gabe filed the information away for later. Either Hannah lied and somehow managed to fool Sam "I have a built-in lie detector" Winchester, or someone had tidied the house up expecting visitors.
He still needed to sit down and work out the timeline once the techs finished processing the scene, but Gabe suspected that it hadn't been the killer. Even with shortcut tunnels running beneath Lawrence, how could he have set up Hoffman across town and gotten back to clean up after himself?
That only left one feasible option, and more often than not, the simplest solution ended up being the correct one.
"An accomplice," Gabe murmured to himself, "Something that's not in any of the profiles drafted up."
A slim possibility wasn't an impossibility. Just slim, and Gabe considered himself a master at chasing the thinnest leads to find the answers he sought.
So, work out the timeline, and figure out if the partner thing happened recently, or has been a thing this whole time.
"-there's no way anyone that young is running rings around us!"
"It's perfectly plausible if we account for the almost certain fact that he has a healthy dose of madness fueling him-"
"Oh, almost…"
"Put me out of my misery," Gabe groaned.
"Put me out of mine first," Jody countered, rubbing her stiff neck with a wince beside him. She'd the first to tap out of the discussions when they began to devolve into debates, taking the opportunity to catch Gabe up on the finer details and inform him that there'd been some headway on The Roadhouse case.
She'd also slipped him the file and told him that there would be no more files coming from her, because she wasn't his filing cabinet, dammit. Gabe nodded solemnly and made a note to buy her some nice coffee grounds at some point to thank her for going against her law-abiding moral code so much.
"I'll do it for both of you and then take myself out," Donna said decisively, materializing behind them with a box of files that gave Gabe a headache just looking at them.
"But then how will I get my paycheck?" Gabe asked, sitting up dramatically and spinning in the office chair to face the detective duo.
"You don't. But at least you don't have to deal with all of this anymore," Jody replied, taking the box from Donna and setting it on the table, "Someone has to get them in check though…"
"Use your outside voice," Gabe suggested, which got him an eye roll but kept Jody standing on her feet to get the rest of the room's attention.
"Can we stop the pissing contest and continue working before someone gets Billy in here?"
Bela shut up at that, and even Agent Smith looked wary at the mention of Reaper. Gabe didn't blame him; Billy was a force of nature and a half step away from being chief interim. She'd have all their hides before they could point fingers and then be on her merry way.
"Now, I know the interpersonal dynamic in here is…less than compatible," Jody said, mincing words as best she could, which wasn't much when she didn't mince them much to begin with. "But it would be nice to have something solid before I go crash on an LPD cot and throw out my back. I mean, for Christ's sake, Milton has made the biggest contributions to the case all day, and he's not even trained for this!"
Gabe didn't know how she made that sound like an insult and compliment all in one, but he got Jody's point, and it seemed the others did judging by the array of ashamed faces and averted eyes.
"So, let's get down to business and summarize what we have. Michael, if you would?"
Agent Arch-or Michael as he insisted they call him about a half-hour after they all shut themselves up in the conference room- moved from the water cooler to the head of the table to speak. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his suit jacket shed some time ago, leaving him looking strangely vulnerable despite the shoulder holster he wore.
He didn't say anything new for a bit. The Crucifier shouldn't be referred to by that moniker anymore; unsub should be substituted whenever possible and especially when talking to reporters. Cops should be on the lookout of calls made to rougher areas of Lawrence. The killer was devolving, which meant an end in sight, but also made the profiles drawn up possibly less accurate. Arguments flared up a bit when Michael hit that talking point, but Jody shut it down quickly with many fierce glares and thumps of her empty coffee mug.
Gabe dozed through it all, Sam's face swimming in and out of his mind's eye. He wanted to call him to see how everything was going but didn't want to break what appeared to be intentional radio silence. For all he knew, a call or text could expose Sam in a risky situation, and Gabe refused to do that.
"The FBI will be handling the evidence found in connection to the shootout the unsub potentially staged. Our labs can trace the drug, which will free up the LPD's to focus on other matters."
Now, that's interesting.
Gabe cracked open a curious eye. What Michael said with a charming, but neutral face was true to an extent, but the gangs were all local. The only way the FBI could have jurisdiction was if they had an open case somewhere in relation to the LPD's, but since they were here on serial killer business, he'd phrased it as a favor to the LPD so minimal eyebrows were raised.
Clever, Gabe thought, watching Michael smile and gesture at all the right times while his partner snored in a chair, Does the FBI already have an investigation underway for demon blood?
The drug had to have come from somewhere, and with how potent it was, it couldn't stay under wraps for long. With all the resources the FBI had, Gabe wasn't surprised that they could be here to kill two birds with one stone. However, it only made things complicated when one factored in the growing possibility that the FBI might be angling to keep the LPD away from the drug investigation entirely. Why else would Michael be so vague about it?
But why would they do that?
It hit Gabe when Bela cut Michael off (for the thousandth time that night) and a brief, but genuine look of irritation crossed the face of an agent who had been nothing but affable at best and mildly stoic at worst.
The FBI thinks the LPD is incompetent.
From the FBI's perspective, the LPD's track record wasn't very illustrious. Yellow Eyes was their biggest failure, and the high crime rate didn't endear them anymore to the feds. Of course, twenty years could change a lot, so the FBI had come in with relatively open minds. They'd sent a paper pusher and an optimistic agent, both with high tolerances for bullshit for very different reasons.
But people like Bela had soured their opinion, and all respect was lost. The LPD's finest were gathered in this room, and Agent Smith was sleeping deeply enough that it would take the Devil himself to wake him.
They hadn't come anticipating the presence of demon blood, but now that it was in town, the FBI would quietly seize control and set down stakes. It was bad enough the LPD had fumbled this case for as long as they had; the FBI wouldn't let them bungle something as large-scale as a drug operation.
Looking around at the tired faces around the table, Gabe had to admit that in their shoes, he wouldn't either. There were a few good apples like Jody and Donna on the force, but they'd just taken a hard hit. They were stretched thin as it was, and Gabe didn't think that the corruption that had skewed Mary Winchester's case twenty years ago had magically fixed itself. Someone was leaking information to the news, and where there was smoke…
"Milton…Gabriel, wake up."
Gabe jolted, nearly smacking Jody in the face with a flailing arm. He'd dozed again and hadn't even realized it.
"Dammit Milton-"
"Sorry," Gabe apologized before she could really get going, glancing around the room. People had dispersed to achieve tasks, leaving him with the detective duo and a still sleeping Agent Smith.
"Go home, Gabe. We'll call you if anything develops on our end," Donna said kindly, "Michael didn't assign you anything on account of your payroll situation. He's very understanding for a federal agent."
"Have they still not processed it?"
"It got lost somewhere in the system. I think Billy's just going to draft up a new form and stamp it herself in the morning," Jody admitted.
"At least I can sleep in when I get home," Gabe yawned, standing to stretch himself awake, "What are you two up to?"
"We've been sent out to the university. It's his hotspot, and the FBI is convinced there's got to be something on campus that'll point us in the right direction," Donna replied, "I overheard you talking to Garth. We'll see if we can find an opportunity to check out that subbasement."
"If you tell us why it's so important," Jody added with an expectant look.
"Fair enough," Gabe sighed before launching into a highly summarized version of how Hannah stumbled into the basement and then sought him out. He paused before telling them about the shrine-he hadn't told the patrol cops that-but decided that he had to if he was going to send them into what sounded like a watery hellhole.
"Castiel's sister… is she anything like him?" Donna asked while Jody grumbled about Yellow Eyes and freaky serial killer fangirl attitudes under her breath.
Gabe nodded vigorously, and the two detectives looked at each other before coming to a silent consensus.
"Mr. Novak doesn't use hyperboles. If she laid it out like that, then she saw what she saw," Jody said confidently, "And yet the cops didn't see anything…either way, we're on it."
"After we make a little side quest," Donna corrected with a sly look at her partner.
"Side quest?"
Jody glanced at Agent Smith before jerking her head towards the door. Gabe followed them out, interest piqued by her secretive behavior.
She didn't speak until they reached the office she shared with Donna at the far end of the bullpen. Despite her status as head detective, it was barely bigger than a shoebox and had a wheezy air vent that she put a work order in for once a month with little success.
"The FBI "taking care" of the drug analysis for the LPD is nice and all, but it's also suspicious as hell," Jody said, drawing the blinds of her sole window shut, "Don't touch my coffee pot, Milton."
"Didn't even look at it," Gabe replied, snatching his hand away from the tiny Mr. Coffee machine sitting at the junction of the L the detectives' desks made.
"We're going to make a pit stop at the interrogation rooms. We know they managed to catch a couple of Dead Eyes at the scene, but not a single member of the Vipers," Donna said.
Gabe smirked. "So you're saying they…slithered away-ow!"
He rubbed the back of his head and pouted at Jody, who only made a show of checking her fingernails.
"We don't necessarily want to take whatever case may be brewing from them, because we have enough on our plate as it is," she explained, "We just want to know what they're going to be doing in Lawrence, that's all."
"And without altering them that you're onto them," Gabe concluded.
"Exactly. We just want your discretion on our secret objective."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Gabe said, shrugging his shoulders, "Drugs? Never even heard of them. My body is a temple. I've never even had caffeine-ouch!"
"You're a good man, Milton," Jody said, leaning back on her desk and ignoring his half-hearted grumblings, "An idiot, but a decent man, nonetheless. Go home."
"You don't have to tell me twice," he replied, skedaddling before Jody could land a third chiding slap to the back of his poor head.
On the way out, he passed the conference room. Agent Smith had miraculously woken and vanished, no doubt shadowing Michael and fending off more attacks from disgruntled detectives.
If he'd even been asleep at all.
Gabe wouldn't put it past him. Old agents like him didn't learn new tricks, and faking sleep was one of the oldest in the book.
The bureaucratic noose hanging around his neck was growing tighter with every day that passed by, and Gabe knew that once the FBI launched a full investigation into demon blood, there'd be no more room left to breathe.
…
From the side and cloaked in shadow, Sam painted a dangerously hot picture leaning against the Impala. For a brief second, Gabe could indulge in a fantasy that Sam was whole and well, come back intact from a pleasant and fight-free talk with Gordon and whatever else he'd done that night to surprise him at his place with a set of wheels to complete the package.
However, the illusion shattered quickly when he pulled up alongside him and the forming bruises and blood smears came into full view.
"Christ, you look like shit," Gabe blurted out before immediately wincing.
Very smooth. At this rate, I'll be digging my own relationship grave.
"Worried about my pretty face?" Sam teased; lopsided smile made even more so by the red swelling high on one cheek. He didn't look pulverized, but he'd taken some hard hits for sure.
"Worried about your entire body," Gabe grumbled, slamming the car door shut behind him. "Did Gordon have friends or something?"
Sam winced as he looped an arm around his waist, but before Gabe could pull back and apologize (if anyone had kicked Sam while he'd been down on the ground, Gabe would hunt them down himself), he leaned in, draping an arm over his shoulders and accepting the support.
"Not exactly. Should I start with the fact that he was dead when we got there, or that the King of Hell is now trying to hire us?"
Gabe nearly dropped Sam in his shock, mind catching on all the bad buzzwords in the single question.
"Dead?"
The hike from the parking garage to the elevator that would deposit them as close to his apartment as possible by Sam's concise retellings of how he'd gone to a shady motel and ended up encountering the King of Hell and a very dead Gordon. The jumping was merely an interlude in Sam's perspective, and he interrupted himself regularly to reassure him that the other guys looked worse, which only made Gabe worry more.
The worry only increased when Sam described the Enochian on the walls and Gordon's burned out eyes. Gabe was sure he started sweating when Sam scoffed at Crowley's weird obsession with Enochian. Despite the sluggishness that was beginning to tug on his bones and nag at him to collapse in a bed, Gabe knew he was looking at a 2+2 equation, and the result was coming up 4 no matter how much he didn't like it.
It was official. Gabe would have to tell Sam that he'd lied the whole time about knowing Enochian and that he'd gone so far to hide his secret that he'd dragged Castiel, an innocent academic that couldn't differentiate between a pistol and revolver to save his life, into the whole affair. If he'd fessed up earlier, Dean and Castiel could've been in far less precarious positions.
Or if I had run as soon as I'd seen that lecture hall. But Cas would've gotten involved anyway since someone would've found out he was an Enochian expert. Right?
Gabe swallowed back a surge of stomach-churning nausea. How much of this was he responsible for?
"Hey," Sam said quietly, breath ghosting over his ear as he squeezed his shoulder, "Your aura is all wonky. What's on your mind?"
My aura. Of course. He's seen it since the moment he met me.
The knots twisting up Gabe's stomach dropped away, leaving behind a strange sense of relief. Sam could've said something at any point in their relationship, but he'd chosen not to. That meant that he wasn't mad about it.
Right?
"Why didn't you say anything when I lied about knowing Enochian?" Gabe asked, eyes fixed on the floor numbers inching upward. Just because he was mostly positive Sam wasn't upset about didn't make it a certainty.
"It wasn't my place to ask when I first met you. I knew you weren't the killer, and I knew that it probably had something to do with your past."
"But I lied to you," Gabe insisted (just to make sure).
"To protect your secrets. I've never held it against you," Sam replied easily, leaning against the elevator railing and tugging him along.
"I can't keep this secret anymore," Gabe confessed, grimacing at the blood splattered on the collar of Sam's shirt. "There's no more time. I should've said something earlier, but-"
The doors dinged open. Gabe shut his mouth with an audible click and shook his head, pulling Sam back up.
"Are you in danger?" Sam asked, sounding ready to fight in an instant despite the fact he'd already been through enough for the night.
"Not exactly…Sam, why do you have a knife in your boot?"
Gabe unlocked his front door with muscle memory, too busy watching with a mixture of exasperation and interest as Sam made a show of twirling the blade.
"They're handy. Let me in first," he said, back ramrod straight and eyes as sharp as the blade in his hand. In a matter of seconds, Sam had somehow gone from exhausted to taut alertness.
"But I'm not in danger right now-dammit Sam!"
He slipped through before Gabe could grab the back of his jacket, leaving him standing with the keys in his hand and a weirdly fond feeling sitting in his chest.
Oh, God. I have an overprotective idiot for a boyfriend.
"Of all the hare-brained and unnecessary things to do…" Gabe muttered, shaking the feeling off and stepping in. "Sam, you do realize I carry a gun, right?"
"Better safe than sorry," Sam replied from his bedroom, "It's all clear. Can I take a shower?"
"You should. I didn't say anything because I wanted to be a nice boyfriend, but you smell like a locker room," Gabe retorted, still a bit irked by Sam's chivalric attitude. He could take care of himself, thank you very much.
"I probably smell worse than one," Sam remarked, stepping out and casually leaving his knife on the breakfast bar. Gabe suspected that was meant to be a sign of trust, but he also could've been reading too much into it.
"Want to join me?"
Gabe nearly dropped the first aid kit at the perfectly casual tone and made an embarrassingly squeak-related sound that he did his best to cover up with a cough.
"Um, maybe next time Sam-a-lam," he said, already kicking himself repeatedly for turning down such an enticing offer, "I don't think I'll be able to focus on secret-spilling if I'm sharing a shower with you…"
He turned, about to say something about hopping into the shower with him on other occasions with great gusto, before really dropping the first aid kit this time.
A shirtless Sam was a fine sight, only partially marred by the forming red and purple blotches on his stomach and sides. Gabe shouldn't have been so flustered by his bare torso; he'd seen dozens of all sorts of people naked and Sam shirtless before this, but here he was blushing like he was about to lose his virginity all over again.
"Careful with that," Sam chided, unzipping his pants and oh boy-
"I-let me just…uh, yeah," Gabe stuttered, snatching up the first aid kit and darting into the bathroom to get the shower started.
Now is not the time to be thinking like this! Or worse, acting like this!
Gabe reminded himself that was a mature adult with very big problems. He had paperwork on his coffee table and a whiteboard full of serial killer information.
"I'm so tired. Is the water hot yet?"
"Fairly," Gabe managed to reply, letting his eyes nonchalantly skim over Sam's frame as he stepped into the shower. Long, lean legs, narrow hips, and-
Sam shut the frosted door, and the snap jolted Gabe back into reality with a body too warm to be blamed on the growing steaminess of the bathroom.
"So, where do you want to start?"
"I don't know," Gabe said, shedding his jacket and toeing off his boots (focus on anything but his silhouette, dammit)."Do you have any recommendations?"
"It's not my secret," Sam laughed, the husky edge to it driving Gabe nuts. "But your aura is still this very pale blue-green at the edges like something is making you sick. Did something related to it happen tonight?"
"Yeah," Gabe replied, thinking of Balthazar's call.
"You're thinking of it," Sam surmised, sensing whatever color shift in his aura matched the renewed pit in his stomach, "Start with that."
So, Gabe did. He perched on the toilet and fiddled with the first aid kit, putting things in and out in no particular order as he told Sam of Balthazar and the dreaded call.
"He's dedicated his life to figuring out how we know Enochian…the way we do," Gabe said, twirling gauze around his finger, "His work managing artifacts is just an avenue for him to learn about Enochian. Balthazar thinks that there's some truth to the legends, mainly because of the things we, or rather, he can do with Enochian. I haven't used it for shit in years."
Bitterness clawed at his throat along with the old taste of paranoia. The last time Gabe had done anything with Enochian had been to prove to Balthazar that he wasn't a fraud, and it had hounded him in his dreams for weeks afterward.
"What do you mean by use it?"
"Like…commands," Gabe said, using the word Balthazar did, "Enochian relies on intent, so one word could mean ten different things depending on what's needed and what the speaker wants. It's a language of creation. You speak, and it obeys, but you have to have the gift and a strong will."
"Well, you've got both for sure."
Gabe chuckled wryly, setting the kit down onto the counter before slouching down and shutting his eyes.
"Yeah, I do. But that's where the danger comes in. There are people that want to find those like Balthazar and I, either for proof of Enochian's origins or…other reasons."
Sam said nothing for a bit. Gabe waited, minutes ticking by like molasses. Knowing Sam could see auras around people made this conversation ten times easier, but it was still hard to talk about Enochian after spending so much time trying to pretend it never existed.
Just as he was about to check if Sam had fallen asleep standing and was sleep showering (his research had suggested it was a possibility), he spoke.
"You really hate it, don't you?"
Runes flickered at the edge of his peripheral, dancing in time with the nervous flex of his fingers. Gabe knew that they wanted to be spoken (they only appeared when the urge got strong), but he hadn't said a single word ever since he'd demonstrated for Balthazar. Writing it was one thing, but to speak it…
"It's worse than fiction," Gabe said, "Balthazar thinks I'm crazy to repress it, but I can't use it. The time I did before him, it drew attention from the kind of people I told you about."
He remembered it like it'd happened yesterday even though he hadn't actively recalled the memory in years. After defeating all the odds and graduating high school, Gabe only had one problem: he had no car to get out of the suburb he'd ended up in for his last foster home. He'd saved up plenty of money for post-high school and had kept pushing the car off for later, but then later had come and instead of staying with his foster parents for a few more weeks as they'd kindly offered (they'd been alright, his last home), Gabe wanted to get out of Dodge right then and there. He'd been too excited from graduating to think straight.
"Intent is what drives Enochian. I wanted a damn car so bad," Gabe recalled, the steamy bathroom infiltrating his mind and making his brain hazy, "But there's no word for car in Enochian. It's a limited language that way, but it's like I knew what to do. I printed a picture of the Beetle from the library-even paid for it in color-and went out to the backside of the local Wal-Mart. I came up with a phrase in Enochian, or maybe the words made themselves for me. That part's unclear, but I left the lot in the car I drive now."
The Beetle's keys had already been in the ignition when Gabe sat in the driver's seat, the interior pristine and smelling exactly what he now knew was the infamous new car scent. Besides being light-headed and feeling as if he'd been slammed against a wall in his shoulder blades, Gabe was no worse for wear and the victory put him on top of the world.
"But I fucked up. I got cocky and stayed vague about where I'd gotten such a flashy new car. The next thing I knew, men showed up at my foster home asking where I was. They had an "internship opportunity" for me, and they were persistent."
Gabe snorted. "I hadn't done well academically in school for mysterious people to be interested in me for an internship, so I hid in the backyard. I think they'd always had a passive eye on me because Balthazar has similar stories of people in suits, but I didn't risk it. I left that same day and never used it again save for when I met Balthazar."
He hadn't told Balthazar that his car had been created from Enochian. Gabe barely trusted the ostentatious man back then and all his Enochian anecdotes, and the Beetle was too precious of a secret. He'd been terrified that the car was only a temporary creation and that it would go back from whence it came. Dust to dust, car to Enochian.
But seven years had passed since, and the Beetle only faltered in the ways that normal seven-year-old cars did. Gabe nearly forgot that he hadn't flirted his way into buying it for a song like he always said he did when the subject came up. Speaking it into existence felt like a dream sometimes, or something that happened to someone else.
The water stopped running. Sam opened the door and let out billows of steam that did little to hide all the edges and curves that formed him. His face was caught somewhere between serious and the far-off stare that Gabe knew meant he was looking past bodies and to what surrounded them, cumulating into an intense look that felt as if he was looking right into his soul.
Gabe's breath hitched as Sam crouched down and pressed a wet hand to his face. His hair was plastered to his face, the same hot water that darkened it to near black coloring flushing his skin. It startled him how much his soap and shampoo smelled right on Sam.
"You don't have to run from all of that anymore," Sam whispered, thumb stroking his cheek, "You got me now, and I'll keep your secrets."
He pressed their foreheads together, and somehow, the unfamiliar act felt better than a kiss would've been at that moment. This was what Gabe always denied himself; the soft, tender sort of caring that didn't come with city-hopping.
The itching in his shoulder blades died, taking the runes with it. Sam made a soft sound, sensing the change.
"I'm not going anywhere," Gabe replied after taking a breath.
Sam's smile was half relieved and half sleepy. Gabe touched the small cut on Sam's bottom lip; a reminder that there was still work to be done before they could rest.
"Now, let me fix you up before you end up dripping all over my floor."
"Oops," Sam said sheepishly, blushing redder than a tomato as he glanced down and realized he was still very much naked.
Gabe only had to use a half roll of gauze for Sam's bruised knuckles and a butterfly bandage for a gash along his hairline that had been the cause of most of the blood on his face. After a liberal amount of ointment and a thorough investigation of his ribs, Gabe gave him a tentative clean bill of health. He didn't like the way Sam winced when he pulled his arms up above his collarbone, but there was nothing he could do for that.
"As long as I don't cough up blood, I'll be alright," Sam yawned, wheeling the whiteboard out into the living room.
"If you say so," Gabe replied doubtfully, checking his gun to make sure all was well before he set it by the nightstand. He didn't normally sleep with it so close, but he wanted the reassurance tonight. "You know, I've never showered with anyone before."
Sam padded back in on silent feet, a confused puppy dog expression on his face.
"Really?" he asked, crawling into bed like it belonged to him. Gabe liked that confidence, even if it came from Sam's tiredness and subsequent utter lack of inhibitions.
"Yup. That's a very couple-y thing to do, so I've never done it," he explained, setting the gun down.
"I figured it was something like that. But teasing you is so much fun," Sam grinned, so delighted with himself that Gabe couldn't be blamed for wanting him so badly.
"You're a cruel man, Winchester. Very cruel."
"The cruelest," Sam agreed, curling up around him with one last massive yawn, "I left my knife in the kitchen, so you better be a good shot."
Gabe opened his mouth to reply that he was, in fact, pretty damn good, but Sam was already asleep. He must've been running on fumes to pass out so quickly with the lamplight still on.
"Good night," he said instead, carding his hand through Sam's still damp hair before contorting himself to turn off the light. Maybe if he was lucky, he'd have nice dreams featuring Sam, and not all the horrors of the night.
As he shut his eyes and gave in to the bone-deep tiredness that had hounded him all night, he already knew that it was a lost cause. Gabe could already taste the words in his mouth, ripe with seven years of waiting.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
For some reason, the site was down last night for a few hours? I was so pumped to post after sending a few hours fine-tuning this, and then the site backstabbed me. So, this is going up approximately 8 hours after I went ahead and posted it on Ao3 before instantly falling asleep. Feels weird posting on a Monday...