"What're you doing?"
Gabriel, standing in front of an open cabinet, jumped and spun around guiltily. His hair was sleep-ruffled, the creases of a pillowcase starkly visible against one cheek. He blinked rapidly, visibly calming down when he saw it was just Sam, and then offered up, "Snack?"
Sam wanted to apologize for startling him. Asmodeus's psychological fingerprints were fading a lot more slowly than the death's-head scars the thread had pressed into Gabriel's lips, and he was still jumpy in a way that Sam could very much relate to. But that same relation let him know he should comment on it as little as possible, so he checked his watch instead, squinting at it. "It's…12:32. At night."
"Yeah. Midnight snack." Gabriel was one of the only beings Sam had ever met who could pull off certain combinations of emotions. Like indignant and cheery. "That's a thing."
"Uh huh." From the looks of him, Gabriel didn't need a snack, but Sam didn't say so. He nodded to the tin in Gabriel's hands. "Are those Dean's cinnamon rolls?"
Gabriel's arms tightened possessively around the rolls. "He can make more! He likes baking."
"Well…" Sam couldn't exactly argue with that. Much as Dean might bitch and moan about finding tins empty except for crumbs and raided bread boxes and empty, whipped-cream smeared pie dishes all over the place, the joy and pride he took in making replacements - and knowing somebody was enjoying his handiwork so much - was so obvious he might as well have been wearing a neon sign. "Yeah, okay."
"I'm sorry I woke you up." Tucking the tin under one arm, Gabriel crossed to the fridge, pulling it open. He lifted out a carton of milk, gave it a sniff, and put it back with a wince. A similar test on one of cream got a nod of approval, and he took it and the rolls over to the kitchen's small table after kicking the door closed. Sam bit his tongue, literally and metaphorically. "I didn't mean to."
"It's okay." Usually, he wouldn't have. Sam knew, because he'd found the evidence, that this wasn't Gabriel's first midnight snack. He'd just been sleeping lighter tonight because, even after the years they'd been in the bunker, there were still nights where he hovered just under the surface of sleep because Dean's white-noise snoring was absent from his room. Decades of sharing space down to the mattress was a hard habit to shrug off.
Sam shifted from one bare foot to the other, toes going numb against the cool linoleum. Part of him thought idly about taking Dean up on the offer of "dead guy slippers" that he'd so far turned down about a dozen times. The rest of him was engaged in a self-argument, the same one he'd been retreading for weeks now.
Gabriel had popped the lid off the tin (decorative, antique, dug out of storage, definitely having contained a fruitcake at one point) and was surveying the gooey rolls inside with one hand hovering above them, like the pressure of deciding which one to grab was a little too much for him. Apparently noticing that Sam was still in the kitchen, he paused, then gently said, "Y'know, I'm fine. You can go back to bed."
"Oh. No, w-we should…" Sam sighed, and grabbed the chair across from Gabriel, pulling it out and sinking down into it. Now was as good a time as any, with the rest of the bunker asleep. "We should talk."
Gabriel's head cocked. It was birdlike, almost reminiscent of an owl. Sam had seen Castiel doing the same thing more times than he could remember, filed it automatically under "angel things." "What about, sport?"
"Well, you're." Sam had clasped his hands on the table, now spread them. "Human, right?"
No Grace, no powers. Drained by what had happened to him, the torture Sam could feel echoing along the ragged, molting edges of his own mind whenever Gabriel haltingly alluded to it. Completely wingless, outside of one physical eccentricity Sam had once caught a glimpse of while Gabriel was getting ready to shower: a dusting of gold and cream and toffee feathers prickled up and down each shoulder blade, a color combo that made him think of toasted marshmallows.
"For all intensive purposes." Gabriel finally chose a roll. Sam didn't correct him, the usual reflex stopped by a sneaking suspicion he'd chosen the malapropism just to mess with him.
He watched Gabriel's fingers sink into the doughy seam where the sides of the cinnamon rolls bumped up against each other, pry one stickily free. White icing and the filling crumbled free, scattering over the table as Gabriel took a generous bite. Sam's own fingers and face tingled with a phantom stickiness. He sucked in a sharp breath.
"Humans, or, uh, human…ish bodies, have certain needs," he started. He wasn't sure how to put this delicately, and the distinct lack of coffee in his system wasn't helping.
Gabriel snorted, and popped the center of the cinnamon roll into his mouth before reaching for another one. "Yeah, I'd noticed."
"Right." Unsurprising, most angels picked up instantly on the little everyday annoyances that Sam took for granted. "Course. Uh, hunger - "
"Oh, don't worry," Gabriel said through a full mouth, waving his free hand breezily. "Between me and your brother, we got that one locked down."
"Yeah, I know." Dean was not only in charge of the baking, but had volunteered to take over the grocery shopping. Sam hadn't initially cared, so long as he bought spinach and hummus every week. "What I'm worried about is that you've locked it down a little too tight."
Gabriel took a hearty swig of cream before letting out a wet little belch. "Not following you, Samwich."
"How much have you had to eat tonight?"
"You mean last night."
"Sure." It was a physical strain, not rolling his eyes. "Last night, and this morning."
"Well…" Gabriel leaned back in his chair, working philosophically at his third cinnamon roll. The position put a swell of belly, very obviously fuller than it had been when Sam had watched him go to bed, on display. "Dinner was lasagna and garlic bread, three helpings of that. Dessert was black forest cake, which…Dean does not know how to region-match his menus, but whatever, it was awesome, so two slices. Needed something to munch on while me and Cas were watching Law & Order, bag of white chocolate chips. Bedtime snack, bowl of ice cream…with hot fudge and whipped cream and sprinkles and everything on top, obviously. Raided my candy stash around ten. Woke up and finished it off little before midnight."
Sam nodded along as Gabriel listed everything. He already knew that he didn't come into the kitchen until he'd gone through what was in his room.
"Then two - " Gabriel popped the center of his current roll into his mouth with obvious relish. "Three cinnamon rolls, just now."
"What about to drink?" Sam tilted his head.
"Oh, Sammy, you know I don't keep track of that." Gabriel smiled, stretching the scars on his mouth thin and shining. Something half-remembered and putridly unpleasant shivered in the abandoned depths of Sam's own mind. "I think my fluid intake's good. Based on the, um. Y'know. Color."
Teaching angels how to properly hydrate had been a real pain in the ass. Or maybe Sam could track it a little bit higher and call it a pain in the kidneys, what with the repetitive UTIs involved. Not to mention the extremely-embarrassing conversations, color charts taped up in the bathroom, and clearly-marked water bottles intended for children. Thank god they'd already had experience from Castiel's stint as a human. Fewer rounds of antibiotics and cranberry juice for Gabriel.
Sam hadn't gotten up to drag the two of them through another "it's-not-supposed-to-burn-we're-going-to-the-Urgent-Care-right-now" conversation, though. Besides, he didn't need to. Most of what went into Gabriel was soda and milkshakes and fruity cocktails, but still. You could track him anywhere in the bunker by the liquid sloshing of his stomach.
Sam watched Gabriel pull out a fourth cinnamon roll even as he chugged cream. Dean had made this batch extra gooey, exactly the way Sam was pretty sure Gabriel liked them.
"Yeah, okay, that's awesome, but I'd rather focus on what you're drinking. And eating. And how much." Sam followed the cinnamon roll up to Gabriel's mouth, which was frowning in confusion. He clarified, "Since you got here, you've gained weight." A second later, "A lot of weight."
Gabriel very daintily set what remained of the cinnamon roll down on top of the others, pinky up. Sam would have said something if he hadn't been sure that he'd intended to eat them all from the beginning. Gabriel stood, smoothing down the T-shirt that had been loaned to him ("loaned," because Sam really doubted anything they gave Gabriel was ever coming back) and looking down at himself. Pajama pants from Dean, hot-dog print, that puddled around his ankles. Jack Russel-shaped slippers that had been a gift from Castiel.
When Gabriel first came to them, he'd been thin. Thin enough that, in the hunched-over pose he'd spent so much time in at first, his back had looked like a fist, ribs fanning like fingers, a harsh knuckle-jut of vertebrae. Sam suspected that the Grace had drained fully out of him a while before, that Asmodeus had been more than happy to let starvation be Gabriel's first taste of humanity.
Obviously, that hadn't been their approach. There was plenty of food in the bunker (Sam and Dean were both over six feet tall with extremely active jobs, even snuggled up against forty their caloric needs were through the roof…and Dean just liked eating), and it went without saying that Gabriel had unfettered access to it. The first, second, and third times that Sam had had to explain that to him had really hammered it home, the number that Asmodeus had done on him.
But he warmed up to the idea pretty quick, started joining them for meals, getting seconds, then thirds and fourths. Socking snacks away in the room he'd been given and claimed with an Enochian diary all over the wall. He gorged constantly, reading, watching TV, during animated conversations with any and all of them, spent his days with a ballooning, gurgling stomach utterly packed with junk. Sam had seen the weight of it pin him to whatever seat he'd chosen more than once, with Gabriel looking almost comically surprised each time. In the first weeks, the size and shape of it had been almost grotesque compared with how little there was to him between skin and bones, raw hips pinching it just above the waistbands his constant fullness pushed down.
That wasn't a problem anymore. The T-shirt, which had been worn soft and sheer by a thousand washes in vending machine detergent, clung very effectively to the twin shapes that Gabriel's chest had plumped out into. His arms filled the sleeves fully and then some, there was exactly zero slack on the pajama pants in the ass area, and his belly was a wide, round spread under the fabric. As he examined himself, the shirt pulled up, displaying just how much of both it and his ample love handles overhung the pants' overstretched elastic waistband, and showcasing the dimple just below his navel. Looking down squished the extra flesh that had gathered under his jaw up into a proper double chin.
He reminded Sam of a pillow. The expensive kind with gussets and cooling casings and memory-foam cores that never went flat. Round and soft and so very, very thick. Like he could put a hand on him and sink an arm in up to the elbow.
"You really think so?" Gabriel's doubtful voice broke through into Sam's thoughts.
"Yep." He cleared his throat. "I do."
"I don't see it." Gabriel sat back down. The chair creaked under him.
"Well, you've gained weight," Sam told him firmly as he picked up the abandoned cinnamon roll again and finished it off. "And that's a problem. For - humans. Can lead to all kinds of health issues."
"I feel fine," Gabriel pointed out through a very gluey-sounding mouthful of dough and sugar. Only decades with Dean let Sam translate as easily as he did. "Actually…" He swallowed, and beamed with icing on his nose and chin. "I feel awesome."
"That's good, but." Sam brought his hands back together in front of him. "There's no guarantee it'll stay that way. Especially considering your age." Forties, if he had to hazard a guess.
"Fourteen billion?" Gabriel's head cocked again. His free hand had come to rest comfortably, almost naturally, on top of his belly as he slouched in his chair, but now he used it to reach for the cream again.
"...I was talking about your vessel."
"Ahh." Gabriel nodded. "Yeah, I guess three hundred, give or take, is a running a little long in the tooth for you guys." He shrugged. "Whatever. Like I said, I feel great, but you're the expert here, Samsquatch. I've seen those abs."
He winked. Sam swallowed. He felt very warm all of a sudden.
"So, what's the plan?" Fifth cinnamon roll. Gabriel brushed crumbs fastidiously off his stomach. "Gonna queue up 'Eye of the Tiger' on repeat, buy me some sweatbands? Oh, you…you probably want me eating less, right?"
"Maybe." There had been a tense, brittle undercurrent in Gabriel's voice when he mentioned eating less. Sam recognized it. He chose the gentler word. "But it's really more about what you eat."
And now he'd lost him. Gabriel looked even more confused than he had back at the beginning.
"Come again?" he asked blankly. "How could what I eat possibly make more difference than how much?"
"Y'know." Sam wondered if they ought to tack a food pyramid up alongside the pee charts. "You wanna get in your dark, leafy greens, your lean meats, your - "
"Yeah, I know that, all that stuff has more vitamins and minerals and all those other salty little building blocks you guys need than cake," Gabriel interrupted. He sat up straight, gesturing with a cinnamon roll as he talked. "But they all add up to your net total. There's just not that much difference between a pound of chocolate and a pound of kale."
"Uh, yeah, there is, there's a huge - " Something occurred to Sam. He blinked, and straightened himself as he felt his eyebrows knit together. "Gabe, you…you know that all food doesn't all have the same calories. Right?"
"Uh, yeah," Gabriel began slowly, "it does. It's all food, right? It's all the same."
"No."
"Sam." Gabriel drew himself up. He would have looked very authoritative and self-important, if it hadn't been for all the icing and cinnamon on his face. "I am an archangel. I was there when the stars that would beget the stars that would beget the stars that would forge the carbon in your cells were lit. In fact, I lit a lot of them. Do not argue with me about this."
Sam didn't. Instead, he let a pair of nutritional labels do it for him. After spending roughly ten minutes looking back and forth between the separate calorie counts on a can of spinach and one of lemon pie filling, identical in size, Gabriel flung himself dramatically back in his chair and proclaimed, "Okay, well, that didn't used to be like that."
"It has always been exactly like this," Sam stated flatly, setting the cans aside.
"It hasn't. Maybe that's another thing you monkeys fucked up on your way out of the Garden." Gabriel hunched in on himself, kind of like he had right after Asmodeus, and brooded around a cinnamon roll. He spent about a minute practically nursing the icing off it, and Sam let him, until he looked at him with wide eyes and blurted out, "Wait a minute, is anything I've been eating like that? Like, the really high number - no, no, can't be, I've barely had any lemon meringue pies." He shook his head, relieved. "Too tart for me."
An incredulous little laugh scraped out of Sam, so high it was almost breathless, and Gabriel looked at him quizzically. He sat forward to explain. "Are you serious?"
"Rarely, but right now, yes." Gabriel took a very aggressive bite of his icing-less roll. "What is it?"
"Gabe - okay, pastries, baked goods, soda, ice cream, candy." Sam ticked them off on his fingers as he named them. "All of that stuff is super high in calories. Empty calories, even. Sugar, trans fats, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, processed everything…"
"I was following you." Gabriel dragged a finger through the amber filling crusted along the bottom of the tin, where his gorging had revealed it. "But you've high-tailed it off into the weeds, there. I heard 'syrup,' I like syrup. It's good, right?"
"No. No. Absolutely not." Sam shook his head.
"Okay, then…" Gabriel did not seem convinced as he separated yet another cinnamon roll, dragging the remaining clot of them into the center of the tin in the process. "Bottom line?"
"All of this sweet stuff," Sam stated slowly, trying to put it in terms that Gabriel could understand, "Everything you've been stuffing your face with for. Jeez, months now." He leaned forward. "All of that is extremely unhealthy, and super fattening."
Gabriel stared back at him, utterly aghast. His eyes were so wide Sam could see white all the way around his amber irises. Neither of them said anything, and neither of them moved, for a very long thirty seconds. Gabriel finally broke both the silence and the stillness with a sharp little hiccup that sent all of him jiggling.
Sam bit down hard on the inside of one lip, then crossed his legs.
Gabriel looked at the half a cinnamon roll in his sticky hand. He swallowed what was in his mouth with difficulty, then pointed down into the tin. "This…?"
Sam gave a single sharp nod of confirmation. "Yep."
Gabriel lowered the roll, almost but not quite put it back in the tin with the others. He put his free hand on his stomach, like he was feeling out the heft and spread of it. He swallowed again, then took a deep breath.
"So. To get healthier, like I need to. Like you want me to. I'd need to stop eating…all this stuff."
"A lot less," Sam agreed. "Yeah."
Gabriel looked at the roll. The hand on his stomach squeezed, sinking into fattened flesh, dimpling his shirt and reminding Sam of when Dean had made him feel his new mattress. He pried his fingers free of the cinnamon roll, dropping it back into the tin, and went to push it away from himself.
And there was something difficult, almost arthritic, in the gesture. Something that spoke less to sugar addiction than to a very familiar pain, the burn and ache of gangrene, that sank a fishhook into something inside Sam and tugged. The fractured, broken thing in Gabriel's eyes reminded him of a scar that still roped across his palm, and Dean's touch and furious gaze, and a grounding pain, and the occasional loss of all three. Having the reminder he wasn't there anymore and that he could do what he wanted and that he was back with people who didn't want him torn and bleeding stripped away was worse, occasionally, than the original trauma had been.
The way Gabriel's mouth twisted now, it pulled the scars on his lips into clear and almost blinding relief. Sam swallowed, and he might as well have had a lump of sticky, firm dough in his own throat.
"But you don't have to," he blurted out. "I-if. If you don't want to."
Puzzled, Gabriel's head cocked. His fingers were still on the tin. "But I thought you said - "
"Yeah. I know what I said." Sam blew out a breath, the usual prickling exposure of pushing too hard on something that backfired crawling over his skin. "But you should really try and forget about it."
"Changed your mind about getting me fighting fit, huh?" Gabriel's eyebrows went up. "Well, guess I can't blame you for being threatened."
"No, no, I…I want you to be healthy," Sam tried to explain, leaning forward. "But there are technically other options there besides a diet change, and…" Spells. Charms. Castiel. "I want you to be happy, too."
"You do, huh?" Gabriel fingered the tin, matching Sam's position. His belly folded over the edge of the table when he leaned in. "Seem pretty invested in me."
"Well, yeah." Sam gave an embarrassed little shrug that involved his hands. "You're kinda family by now, right? I care about you."
"That's good to know." Gabriel picked his cinnamon roll back up, and finished it off, making a show of licking his fingers clean when he was finished. Then his lips. Sam found his eyes following every line the tip of Gabriel's tongue drew. "'Cause I care about you too, Sammy."
Even this late in life, Sam wasn't great at picking up on certain social cues.. Like flirting. And telling when somebody wanted to kiss him. Especially not when he was tired, frustrated, and annoyed at himself, the combination of which were a near-constant state for him. He had a sneaking suspicion that Gabriel knew that, because while Sam was debating whether or not to let him call him "Sammy" (traditionally, that had been a Dean-only nickname, but Gabriel using it didn't exactly feel wrong), Gabriel snuck in under his radar and pressed their lips together. He guided Sam's mouth open with a small movement of his jaw, made a self-satisfied little chirruping noise in the back of his throat as his tongue moved. The kiss was soft, clever, and mischievous. A lot like Gabriel himself.
In the fireworks storm that the inside of Sam's head had turned into, one concrete thought coalesced: no wonder Gabriel liked Dean's cinnamon rolls so much. They tasted incredible.
When they broke, Gabriel was grinning, looking way too pleased with himself. He sat back in his chair, and Sam's expression must have reflected the fact his brain felt like a fusebox with a breaker that had just violently tripped, because he sniggered. Sipping from the carton of cream, Gabriel commented, "Lotta things I don't appreciate about being human, but I think having to breathe's a big one."
There were a hundred things Sam wanted to say right then. A thousand things he needed to. They all crowded at the point where his tongue hooked in his throat, the phantom dough from before working its way back up. What wound up squeezing out was, of course, the most stupid and useless question he could have possibly asked at that moment.
"So, you. Even when you were still an angel, you had a sweet tooth. Right? But Cas - whenever he tries to eat stuff, he just tastes the component molecules."
"Well, Sammy, practice makes perfect, even in matters of taste, and I have had a lot of practice." Gabriel belched. His burps were always tiny, delicate. "Plus, archangels do tend to come loaded with a few more bells and whistles than your average seraph…congratulations, by the way."
"On what?" Sam asked blankly.
Gabriel lifted out another cinnamon roll. Third to last. It brought the other two up with it, and he shook it free with a thoughtful scowl. "Not instantly trying to talk this whole thing to death."
Sam opened his mouth. Gabriel's free hand came up, palm facing him.
"Bup, bup, bup, bup! Close it, and have yourself a good, hard think over there. Put that big head to use." Gabriel nipped at the roll, and winced a little when he chased the small bite with a sip of cream. "We've got a few hours, at least, 'til your brother gets up and mine comes out of his room to puppy-dog around after him, so lemme ask you this: you really wanna spend that time dissecting what just happened down to the very last facet of sexuality?"
Sam looked down at his hands, frowning. They were clasped, knuckles bone-colored and the scars on them standing out clearly. Then he looked back up at Gabriel, opening his mouth again, but before he could say anything, Gabriel rolled his eyes and interrupted him.
"Should've known better than to ask you that question," he said, with a fond exasperation. "Okay, let me tell you what we're gonna do, all right? Your brother's got a thing of apple turnovers on the counter." He nodded to it. "You're gonna bring it over, along with something else for me to drink. Then, 'cause I've somehow given myself a pretty bad tummy ache, you're gonna rub that for me while I eat. If you want to. Which I'm almost positive you do, since I'm apparently fat and you've got a chubby-chaser streak in there that's lit up like a neon sign."
Sam's face was hot again. "I - "
"Sam," Gabriel began patiently, "do not try to lie to me, of all beings, about what turns you on. Mmkay?" He took a bite of his current roll and honest-to-god batted his eyelashes. "Now, c'mon. Chop-chop."
Historically speaking, Sam had had a problem with being told what to do by angels. This, he didn't mind so much. After extracting an incredulous guarantee from Gabriel that no, of course he wasn't about to barf all over the floor, how could Sam even think that, Sam stood and retrieved the turnovers. Along with a tall glass of ice water, which Gabriel made a face as soon as he saw.
"Seriously?"
"You just drank a pint of heavy cream," Sam stated. "I think you'll live."
He set everything on the table next to the near-empty tin. Gabriel turned imperiously to the side to give Sam access to a belly that had absolutely expanded since he'd sat down, and Sam dragged his chair over. The position was awkward, though, and he wound up sliding down onto his knees on the floor. Like he would for a blowjob. His hyperawareness of that fact had heat prickling along his scalp and down into his face, but Gabriel seemed thankfully oblivious as he put real effort into finishing off the cinnamon rolls and the cream.
Sam leaned forward, put one hand on either side of Gabriel's stomach. He was warm, and it had swelled, soft and pale, out from under the T-shirt. When Sam pressed, he didn't sink in the way that he'd imagined. Gabriel was firmer than the average pillow, of course. Flesh plump and compact and belly very, very full. Sam swallowed.
"Still can't believe this stuff is so fattening," mumbled Gabriel as he shook the carton of cream and then upended it into his mouth, tapping the bottom to get the last few drops out. "Dad really hated you guys."
"Well, it wasn't originally a bad thing," Sam said automatically. "Back before the - "
He stopped. A pudgy finger, gritty with icing sugar, had just been pressed to his lips. He looked up at Gabriel.
"Sammy," he said tenderly, "you must know how much I love all the wrinkles on that big, beautiful brain of yours, but for now…please. Less talking, more rubbing."
Gabriel sat back. Sam wasn't entirely sure what to do, hadn't ever given anybody that wasn't a dog a belly rub before, but decided to just go ahead and go for it. He started off gently, probing for cramps and gas bubbles, finding plenty. He made little circles, tried to rub in the same direction, kept going with what Gabriel seemed to like and immediately stopped doing things that had him grunting in pain or discomfort. It turned out he had to press a lot harder than he'd thought he would.
Through trial and error, Sam wound up falling into a pattern similar to the shoulder and neck massages he gave Dean after an entire day behind the wheel: fingers folded down, thumbs pointed, the meat of his palms and heels of his hands acting as rollers. Forearms tensed, back and shoulders put into it, smoothing up and down over and over again to press muscles out.
It was also more or less the same rhythm Dean used to knead particularly stubborn doughs, and after awhile, that was how he started thinking of Gabriel's gut. As bread dough. Enormous, and soft, and workable, and ever-rising, bloating slowly further and further free of his pajamas as he ate and Sam kneaded, pressing him deeper into the chair.
Dean had mentioned a couple times how satisfying it was, pressing air bubbles out of dough. Sam thought he got that now, listening to Gabriel belch above him.
He hadn't known how hypnotic it could be. He thought that it had only been a few minutes since he started, maybe twenty at most, but when Gabriel reached down and broke the spell, the burn in Sam's biceps and trapezius shocked him. Gabriel wound sticky fingers in his hair, and Sam blinked, the sizable part of him that craved order and cleanliness recoiling. The slight tug Gabriel gave, though, had him sucking in a sharp breath between his teeth.
Looking sleepily down past the curve of his overfed gut, the apex of it eclipsing part of his face from Sam's view, Gabriel chuckled. "Just look at all the kinks we're turning up today, huh?" He gave another tug, a little more insistent this time. "Come on up here."
Sam rose, knees giving a crack that had Gabriel clucking in apologetic sympathy. Once he was standing, Gabriel's fingers having slipped free of his hair, he could see that a good portion of the turnovers were gone, and the entire glass of water. Gabriel's belly, swollen out of his shirt entirely so that it hugged his chest like a bra, was making aquarium noises. Gurgles, bubbling, churning. It would have been cause for concern, but it sounded more content to Sam than angry.
Gabriel reached up, fisted a hand in Sam's shirt and dragged him down while groaning about how bad he was at taking hints. Sam decided not to correct him; he didn't need to know he'd been mesmerized by his stomach. Hard to explain that anyway, when his mouth was occupied by Gabriel's.
The kiss was even softer this time. Gentle and languid, sugar-crusted (although that went without saying), and it spoke of sated, happy exhaustion. It was like sinking into a warm bath, felt like a reward and did wonders for Sam's overworked muscles.
He could have fallen into it forever, or at least until he had to breathe, if it weren't for the very loud throat-clearing.
Sam jerked up and backwards. He probably would've fallen right on his ass, or punched the back of his skull neatly in on the edge of the nearest counter, if Gabriel hadn't still had a hold of him; obviously, he outweighed him, and by quite a bit, considering the anchoring effect he had. They both looked to the doorway, though Gabriel didn't seem to feel Sam's iced-adrenaline panic. Where Dean was standing, in his bathrobe and his own much-more-sensible slippers, arms folded over his chest. He arched an eyebrow.
"Dean," Sam said, gulping in air, and his voice was way too husky. He resisted the urge to ask him how long he'd been there, because even having just walked in meant he'd seen more than enough.
"Now, that's just unfair," Gabriel drawled. "We didn't even get around to doing anything loud yet."
Dean looked at the two of them, and then away, clearing his throat and putting his hands on his hips. He shook his head a little, and Sam held his breath. Waiting for any one of a number of possible reactions. The teasing. The barely-leashed anger. The demands about how he could possibly be making out with the former archangel who had murdered Dean in about six hundred different, increasingly-creative ways, which was a very good point that had somehow not occurred to Sam until the tiny backup Dean who lived in his head brought it up ahead of the real one.
Sam waited. The seconds ticked past on the analogue clock on the wall; almost three-thirty, where did the time go?
When Dean did finally speak though, he didn't do any of the things that Sam had expected. He rolled up his sleeves, looking at the two of them, and sighed.
"Well, long as you're both up," he said, "guess I might as well get started on breakfast, huh?" He nodded to Sam. "You're helping. 'Bout damn time you learned how Gabe likes his pancakes."
