Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair. Spencer relished in the silence of it, knowing that they were going to be so much busier here shortly. It felt good to just sit in the quiet for the time being. He ate quietly, content with Gabriel's presence close to him. It wasn't until they were almost done with their food that they finally broke the silence. He wasn't surprised that Gabriel was the one to do it, nor by the question that he asked. "How're you doing, kiddo?"

"I'm fine." Spencer answered automatically. He saw Gabriel's slightly skeptical look and knew his self-appointed guardian wasn't accepting his words. A shy smile touched Spencer's lips. "Really, Gabriel, I am. I'm not going to try and claim that I'm perfect - we both know better. However, it's not anything I can't handle. I've dealt with worse."

"Just cause you've dealt with worse in the past doesn't mean you should have to put up with shit now." Gabriel pointed out. Then he sighed and softened a little. "I can't help it, kiddo. I know you've already been through shit and you're capable of dealing with it and blah, blah, blah. Doesn't mean I don't wanna wrap you up and keep you from getting hurt."

"I know."

A quiet fell over them once more as they finished off the last of their food. Once the food was gone and the dishes put away, the two came together in the living room. Spencer had a bag slung over his arm today with books that Gabriel had approved as being safe to leave the house. They took a second to make sure they had everything and then Gabriel was flying them away from their hideaway and back to Bobby's house.

Only Bobby was in the living room when they arrived. He looked up at the sound of their landing but, to his credit, he didn't startle at it. He just nodded at Gabriel and actually smiled at Spencer. "Hey. Didn't expect to see you two."

"I said we'd be back." Gabriel pointed out. He made a show of looking around the room. "Where's tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum?"

"Running errands in town."

It was a vague sort of answer and Bobby offered no more than that. Whatever Gabriel thought of it, he didn't say anything. Spencer, however, relaxed ever so slightly. Where the boys went, their angel would go, and that meant that he wasn't here. Spencer had no issues with Bobby and the idea of spending the day with just him was a bit easier to stomach than spending the day crowded in this small house with everyone. It also made it easier for Spencer to do what he'd been planning on doing anyways. After he set his bag down on the couch, he turned to smile at Gabriel and he hesitantly reached out with a tiny tendril of grace. "I know you've got a lot to do, Gabriel. Why don't you go ahead and take care of things while I stay here and research with Mr. Singer? I mean, if that's all right with him." He glanced back at Bobby for confirmation and found the hunter nodding at him. "It's fine by me – so long as you quit calling me Mr. Singer."

Spencer flashed a shy smile and dropped his gaze. Then he looked back up at Gabriel.

The archangel was watching him carefully. "You sure, little bird? Cause I can hold out for a little while and work tonight."

"It's fine, Gabriel. This is important; you go handle what you need to."

Gabriel's grace curled around the little tendril from Spencer and sent a pulse of affection. "You're important." He said firmly. Then he smiled, a look that Spencer could see was covering up the frown he really wanted to let out. "You call me if you need me for anything. Just send up a prayer and I'll be here as fast as I can fly."

"Yes, sir." The words were just sort of instinctive. Spencer said them without even really thinking about it. He'd just been responding to that tone in Gabriel's voice, the one that said he expected to be listened to, and Spencer responded the same he would have if Aaron or Jason had been the one to say it.

Unlike them, however, the archangel wasn't the least bit pleased with that sign of 'respect'. Gabriel scowled at him and cuffed him with one wing. "Don't get lippy with me."

"Only you would think the title 'sir' is 'getting lippy'." Spencer said, shaking his head.

Gabriel didn't say anything against that. He just flashed one of those bright, bright grins of his and then he snapped his fingers and he was gone. Spencer turned to look over at the older hunter, aware suddenly that the two of them were alone here. For all his bravado with Gabriel there, a part of Spencer didn't want to be left alone here. He didn't want to be without the protection of the archangel. The only thing that really kept him from panicking was that he knew Gabriel was an angel of his word. If Spencer prayed for him, he'd be here as fast as he could. And Gabriel had told him there was very little that could block out a prayer and so far as he knew, the hunters here didn't know any of them.

The way that Bobby was looking at him suggested that he knew just how uncomfortable Spencer was. He didn't call him on it, though. He just gestured with his chin towards the bag that Spencer had brought with him. "You bringing your own toys with you today?"

"Just some books." Spencer said. He resisted the urge to ask Bobby why on earth he'd be bringing toys of all things here.

"Anything useful?"

"I'm not sure yet." Spencer moved over to the couch and sat down on the end furthest from Bobby. It wasn't a conscious choice; just something automatic. He folded himself down onto the end and pulled his bag up into his lap. "I went through Gabriel's books and he sorted the ones I found into two piles. One that had to stay there and one that was safe to bring out. I brought the pile he deemed safe. Or, at least, some of it."

Bobby lifted his eyebrows under the brim of his dirty trucker cap. "Safe?"

Instead of answering that, the young fledgling shrugged his shoulder. He wasn't going to be giving away information that Gabriel didn't want him to give away. If the hunter had questions he was free to try and ask Gabriel later on.

Spencer focused a little bit and, with a quick snap, brought the notebook and pen that he'd left beside his bed. They appeared in his lap. Spencer grinned down at the items. He was getting better at things. Gabriel said his control and strength were improving every day.

The two men settled down into a silence that was surprisingly companionable. They didn't say much else to one another as they both dove into their research.

The two continued on their research for most of the day. The silence that had surrounded them at the start was broken by Spencer first, when he'd had a quick question about a curious look Bobby wore. Apparently the hunter had been stuck on the translation of one Latin word that could've gone two ways. Knowledge was something that Spencer was comfortable with and it was something that had helped him many times in the past to break past the barriers that his own fears put up. He'd found himself pushing up off the couch to come hesitantly over to Bobby's desk and look down at the translation that he was working on.

From there it was like the wall between them was broken down. Bobby asking Spencer for help there had triggered conversation between them and now they talked openly. Spencer found himself sitting at the end of the couch closest to Bobby, talking animatedly as he explained about what he was discovering about Pestilence in the book that he'd found. Nothing that they'd found so far was anything good. "It's not going to be easy going up against him."

"Yeah, well, when is any of this ever easy?" Bobby asked.

Spencer chuckled lightly. "It does seem that way, doesn't it? Then again, I think we'd be ridiculous if we assumed that any part of the Apocalypse would be easy. If it were, it wouldn't be a problem, would it?"

"You got a point there, kid."

"You know..." Hesitating, Spencer chewed on his lip for a moment, turning over something in his mind. It'd been something he was thinking about for most of the morning.

"What is it?" Bobby asked. He watched Spencer's face, reading the play of emotion there.

The fledgling didn't notice Bobby's observation. He curled his hands around the edge of his notebook. "All of this research into the Horsemen is important, I'm not saying that it's not, but shouldn't we be researching other things as well? Things to protect us for when we do go up against them? Everything that I'm seeing so far suggests that they're extremely powerful. We won't stand a chance of stopping them if we don't figure out how to keep ourselves safe while we do it."

Bobby sat back in his chair. "Thought that's what our secret archangel was for."

"His power isn't absolute. I have no idea how it'll hold against a Horseman. Why diffuse his power by having him protect all of us as well?" It wasn't logical. Best that they leave him prepared to handle just about anything that came their way. There was no reason for them to waste Gabriel's powers on protections they could do themselves. "I've got a working knowledge of quite a few protective sigils and runes as well as spells. I've come across a lot over the years." He gave Bobby a wry grin. "I may not be a hunter, but I like knowledge and I read anything I can get my hands on. I've accumulated a lot of different facts in my lifetime."

The two shared a look, scholar to scholar, and then Bobby was pulling out fresh paper and pen. "All right, kid. Let's break things up a bit and compare notes. Between the two of us I bet we can come up with a way to keep everyone safe."

They were still at it later when the boys finally returned back to Bobby's house. The sky was just starting to get dark when they heard the sound of the impala come up the drive. Spencer hadn't once asked Bobby what the boys had been up to and he didn't plan on it. He didn't plan on asking the Winchesters, either. Just because they were working together didn't mean that they needed to know every single detail about one another's lives.

Spencer and Bobby were bent over the still larger than normal kitchen table with papers spread out in front of them when the boys came in. If it had been anyone else this probably would've looked extremely strange. All the papers strewn out had different sigils drawn hastily on them. The two scholars were trying to find the smartest way to combine these things to offer the best protection - without doing any damage to the wearer. They'd come up with a few possibilities so far and had discarded a few. Some things couldn't be paired together without making a person sick or opening them up for a different kind of attack entirely. There were some, too, that Bobby knew that Spencer hadn't ever seen or heard of before, and there were also surprisingly some that Spencer knew that Bobby didn't.

Even though this couldn't be that strange in the grand scheme of things for the Winchesters, the both of them froze when they came into the kitchen. Dean arched his eyebrows at them while Sam looked most interested than anything else. "Well, you guys have been busy." Dean said dryly.

Bobby snorted and didn't even bother looking up from his papers. Spencer, however, flushed just a little and nervously shuffled the papers in his hands, almost dropping them. A quick move from Bobby rescued them. He'd grown used to Spencer's absentmindedness and slight gracelessness today. The more that Spencer got into what he was saying, the more he forgot things around him. Namely, how to not knock into anything, or not drop anything or things like that. Bobby's quick reflexes had saved him once already from falling to the floor when he'd tripped over a chair in his excitement to get to a certain piece of paper.

"What is all this?" Sam asked, stepping up to the table and looking down at all their papers. A second later his eyes lit with realization. "You guys are figuring out protection."

"We figured it'd be smart to be prepared when we go up against the Horsemen." Spencer said.

Dean spared it all a half glance on his way to the fridge. "Nice." was all he said. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and popped the top, tossing the bottle cap into the sink. "Make any progress on actually finding the bastards?"

Lifting his head from his work, Bobby scowled over at him. "You wanna step in an help a little instead of comin' in bitching and moaning at me, boy? We thought it might be smart to maybe make sure we're ready to handle em before we actually hunt them down. I like the idea of not dyin' when we do."

"An we appreciate your work, Bobby, we do." Sam stepped in, playing peacemaker in a way that Spencer was fast coming to see was a normal role for him. He had the tone of voice perfect. A way of saying things that wasn't offensive to either side and helped to diffuse any temper that might crop up.

Trying to ignore them for a moment, Spencer bent down over the table to look at a sheet of paper that had slid under the others. Maybe this one, if they placed it next to...he grabbed another sheet of paper and grinned. Ah, yes. These two together would help protect the wearer from quite an array of magically induced illnesses. Who knew if it would work against a creature as strong as Pestilence? Would the illnesses he caused count as magically created ones or would they be considered more real? Either way, it was worth wearing. They'd give no harm to the one who was wearing them.

As he straightened himself back up, the ache that sat between his shoulders all the time anymore made itself known and he winced a little. Dammit, now was not the time for that to start kicking in. Spencer rolled his shoulders to try and ease the muscle strain. There was no getting rid of it, not completely, but sometimes he could get it a little more under control than others. It was starting to happen more and more frequently. Gabriel said it meant that his wings were getting closer to wanting free.

His gesture hadn't been lost on the others. Bobby straightened up as well and pressed his hands in against the small of his own back, pushing and arching until he got himself to pop. Then he smiled at Spencer. "We been pushing ourselves here, kid. Why don't we take a break for a bit? You been bent over this table for hours. Go outside, take a walk, get some fresh air."

Spencer tilted his head so that his bangs screened his face and he discreetly looked them over. He wasn't sure if Bobby's suggestion was for him to really stretch or if he wanted a little alone time with the boys to discuss whatever it was they'd been doing today.

Either way, Spencer wasn't going to argue it. "That sounds perfect. Excuse me, gentlemen." He slipped past Sam, who politely stepped back to allow him past, and then moved towards the front door. If they wanted to talk without him being there, let them. Maybe it wasn't the best team dynamic but there was no reason to expect them all to be able to work together perfectly right away. They were basically two teams merging into one - with no one really trusting anyone. This ought to work out great, he thought sarcastically.

Spencer didn't go far in his walk. Just down a long row of cars to a space that was just out of view of the front porch. There, he leaned against the side of the car, wrapping his arms around himself and wishing idly for a sweater to wear. After a second he chuckled at himself for forgetting and he snapped his fingers. A warm, thick cardigan appeared on him and he gave a happy sigh, snuggling down into it.

He didn't really let himself think about anything in particular as he rested there and watched the sun go down. His brain had been working nonstop for hours now. It felt good to let it rest.

Unfortunately, his time alone didn't last very long. He'd only been out there for five, maybe ten minutes when he heard the crunch of gravel and felt the presence of someone coming towards him. His mind easily identified the other person as Dean. Knowing who it was, Spencer didn't turn away from the view. He just stayed where he was as Dean stopped a few feet behind him.

When the hunter stayed quiet for a moment, Spencer decided that he was going to have to be the one to break the silence. "So, am I to assume it's your turn for a 'heart to heart'?"

He felt the other man startle at his words and then there was a low snort. "God, no." Dean drawled out. He moved forward, coming up to stand at Spencer's side. He looked briefly at Spencer's face before following his gaze to the sunset ahead. "Sharing and caring isn't exactly my thing. I think you and I both know where we stand."

"I don't trust you and you don't trust me. Or Gabriel – who I do trust." A corner of Spencer's mouth tipped up. "Which makes you distrust me even more. Did I get it all?"

He felt the warm crisp feel of Dean's humor in the air. "Yep. Sounds like it."

"Mm."

"It's nothing against you, kid. I know he's helped you and all that."

"He's just put you through a lot." Spencer finished. "I know. He let me read the gospels. I guess he figured it was only fair I knew what I was going to get myself into."

The string of curses that Dean let out at that was rather impressive. Spencer logged some of it away in his head to think about later. He'd always been personally amused by the way that some people cursed. Not all of them ever made any sense to him. The things that people said or suggested someone do. In the back of his mind, Spencer made a note to ask Gabriel about some of it. Maybe he'd be able to make some of it make sense. For now, he just focused his attention on the hunter who was slowly running out of steam. Dean finally settled back against the car with a huff and a glare. "I hate those freaking books." He growled. Then he waved a hand before Spencer could say anything. "Bypassing that entirely, how is it that you could read the things that he's done, the dude that he was, and still be okay with him? I mean, I'm not trying to get rid of a powerful ally here, but I'm not looking to get screwed over. And he's got a history of screwing us over."

"Actually, if you look at it from an objective standpoint, he's got a history of trying to help you guys." Spencer countered. "Everything I read, everything he's done to you or that he did to other people, all the things he told me he did, there was always a lesson to be learned there."

"He's killed people, Doc. Lots of people."

"I know." Spencer said calmly.

Dean turned to look at him incredulously. "And you're cool with that?"

"Have you ever asked him why he killed them?" Spencer countered. He didn't raise his voice, didn't look upset. He just looked at Dean with those too big, too serious eyes of his and calmly asked "Did you ever ask him at all about the people he punished? Or did you simply see the crimes, assume he was evil and decide that he needed to be killed?" The stunned look on his face had Spencer nodding a little as if he'd spoken aloud and answered his questions. "That's what I thought. Things aren't as black and white as you seem to see them as. There's an entire world in shades of gray out there. Maybe next time you should remember that and get the whole story before you make your decisions."

A sensation tickled at the back of Spencer's mind and had his head snapping up. Part of it he recognized; that was Gabriel coming towards them. He knew the feel of the archangel's incoming arrival by now. He had a unique feel to him that was more trickster than anything else. More pagan. Spencer knew it and his mind easily labeled it as Gabriel. What he didn't recognize was the being that he could feel coming with him. "Something's coming."

Immediately Dean tensed beside him. "What?"

"Something's coming." Spencer repeated. He shoved off the car and started to make his way quickly towards the house with Dean hot on his heels. Whatever was coming with Gabriel, they weren't going to wait for it outside. They weren't going to be separated. Spencer had every faith that Gabriel wouldn't bring anyone or anything here that might bring them harm. However, that didn't mean he wanted to be out here with only Dean at his side when it arrived.

They got into the house in just seconds after Gabriel and his companion landed. When Spencer stepped inside and saw who was standing there, he sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled. He would've hit the ground if Dean hadn't caught him up and steadied him. As soon as he had his feet, he found himself shoved behind Dean as the hunter took up a protective stance in front of him. "What's going on?"

Spencer ignored Sam and Bobby on the opposite side of the room. All of his attention was on the being beside Gabriel who shone with a light so bright it was almost blinding. Six enormous white wings lifted up behind him and even with Spencer's shields up, the true form was shining through the vessel, so much more powerful than even Gabriel's.

"Guys," Gabriel said, giving them all his most charming smile. "I'd like you to meet my brother – Mike."

The First Archangel, the oldest of all angels, looked at every single one of them, eyes lingering on Dean the longest, before finally settling on Spencer. The intensity of that stare had Spencer taking a full step back. "Hello." Michael said in a voice that was low and smooth. One corner of his mouth quirked up. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

A stunned silence fell over the room.