Author's note: Thanks so much to Ghastly Eternity for beta-reading and to Maknatuna, Mello18, Tendencia, Darla M, keacdragon, Jeanny and one guest for last chapter's reviews!

4

Gabriel always had very realistic dreams. He started to dream the moment he fell asleep and only stopped when he woke up again. The most prominent sign for that was the fact that his arms and legs were twitching nearly constantly while he was sleeping.

Usually, he was dreaming of the times when Castiel got him out of the cage and let him run around the carpet for a while. His favorite of those dreams were the ones where he got to climb around on either Dean or Castiel while the children giggled madly. Why hadn't they done that in days, anyway? Maybe he should drop his black-haired caretaker some hints when he showed up the next time.

Anyway, his dreams were different that day.

A head of lettuce was following Gabriel with murderous intent. The thing had glowing red eyes and sharp teeth and it was seeking vengeance for all its siblings the golden hamster had eaten in his life. Gabriel was running as fast as he could, but the lettuce was faster and he would inevitably be eaten.

It might have been the ultimate nightmare, if it wasn't for the big brown hamster that showed up just in time and ate the evil lettuce. Gabriel smiled at Sam gratefully and his hero smiled right back.

The golden hamster woke up in an incredibly good mood and with the resolution to get the real Sam to smile at him like he had in his dream. That, and to get Castiel to take them out of the cage for a little while. But first and foremost, he'd get Sam to like him back!

"Good evening, Sammy!" Gabriel called merrily and hurried over to his roommate.

Sam jumped slightly and hastily threw the sawdust back over the spot he had just been looking at. The taller hamster turned to look at his smaller companion slightly unnerved because he never got to do anything without him interrupting! Then again, this time it wasn't really Gabriel's fault. He had just woken up and just wanted to say 'hi', the taller hamster couldn't be mad at him for that.

"Uh… hey… Gabriel," Sam replied, trying and failing miserably to be completely inconspicuous.

"Watcha doing?" Gabriel asked predictably and stood right next to the brown hamster, shamelessly invading his personal space. He had seen how his companion had moved some sawdust around, but he didn't really have an explanation for it. Well, he had a couple of explanations for that, actually. They reached from spring cleaning to building a sawdust-man.

"Uh… just… y'know… the usual," the brown hamster shrugged and turned to walk toward the hamster wheel. He wanted to have some exercise anyway and it might help with throwing Gabriel off his case. Or, more likely, it would get the golden hamster to try and get him out of the wheel instead of questioning what he had been doing in the corner of their cage.

"Oh," Gabriel replied with a serious nod, "I usually do that in the house, but hey, to each their own."

"What are you even talking about?" Sam couldn't help asking, even if he suspected that he was going to regret it, already. It seemed like the smaller hamster made him do and say quite a few things he was going to regret later quite regularly.

"You have gone through puberty, haven't you?" Gabriel shot back, waggling his eyebrows.

"Eww," the taller hamster commented and made a mental note to stay away from the hamster house in the future, as well. Before he had only avoided it, because he didn't want to be in an enclosed space with the golden hamster. It was hard enough to get a little privacy in this cage and getting into an even smaller section when he was sure that Gabriel would follow promptly just wasn't all too appealing.

"What were you doing there then?" the older hamster asked thoughtfully before he leaned closer and whispered, "I had thought you knew that the toilet was over there."

"Yes, I do!" Sam replied definitely. He wasn't going to let Gabriel go on thinking that he had been doing any nasty things, even if he might have ended the talk by admitting to something he hadn't done.

The smaller hamster nodded satisfied with that answer until he remembered that he had originally wanted to know something else entirely.

"What were you doing then?" Gabriel asked once more, looking at his roommate even more curiously. The more Sam tried to hide whatever he had done, the more the golden hamster wanted to know.

Since the taller hamster didn't dream about giving an answer, the smaller hamster decided to take matters into his own two paws and began to dig around in the sawdust. He would get to the bottom of this! In fact, getting to the bottom was not all too hard. The sawdust wasn't heavy or anything, after all.

"Okay, yeah, are you satisfied now?" Sam asked with a deep sigh as he watched Gabriel stare at the newspaper at the very bottom of their cage.

"Uh… no?" the smaller hamster replied, frowning.

"You… don't get it, do you?" the brown hamster sighed. He really didn't want to explain something he'd only be teased with. Not saying anything more wouldn't work either, though. After all, Gabriel knew for sure that something was up and he clearly wouldn't let it go.

"Sure, I get it! What do you think? I'm not stupid! I totally get it!" the golden hamster insisted and desperately tried to put the things together that his roommate seemed to think he should have put together, already.

"I've been reading that," Sam admitted annoyed and then added, even more exasperatedly, "Go ahead. Say it!"

Gabriel blinked a couple of times and then looked back at the taller hamster in amazement. "That's awesome!"

Well, it clearly wasn't what the brown hamster had thought his smaller companion would say, but Sam wasn't going to complain about that. In fact, he might just have gained a whole new level of respect for the annoying, little thing he was stuck with.