"Alright, out with it," Dean said, looking over at Sam in the passenger seat.
Sam stopped staring out the window long enough to give Dean a confused look.
"You've been acting like someone hit your dog for weeks now," Dean said, "What's eating you?"
"It's nothing," Sam said with a sigh. He knew very well that that wasn't true. He knew what was getting under his skin. It was the Trickster...Gabriel...whatever. He knew it was stupid to still be upset over everything. Betrayal was betrayal, end of story. It wasn't like he shouldn't have expected it, he just didn't think it would hurt so much. So maybe he was a little more moody than usual. Given the current situation with the end of the world, Sam felt entitled to being a little moody.
"Nothing," Dean said skeptically, "Right."
Sam rolled his eyes. He was not going to talk to Dean about his broken heart over a creature that he had no business affiliating himself with in the first place.
Rain pelted the windshield as they drove. Dean talked over the roar of the downpour. "You know, brooding about it isn't gonna do anyone any good," he said.
Sam gave Dean a look. Yeah, like his brother was one to talk. Dean wasn't exactly a model of perfection communication.
The windshield wipers swept the water out of the way as fast as they could.
"I'll deal with it," Sam said.
Dean squinted out the windshield through the rain. "Do you mind if we deal with it somewhere dry? This storm is ridiculous. I can't see a damn thing," he said.
"I don't know," Sam said, "Let's keep driving. We're in the middle of nowhere."
"Well, we're going to be in the middle of a ditch if we don't stop off somewhere," Dean said.
A neon light flickered to life just off the road they were on. Sam and Dean saw it at the same time.
"Jackpot," Dean said. He steered the Impala towards the light and parked in what was hopefully a parking space.
They got out of the car and were both drenched in seconds. Luckily, the sign had been for a motel. Sam and Dean made a break for the doors.
The first thing Sam noticed was that, obviously, it wasn't raining indoors, and that was a wonderful, wonderful thing.
The second thing Sam noticed was that this motel was nice. Like really nice. Like it-has-a-fucking-lounge nice. And a fireplace. If it wasn't for being in the middle of nowhere, Sam might've thought this place was a five-star hotel and out of their credit card fraud comfort zone.
Dean turned to Sam and said, "Nice digs for once."
Sam completely agreed. The decor was nice, there was actual people milling around instead of the deserted places they normally stayed at, and Sam was dying to dry off by the crackling fire. The place seemed really warm, a decidedly pleasant surprise.
Sam and Dean walked up to the front desk to check in. A man in a maroon suit stood behind the counter typing quickly into his computer. There was a computer. Not a check-in book. Not a sign-your-name-on-the-guest-log thing. A computer.
The man typed away, glancing up briefly to smile at Sam and Dean before continuing his work.
"Busy night," Dean said.
"Any port in a storm, I guess," the man said, finishing his typing and facing the Winchesters, "If you could just fill this out, please." He slid a small sheet of paper to Dean.
So maybe there was a sign-your-name-on-the-guest-log thing. Still, this place was still the most high end place Sam had been to since the honeymoon suite with Ruby before the apocalypse. Or maybe wherever it was that Gabriel had taken him after their trip to Vermont.
"Sir, I think you got a little...shaving nick there," the man said to Dean, keeping Sam from dwelling on Gabriel for too long. The man produced a tissue almost out of thin air, handing it to Dean.
Sam glanced over at Dean, and yeah, his brother was bleeding a little. Huh. Sam didn't think he'd seen Dean shaving or anything, but he had been a bit stuck in his own head for a while. He probably just hadn't noticed.
"Your key," the man said, holding up a room key almost as stealthily as he'd grabbed the tissue for Dean.
Dean said, "Oh, thanks." He grabbed the key while still holding the tissue to his neck.
Sam forced a polite smile as he prepared to walk away from the front desk.
Before they left, Dean asked, "Hey, you would't happen to have a coffee shop, would you?"
"Buffet. All you can eat," the man said, gesturing further into the hotel, "Best pie in the tri-state area."
Dean smiled brightly. "You don't say," he said.
Dean practically dragged Sam over to the food. Sam wasn't hungry. It was hard to stir up an appetite when you could barely breathe from how sad and defeated you felt. He went through motions of filling up a plate and sitting down, but that was as far as it was going to go.
Dean, on the other hand, spent so much time over at the dessert section that Sam started wondering if his brother had gotten lost.
Dean sat down across from Sam with some pie and said, "Sam, unpucker, man. Eat something."
"We should hit the road, Dean," Sam said, looking at his phone. Sure, he was just checking the weather, which told him only what he already knew. It was still raining cats and dogs out there. But sitting in this nice hotel and relaxing felt wrong. They should be working. They had an apocalypse to stop, they had things to hunt and people to save. The last thing they should be doing is sitting and eating. Being idle for too long was a bad thing. It meant people got hurt, it meant Lucifer got stronger, and it meant Sam had nothing to distract him from the ache he had in his chest. God, if the last time he'd talked to Gabriel hadn't been so bad...
"In this storm?" Dean asked, "It's-"
"It's biblical. Exactly. It's friggin' Noah's Ark out there, and we're eating pie."
"How many hours of sleep did you get this week? What? Three? Four?" Dean asked.
Sam turned his head away with a strained smile. He saw what Dean was getting at, but taking a break in the middle of Armageddon was a seriously bad idea. And if he was being honest with himself, he'd maybe gotten two hours of solid sleep in the last week. His nightmares had never been so bad, and it was much easier to cover ground if one of them was always awake to drive.
"Bobby's got his feelers out, okay? We have talked to ever hoodoo man and root woman in twelve states," Dean said.
Sam said quickly, "Well, I'm not giving up."
"Nobody's giving up," Dean said, "Especially me."
Sam looked down, unable to look his brother in the eye. Dean had been so close to giving up so recently. He had been so ready to say yes to Michael that Cas was gone, and Adam was probably being tortured by angels. Sam didn't blame Dean for that, and he knew his brother had found some new resolve that kept him from wanting to say yes to an archangel. But Dean had been willing to let Michael in. And that still scared Sam.
"We're gonna find a way to beat the devil, okay? Soon. I can feel it," Dean said, "And we will find Cas, we'll find Adam, but you are no good to me burnt out."
Sam met Dean's intense stare. His brother had no idea. Being burnt out would be a vacation compared to what was going on in his head. If sleep could fix the hurt Gabriel had caused, Sam would've slept straight through any nightmare his subconscious could throw at him. He could barely think straight from how badly he wanted to punch something and scream at anyone who would listen that he'd fallen in love with an archangel who only wanted to use him to destroy the world. But there were things that Dean didn't need to know. And Gabriel was quite a few of them.
So, Sam said, "Yeah." He shook his head and sat up straighter. "Yeah, okay," he said.
"Come on. We've actually got the night off for once," Dean said, "Let's try to enjoy it."
Sam reached for his silverware, resigning himself to the fact that Dean wouldn't think he was relaxing if he wasn't eating. And he hadn't eaten in a day or so anyway. Food would probably do him some good.
After the meal, which Sam did miraculously finish, they decided to try and find their room. And they found it. Right next to a couple kissing and giggling in the hallway.
Dean gestured at the two and grinned, laughing.
"Oh, what are you, twelve?" Sam asked, judging his brother.
"I'm young at heart," Dean said. He unlocked the room and walked in. Sam followed him, anxious to get away from the happy couple. Only to find that their room did nothing but remind him of Gabriel. It was like the archangel had decorated it himself. There was even candy on the beds.
Dean whistled. "Wow, look at this. We're like Rockefellers," he said, "Chocolates! Mmm, you want yours?"
"Knock yourself out," Sam said.
Dean swiped the chocolate from Sam's pillow before looking at something on the nightstand. "Whoa," he said, "'Casa Erotica 13' on demand."
Sam scoffed. Of course his brother would get excited about the porn. Sam couldn't wait until, after being forced to have this "day off," Dean would force him to spend his time elsewhere in the hotel for fear being in the vicinity of Dean and on demand "Casa Erotica."
"What?" Dean said defensively.
Sam said, "Isn't this place kind of...in the middle of nowhere?"
"So?"
"So, what's a four-star hotel doing on a no-star highway?" Sam asked.
Just then, the happy couple in the next room started getting a little too happy. Sam and Dean could hear them through the walls.
Dean laughed.
Sam was about to roll his eyes when the bed creaking and thumping turned into something that sounded like a truck had just gotten rammed into the wall. The wall shuddered from the impact. The second hit made the bricks move and their flat screen tv hang haphazardly from the wall.
What the hell?
Sam and Dean quickly left their room and walked into the room next door. Something absolutely catastrophic must have happened to create that much damage, yet when they arrived in their neighbor's room, nothing seemed out of place. The room was immaculate. The bedding was rumpled up, but that was all the chaos to be had.
"Hello?" Dean called.
Silence answered them. Dean nodded for Sam to investigate behind the room divider. Nothing seemed out of place. The walls seemed fine, which was the really troubling part.
Sam tried a quick, "Hello?" in case they hadn't heard Dean.
Again, silence.
Sam joined Dean over by the empty bed. Dean bent over and picked something shiny up off the ground. A wedding ring. Oh, yeah, something really messed up must've happened for them to leave something like that behind.
After getting no answers from the creepiest concierge on the planet, Sam and Dean split up to look around.
Upon meeting back up, Sam and Dean had no answers and even more questions. Apparently, Dean had seen an elephant. In a hotel.
"An elephant?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"Like, an elephant?" Sam asked again.
"Like, full-on Babar," Dean said.
"So, what the hell is-"
They walked into the main lobby. It was empty, completely empty. All the furnishings were exactly where they'd been, but the place was entirely devoid of people.
"Where is everybody?" Sam asked.
Shit. Sam walked over to the door and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge. Shit. This was so very not good.
"Let me guess, it's locked," Dean said, "So, what? The roaches check in, but they don't check out?"
The storm. Fucking hell, the storm. "Think about how we got here," Sam said, turning away from the door, "That detour on I-90? The friggin' hurricane?"
"You saying we were led here?" Dean asked.
"Like rats in a maze," Sam said.
This sucked, like this really sucked. They'd found themselves in messed up situations before. Hell, they usually created messed up situations on their own. This, though. This was clearly a trap, and Sam hated it. He hadn't felt this trapped and confused since TV Land, and that was quite literally the last thing he wanted to think about. He hated being trapped like this. At least in TV Land, they knew what they were up against. But this? A storm wasn't exactly a whole lot to go on. They needed answers to figure out how to get out of this.
They decided to get a look behind the scenes of this freak show and headed to the kitchen.
It looked like a normal kitchen. Stainless steel counters, food, cutlery. This room also had nobody in it, but Sam was starting to get used to it. There was a pot of boiling, red something sitting on the stove.
Dean stopped and looked at the pot with a scrutinizing look. "Please be tomato soup," he said, "Please, be tomato soup."
Dean moved the ladle and fished out a pair of eyeballs. He dropped the ladle, and Sam turned away from the pot. Well, that was just fucking great.
"Motel hell," Dean said.
Sam sighed. He hadn't exactly wanted a day off, but this really wasn't what he'd had in mind. He looked over at the freezer. If there were eyeballs in the soup, what the hell were they going to find in there?
Sam slowly stepped closer and prayed that they wouldn't find any dead bodies. Or something worse.
A man slammed himself against the freezer door with a frightened expression.
"Help us! Get us out!" he shouted.
Sam moved fast, pulling on the freezer handle. Locked. Of fucking course. He grabbed his lock pick.
"Hurry up," Dean said.
Sam said, "I'm going as fast as I-" He looked up at his brother and saw two men with sinister glares standing behind Dean. "As I can..." Sam finished quietly.
"There's something behind me, isn't there?" Dean said.
The two men grabbed Sam and Dean with inhuman strength and dragged them to the ballroom where they were shoved through the door into a room filled with people.
No, not people. Something else.
"Something tells me this isn't a shriner convention," Dean said.
The concierge came out wheeling in a food cart. "Dinner is served," the man said. He pulled off the food cover to reveal a man's severed head surrounded by intestines, organs, and meat.
Sam had thought the eyeballs had put him off his appetite. Now, he really thought he was going to puke.
The beings around them broke out in polite applause.
Suddenly, a bright spotlight shone in Sam and Dean's faces.
"Ladies and gentleman," said a man, "Our guests of honor have arrived."
Everyone took seats and forced Sam and Dean into seats as well.
The man addressing everyone, whose name tag said 'Baldur', clinked a fork to his glass of champagne. "Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming," he said, "Well, in all my centuries, I never thought I'd see this, this many gods under one roof."
"Gods?" Sam whispered, glancing at Dean. Oh, they were fucked.
"Now, before we get down to brass tacks, some ground rules," Baldur said, "No slaughtering each other. Curb your wrath. Oh, and, uh, keep your hands off the local virgins; we're trying to keep a low profile here."
"Oh, we are so, so screwed," Sam said quietly, looking at all of the gods around them. There were way too many to kill, and way too high up on the food chain to kill without some extensive research. Fuck.
"Now, we all know why we're here," Baldur said, "The Judeo-Christian apocalypse looms over us. I know we've all had our little disagreements in the past, the time has come to put those aside and look towards the future, 'cause if we don't, we won't have one."
A hush fell over the group as they considered this.
Baldur continued, "Now, we do have two very valuable bargaining chips. Michael and Lucifer's vessels. The question is, what do we do now? Anybody have any bright ideas? Speak up. This is a safe room."
A Chinese god stood up and spoke Mandarin very angrily.
"Oh, I don't like his tone," Dean muttered.
"Kill 'em? Why? So the angels here can bring them back again?" Ganesha said.
"I don't know what everybody's getting so worked up about," Odin said, "This is just a couple of angels having a slap fight. It's no Armageddon. Everybody knows when the world comes to an end, the great serpent Jormungandr rises up, and I, myself, will be eaten by a big wolf."
The Chinese god said something else with a sigh.
Odin leveled a look at him. "Oh yeah? And why is that? Because your beliefs are so much more realistic? The whole world's gettin' carried around on the back of a giant turtle. Ha. Give me a break."
More angry Mandarin was snapped at Odin.
"What are you gonna do about it?" Odin said, standing up.
More Mandarin.
Dean and Sam looked at each other. This fight was providing pretty decent cover. None of the gods were looking at them.
"You watch your mouth when you talk to me, boy!" Odin snapped.
More Mandarin was shouted.
Sam and Dean started quietly making their way towards the door.
"No one's ever proved that," Odin said, angrily.
A chandelier came crashing down in front of Sam and Dean, making them stop in their tracks and effectively ending the fight between the gods.
"Stay," Kali ordered.
Dean and Sam turned back towards the gods.
Kali slowly looked around at everyone. "We have to fight," she said, "The archangels...the only thing they understand is violence. This ends in blood. There is no other way. It's them...or us."
"With all due respect...ma'am," the concierge, Mercury, said, "We haven't even tried talking to them."
Kali glared at Mercury, causing the god to start choking. Mercury tugged at his collar and bow tie, blood starting to burble up his throat.
"Kali," Baldur said as a reprimand.
Kali released her hold on Mercury, the messenger god gasping for breath.
"Who asked you?" Kali hissed at Mercury.
Suddenly, the doors behind Sam and Dean swung open.
"Can't we all just get along?" Gabriel said.
Gabriel. Sam's breath caught. How could he be here? Why was he here? He probably caused the storm and set them up. How could Sam have been so stupid? That evil, horrible, little- It didn't matter what was going on with the gods, because at that moment, the flare of rage and shock and hurt in Sam just made him want Gabriel dead.
But damned if he didn't still love that asshole.
Sam said, "Gab-"
Gabriel moved his hand quickly, removing Sam and Dean's voices. He clicked his tongue disapprovingly and said, "Sam. Dean. Always wrong place, worst time with you muttonheads, huh?"
"Loki," Baldur said evenly.
Loki? Just when Sam thought he had Gabriel figured out, there was always another surprise around the corner.
"Baldur," Gabriel said with false cheer, "Good seeing you, too. I guess my invitation got lost in the mail."
"Why are you here?" Baldur asked, hostility dripping from his words.
That hostility didn't sit right with Sam. Sure, Sam was angry as hell with Gabriel, and it didn't surprise him in the slightest that the meddling archangel pissed off others as well, but if anyone was going to take that tone with Gabriel, it was Sam.
"To talk about the elephant in the room," Gabriel said to Baldur. Ganesha seemed to take offense, but Gabriel quickly said, "Not you." The archangel turned back to Baldur and said, "The apocalypse. We can't stop it, gang. But first things first." Gabriel turned around to face the Winchesters. "The adults need to have a little conversation. Check you later," he said.
Gabriel snapped his fingers, and the brothers were suddenly in a hotel room away from all the gods.
Sam and Dean looked around, both completely floored by everything that had just happened.
"Okay. Did that-holy crap," Dean said.
"Yeah, tell me about it," Sam said, "By the way, next time I say 'let's keep driving,' uh, let's keep driving."
"Okay, yeah, next time," Dean said.
Sam ran a hand down his face. "Uh, alright, so, what's our next move?" he asked. Gabriel was downstairs with a whole bunch of gods discussing the apocalypse. What next move could there even be?
Dean said, "I-I-I don't know. We grab those poor saps out of the freezer, I guess. Bust em out, gank a few freaks along the way if we're lucky."
"And when are you ever lucky?" Gabriel asked, sitting on the couch along the wall.
"Oh, you know what? Bite me, Gabriel," Dean said.
Gabriel said quickly, "Maybe later, big boy."
"I should've known," Dean said, "This had your stink all over it from the jump."
"You think I'm behind this? Please," Gabriel said, "I'm the Costner to your Houston. I'm here to save your ass."
"You want to pull us out of the fire?" Dean asked.
Gabriel said, "Bingo. Those gods are either gonna dust you or use you as bait. Either way, you're uber-boned."
"Wow, a couple months ago you were telling us we need to play our roles. You were uber-boning us," Dean said.
Sam had to agree with Dean. Sure, the last time Sam had talked to Gabriel, the archangel had seemed truly sorry over the whole TV Land thing, but he was still on Dean's side with this one. Sam didn't trust Gabriel anymore than Dean did.
"Oh, the end is still nigh. Michael and Lucifer are gonna dance the lambada," Gabriel said with a small dance gesture, "But not tonight. Not here."
"And why do you care?" Dean asked.
Sam stilled. He could think of one reason, but that reason was clearly a goddamn lie. Still, there was a lot of stuff that he didn't want Dean knowing.
"I don't...care. But," Gabriel said, looking at Sam intently, "Me and Kali, we, uh, had a thing." He looked back at Dean before saying, "Chick was all hands. What can I say? I'm sentimental."
"Do they have a chance?" Sam asked, "Against Satan?"
He didn't think too much about Kali and what Gabriel had just said, because that was just too much to think about at the moment; he focused on the important thing, being used as bait. If Lucifer came here, if the gods could work together and overpower him, no more apocalypse. It was more of a plan than they'd had so far, and after Lucifer was dead, Sam could figure out what to do with his feelings for Gabriel without the end of the world hanging over their heads.
"Really, Sam?" Dean asked.
"You got a better idea, Dean?" Sam asked.
"It's a bad idea," Gabriel said, meeting Sam's gaze, "Lucifer's gonna turn them into finger paint, so let's get going while the going's good, hmm?"
"Okay, good. Why don't you just zap us out of here, then?" Dean asked.
"Would if I could," Gabriel said, "But Kali's got you by the short and curlies. It's a blood spell. You boys are on a leash."
Dean asked, "What does that mean?"
"Means it's time for a little of the old black magic," Gabriel said, spritzing his mouth with a spray bottle that he pulled out from nowhere.
Sam looked at Gabriel. Seriously? Now, he couldn't stop thinking about that comment about having a thing with Kali. Did he seriously have a thing with Kali? Was Gabriel just going to go in there and seduce Kali the Destroyer? Sam did not like that idea at all. One, it was dangerous. Two, it was Gabriel seducing someone that wasn't him, and God, that shouldn't bother him so much, but it did. And it hurt like a bitch.
"Okay, yeah, well, whatever," Dean said, "We're gonna take the hors d'oeurves in the freezer with us."
"Forget it. It's gonna be hard enough sneaking you mooks out of here," Gabriel said.
Dean said, "They called you 'Loki', right? Which means they don't really know who you are?"
"Told you. I'm in witness protection," Gabriel said.
Dean said, "Okay, well, then how about you do what we say, or we tell the, uh, Legion of Doom about your secret identity. They don't seem like a real pro-angel kind of crowd."
Sam didn't quite know how to feel about Dean threatening Gabriel. There was still a part of him that wanted to care about Gabriel and protect him from anything. Then again, Sam himself had made a threat to Gabriel that had been much worse.
"I'll take your voices away," Gabriel said.
Dean said, "We'll write it down."
"I'll cut off your hands."
"Then people are gonna be asking, 'why are you guys running around with no hands?'"
Gabriel looked at Sam. The archangel asked telepathically, "Is he serious?"
Sam didn't bother replying.
Gabriel looked back at Dean. "Fine," he said angrily.
Gabriel disappeared, and Sam and Dean headed down to the kitchen. Sam tried very, very hard not to think about what Gabriel was doing with Kali in another part of the hotel.
In the lobby, a cry came from a human being attacked by the gods. "No! No!" he screamed.
Sam and Dean hid quickly around a corner as the gods ran the human over the reception desk. Dean went to intervene, but Sam held him back.
"It's too late," Sam said quickly.
They stayed quiet and hidden while they listened to the gods kill and consume the innocent man. Once the coast was clear, Sam and Dean made their way into the kitchen. Sam quickly got to work picking the lock and forcing images of Kali and Gabriel out of his head.
Within seconds, Dean was thrown across the kitchen by the Chinese god. Blood still on the god's face from killing the man in the lobby, the god ran at Sam, picking him up by the neck and pinning him against the freezer door. Sam tried kicking at the god, but it was no use. His vision started to go fuzzy from the strangulation.
Dean came up behind the god and stabbed him through the back with a stake. And it actually worked, unlike with Gabriel.
"Where the hell is Gabriel?" Dean asked.
Sam gasped, taking a deep breath. He looked at Dean. Where was Gabriel? That was a good question. If they were lucky, the archangel was simply enjoying himself and that nothing too terrible had happened.
But like Gabriel had said minutes before, when were they ever lucky?