Author's note: Thanks a lot to Ghastly Eternity for beta-reading and to Maknatuna, Mello18, Ghastly Eternity, Darla M, Maddy Love Castiel, Tendencia, Creativity Incarnate and Slashify for last chapter's reviews.

Also, to everyone who didn't know, I put up another short-story called "once upon a time" with some established Sabriel and some Destiel moments... also fairytales... Maybe some of you would like to check it out.

9

"Gabriel!" Sam moaned, stretching the other hamster's name to the maximum. This was getting really uncomfortable, even though the golden hamster had promised that it would be fun. Nothing wrong with wanting to have some fun, right?

"Uh… I'm nearly… just… hold still for a moment," Gabriel replied a little breathlessly as he tried to arrange his limbs in a way that would allow for this to be comfortable for them both. It wasn't quite as easy as he had thought at first, however.

"This was a stupid idea!" Sam complained and groaned when the golden hamster scratched his back accidentally.

"Okay, I'm calling quits! Get out!" the brown hamster demanded and pushed Gabriel off the hamster wheel when he wouldn't react fast enough.

The smaller hamster looked so dejected that Sam was immediately sorry for acting as harshly as he had, but there was just no way that the hamster wheel was big enough for the two of them to run in it at the same time.

"Hey, I'm sorry," the taller hamster apologized honestly and got off the wheel, too, "Maybe we can give Castiel signals that we need a bigger wheel, what do you think?"

Gabriel seemed to be rather okay with that idea. In fact, he started to think about possibilities to show their owner what the problem was here with a pantomime. They might get somewhere with moping around the hamster wheel, or showing the little human what they had just tried to do, so he could see for himself that it just wasn't possible with the wheel they had.

"What do we do in the meantime?" the golden hamster nearly whined.

The idea to show Castiel that there was something they wanted was good, but it was night and the humans were sleeping, so they'd have to wait until the next evening to implement that plan.

"What we always do?" the taller hamster suggested casually and went to check the content of the food bowl. He pushed most of the sunflower seeds to Gabriel's preferred side and grabbed a peanut half.

"But I wanted to do something with you!" the smaller hamster really whined this time.

He sighed sadly and kicked the sawdust. Gabriel's moping immediately turned into happy squeaking as he started to uncover as much of the newspaper as he could. Reading was something they could do together! They both enjoyed it, too. Clearly, Sam wouldn't say no to that!

As it turned out, the golden hamster didn't even have to ask, because his taller friend scurried over to him and helped with the sawdust removal nearly instantly. They really had found a pastime they both liked there.

"I found the horoscope!" Gabriel announced cheerfully, "Look, it says so right here!"

Sam was a little astonished that his smaller companion really had pointed to the right word while saying that. Maybe the golden hamster was much more attentive and adaptive than the taller hamster had given him credit for.

"Did you just recognize the word?" Sam asked just to make sure, "I mean, did you just read that word?"

Gabriel stared at the brown hamster, then at the newspaper, then at the other hamster again. Then he stared between them some more before he threw himself at Sam and proceeded to cuddle the hell out of him.

"You showed me how to read!" he yelled and nosed the taller hamster's cheeks affectionately.

The brown hamster didn't really know how to handle all the fondling he was receiving, but he couldn't find it in himself to fight Gabriel off, either. He was just so happy and it wasn't like he was making him feel all too uncomfortable.

"It's just one word, Gabe," Sam stated carefully and made sure to add very quickly, "I could teach you how to read everything you want, though."

He should have seen the golden hamster's reaction to that offer coming, he supposed. The smaller hamster made a few very happy noises and rubbed his head against Sam's chest repeatedly. Again, the taller hamster didn't do anything to stop him. As Castiel had stated earlier, he liked cuddling just fine, so it wasn't a big deal, really.

"Let's start here! No here! No, no, here!" Gabriel suggested excitedly, jumping from one part of the horoscopes to the other until he found the sign he recognized, "I found me!"

Sam chuckled at the wording and went over to the part of the paper his smaller friend was pointing at.

"There is a lot of frenzy and energy in the air today. Unexpected events are likely to come on the scene," he read out loud very slowly. They really should go about this with more of a system, but if Gabriel wanted to start with his horoscope, that was something they could work with.

"Yes, yes, frenzy and energy", the golden hamster nodded quickly and pointed to the two words, trying to memorize them as he did.

"Okay, look, we should try to find a full alphabet for you to work with," Sam stated seriously and ripped an A from the newspaper, putting it into the sawdust next to himself.

Gabriel watched with a lot of fascination as the taller hamster went on ripping pieces out of paper and making a neat line. If there was a more perfect being on this entire planet, then the golden hamster didn't want to know.

Aright, Sam had only been able to find the lower case characters, but that should do for the start. He made sure that he had put them into the right order once more before he went and pulled the other hamster over to the line he had made.

"Learning to read is a lot of work and it'll take a while," the brown hamster warned his friend. He could still back out without either of them having lost much time on this.

Gabriel simply nodded very determined and looked at Sam expectantly.

"Okay then," the taller hamster stated with a smile, "This is an A."