Notes: Thanks for the reviews! Feedback spurs quick updates, you know.
Coincidentally, the next part should be ready to go within the next 24 hours.
The back seat was surprisingly roomy, though it squeaked every damn time he moved and it was impossible to get entirely comfortable with the car rumbling around him. Gabriel was living life human-style, and it sucked ass. Every pothole and bump on the road – which he noticed that Dean did try to avoid – jolted up his spine and sent his wound to aching. He would literally kill for a bottle of vicodin, or a shot of morphine. Hell, assault for an aspirin was starting to look pretty good right about now.
Gabriel shifted in the back seat, rolled onto his back to look up at the roof of the impala. The shift prompted a small flurry of protests from the nerve endings in his back where the exit-point of the knife wound had only just closed up, pink, new skin still tender and easily aggravated.
Alice Cooper was pumping out of the speakers, the volume set at a level that made it comfortable background noise over the purr of the engine.
Somebody's stomach grumbled loudly. It was answered by another, separate growl.
"When your intestines begin talking to one another," Gabriel drawled from the back seat, "it's usually not a good sign."
His sarcasm was met with unimpressed silence. After a moment or two's pause he could hear Sam shift in the front seat. "There's meant to be a truck stop a few miles ahead," he said, "we could stop there."
"We're just a couple of hours away from our next stop."
"Dean, come on. The truck stop is two minutes away."
"Yeah," Gabriel added, ready to jump on board with anything that would get him out of the back seat for more than a few minutes, "come on, Dean. Stop for icecream, get the kid a sundae. Heck, get yourself one too. You deserve it."
"There might be pie," Sam suggested, appealing to Dean's selfish side.
"Think about the pie, Dean. Think about it hard." Gabriel paused a beat for effect. "Now think about going four more hours without that sweet flaky crust, and sticky, mouth-watering, delectable filling..."
"Great. I've got a couple of shoulder-puppets telling me to pull in at a truck stop." Despite the distinctly unenthusiastic tone, Dean dutifully pulled over and found a park outside the truck stop diner. They got some odd looks, mainly because Gabriel was still dressed in the ridiculously oversized hoodie, which died away as soon as they were seated at a booth by the window.
The menus were laminated sheets of paper printed on both sides. A limited range, but good enough considering the nature of truck stops and diners. Whether by sheer coincidence or not the dessert section listed 'chocolate fudge sundae' right beneath the 'hot apple pie with vanilla icecream'.
If it was at all surreal for either of the Winchester brothers to be sitting in a truck stop diner with a wounded and heavily impaired archangel they were doing a good job of hiding it. Of course, Gabriel reasoned as he pretended to look at the menu, they were used to keeping unusual company. It was the archangel himself who wasn't used to sitting in a truck stop diner with a couple of humans, hunters at that, who actually seemed comfortable in his (admittedly not very impressive at the moment) company.
The second the heavily made up waitress arrived to take their orders Gabriel was all smiles. He ordered dessert first with a cheeky grin and a quip about not living forever. "Carpe diem, live fast, eat dessert first. Life's too short for calorie counting."
"What the hell," Dean said moments later, folding his hands on top of the table. "I'll take a slice of that apple pie and a cup of the house blend."
Gabriel nodded at Dean in approval, then turned an expectant gaze to Sam, one eyebrow raised. The younger Winchester looked at the archangel, then at his brother, not sure whether to be amused or horrified at the similar expressions on their faces. He relented with a sigh, dropping his menu into the centre of the table. 'Carpe diem', apparently the battle to save mankind was a good excuse to forget healthy eating. "Alright, fine. Do you have any yogurt?"
"Dude." Dean looked disgusted. "Yogurt? We're eating dessert first and you pick yogurt?"
"There's nothing wrong with yogurt."
"Yeah, if you like sour milk and bacteria."
Feeling unduly pressured, Sam smiled apologetically at their waitress. "Can I get a bowl of plain vanilla icecream, thanks? And an orange juice."
The waitress scribbled his order down on her pad and left them with a smile and a 'be right out with that'. Gabriel watched her go, his gaze lingering briefly on the sway of her hips out of habit before snapping back to the pair of brothers sitting on the opposite side of the booth. He picked up one of the tiny packets of sugar-substitute from the disk on the table and started fiddling with it, contemplating the merits of doing sugar-shots. He looked across the table with a small smirk, sugar-packet dangling from his fingers. "You know, I can't say you struck me as the plain vanilla type, Sammy."
"O-ho, trust me," Dean chuckled, tapping his fingertips against the edge of the table to some inaudible beat, "Sam is definitely the plain vanilla type."
"Vanilla icecream," Gabriel continued as he carefully tore his sugar-packet open, "is instant cause for suspicion. In my long, varied and very fulfilling existence, I've met few people who liked vanilla icecream enough to have it on its own. And let me tell you, none of them were boring people."
"Ok," Sam said, clearly not getting where this was going, "so we've established that I'm not boring..."
"We've opened the possibility," Gabriel paused to pour the sugar from the packet straight onto his tongue, "that you may in fact be a transvestite dominatrix."
Sam choked. "What?!"
"Only kinky bastards choose vanilla, Sam."
Spluttering seemed to be the only response Sam could think of. "Screw you," he managed finally. And not very effectively.
"Right here?" Gabriel's smirk turned into an outright evil grin, "why, Sam. How daring."
"You know," Dean said, looking decidedly devious, "there was that whole screwing around with a demon thing, and the sucking down blood like you were a kid in a candy shop."
"Dean!" Sam looked scandalised.
"That S'n'M librarian chick back in Tulsa."
"It's always the quiet ones," Gabriel nodded, tearing open another sugar packet.
Sam glowered at them both as the waitress arrived carrying their orders. He waited until she'd gone, dug his spoon defiantly into his bowl of plain vanilla icecream, and then said very clearly; "I hate you guys."
Two weeks after Gabriel had first materialised in the back seat, after skulking around motel rooms and spending ridiculous amounts of time lying in the back of the impala (and getting far too acquainted with the vicious side-effects of his current condition), Gabriel was ridiculously happy when he managed to switch the channel on the car radio without touching it.
With just a little extra concentration the radio snapped from the classic rock hits of the 60s, 70s, and 80s to an obnoxious country cover of a contemporary pop song.
Dean's immediate reaction was to glare at the radio suspiciously. "What the hell?" He switched the station back, only for it to jump right back to the country music station. He switched it back again. And the country music came back, louder. Gabriel chuckled evilly to himself in the back seat.
"Dude," Dean looked over his shoulder at the archangel. "Not funny."
Frankly Gabriel thought it was brilliant. It was improvement. It meant that his entire being wasn't beyond repair, just... damaged. Damaged was better than dead. Even so he switched the station back to the one it had been on before, closed his eyes and smiled. He had no idea how much of what he'd been before still existed and how much of his power had been burned away by Lucifer's blade. It was heartening to know that he at least retained some of what he'd once been.
He could still feel the ragged edges of a hole right through his middle; Invisible to the naked eye, intangible, he might have thought it was his imagination if only it didn't take so much effort to access a power that should have come as naturally as breathing.
The wound on his chest had closed up enough to stop oozing, and had begun to show signs that he'd soon be looking at a fresh, pink scar rather than a jagged, terrible scab. Gabriel kept the wound bandaged still – he didn't want to see it until he was certain it was as healed as it was going to get.
He pushed himself too far and split the scabs open again. Impatience might just be his downfall, Gabriel mused as he collapsed to the floor, involuntarily boneless against the worn, threadbare carpet. Heavy, thumping footsteps caused vibrations in the floor that shook him to the bone. Large, careful hands rolled him over and the concerned faces of two human hunters looked down at him.
"Well," Gabriel found himself saying aloud through the foggy haze of core-deep pain, "let's not try that one again."
He didn't quite catch what was said in reply, but secretly appreciated it when he was dragged up by two pairs of hands and manhandled onto the nearby single bed. Judging from the looks of things he'd managed to shift himself all of two metres.
"You're bleeding again," Sam informed him, looking down at him with an expression that mixed exasperation with downright peevishness. "So, congratulations. It looks like you've just set your own progress back a few days, and you managed to bust the microwave too."
"Huh." Gabriel hadn't noticed that, but now that he thought about it he did remember a vague popping noise as he had disintegrated briefly into the ether. That had probably been the very first clue that something was about to go horribly, terribly wrong with his experimental flight.
"That's all you've got to say?" Sam demanded, " just 'huh'? You could have killed yourself!"
"I think what Sam is trying to say," Dean interrupted, fishing out a new gauze pad from their freshly restocked first aid kit, "is that you –" he pointed down at Gabriel, "are grounded, mister. No flying for you."
"Yes, mother." Gabriel raised a hand to slowly peel off the tape holding the blood-stained bandage against his chest. "Am I losing privileges too? Have I been a bad, bad boy? Are you going to spank me?"
"Dude, is your default setting stuck on 'horny sleazebag' or something?"
"And how do we change it?" Sam added dryly, dabbing antiseptic onto the split in Gabriel's chest with a soaked ball of cotton wool. Despite the tone and the look on his face his touch was firm and gentle. Clinical, like it was something he'd done a billion times before. And considering the number of small, silvery scars that no doubt peppered both brothers, he probably had.
"Spank me," Gabriel retorted with a leer, "and find out."
"Shut up, Gabriel. Or we'll get really kinky and gag you."
"Save the coping mechanisms for later," Sam added, gently taping the new bandage in place. "There's a limit to how much creepy flirting I can take."
Caught out, Gabriel pouted just a little. "At least Dean plays along," he grumbled under his breath. Flirting, in his opinion, was a far better occupation of his time than thinking about how a two-metre flight had left him torn open and bleeding again. "Anyone ever tell you that you're no fun at all, Sammykins?"
Sam tossed the gear back into the first aid kit, a resigned, long-suffering look on his face. Much more teasing and Gabriel suspected that the cow-eyes would make a reappearance. He waited, conspicuously innocent, on the bed, and struck with careful precision when Sam opened up his laptop. A carefully directed thought (a small burst of pain from his freshly reopened wound) and the leering bass background of a hardcore bondage website blasted from the laptop speakers.
Sam slammed the laptop closed. He glared at Gabriel, stood, picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, and announced snippily; "I'll be at the library."
A few seconds later the motel door slammed shut. Gabriel adjusted himself on the single bed, inching back until his head was actually cushioned by the hard motel pillow. It sort of pissed him off that he was unable to snap his fingers and replace it with a much nicer, fluffier pillow. "So, Deano," Gabriel spoke up, listening to the hunter move around in the tiny kitchenette. "Now that the little woman is gone what's say you and I crack open a few beers and eat rainbow candy 'til you puke?"
"You want to see me puke?" Dean asked, and the archangel could hear the 'what the fuck' stamped on his face.
"You're not thinking about the bigger picture here." Gabriel clucked his tongue, sounding disappointed. "You'd be puking rainbow. You could do a helicopter shower in the bathtub. It'd be entertaining."
"Yeah. Until someone had to clean it up."
"Sam can clean it up. Come on... you know you want to."
"Dude, I don't want to puke rainbows in the bathroom."
"You're about to lose all of my respect for you as the fun Winchester. Beer, candy, a couple of guys in a dinky little motel bathroom, what's not to love about that?"
"You're kind of a freak, aren't you?"
"I've got a MasterCard in my back pocket," Gabriel sing-songed. "You can buy m&ms and sour hearts and caramel popcorn... Hell, I'll even spring for a bottle of Jack if you're not in the mood for beer."
Dean turned to look at him, arms crossed, one eyebrow slightly raised. "You seriously expect me to just drop what I'm doing and go out and buy a shitload of candy and booze so you can watch me get drunk and puke for your sick ideas of entertainment?"
Gabriel gave Dean his own pouty, over the top version of puppydog eyes. "I'm injured."
He counted how many seconds it took for Dean to wear down. He got to five before the hunter rolled his eyes and, looking disgusted with himself, held out a hand expectantly. "Gimme the damn card."
Gabriel handed over the credit card with a self-satisfied smirk, wondering how long it would take Dean to realise that it was actually one of his own. "There you go. Don't spend it all in one place."
"I'll get the beer," Dean told him, tucking the card away into a pocket, "and I'll get the candy. But I am not puking rainbows to make you feel better." With that he stalked away, keys to the impala in hand.
"Fine," Gabriel replied, still smirking, as Dean left the motel room, "puking optional. You big baby."
Fifteen minutes later Dean returned with a case of beer under one arm and a plastic bag full of brightly coloured packets of candy held in his hand. In that time Gabriel had managed to move himself from the bed to the table – the conventional way, with feet. He watched Dean dump the candy out onto the table and open the case of beer, twisting the cap off a bottle with practiced ease to drink half the bottle in one long draught.
"I always knew you weren't a lightweight," Gabriel commented as Dean passed him one of the bottles, the cap already off. He tore open one of the candy packets, approved of the choice of red liquorice bullets, and popped one into his mouth, mixing the taste with the bitter twist of beer.
The hunter sat down at the table opposite him, produced the MasterCard from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table towards Gabriel. "So when exactly did you swipe that? I don't remember Sam or me misplacing our wallets."
"Uh-uh-uh," Gabriel switched an index finger back and forth. "Just because I don't have any phenomenal cosmic powers doesn't mean I don't have any tricks left in the bag."
Dean shook his head. "Whatever, Houdini. Just don't mess with my credit score."
Gabriel chuckled, watching Dean down the other half of his beer. "Careful, kiddo. You came awful close to making a real, live joke there."
Two hours later when he came back to the motel room to find a mess of empty beer bottles and crumpled candy wrappers and a smirking archangel (with Dean nowhere to be seen), Sam decided not to ask. He got an answer – or part of one – anyway when he heard the sound of retching coming from the bathroom, then Dean's voice muttering "fuckin' rainbows".
He sighed. "I am never leaving you two alone again."