Black Swans

by omphalos, Wolfling

Summary:

A post-apocalyptic road trip with a still recovering archangel wasn't how Sam had envisioned the aftermath of their big plan, but it sure beat a lot of the alternatives.

Notes:

Written for the Supernatural and J-Squared Big Bang Challenge 2010.
The gorgeous banner art accompanying this fic is by Cybel - original post here.
This story jumps off into AU after 5.13 The Song Remains The Same.

Chapter 1

Prologue
(seven months earlier)

"Oh, Sam," Lucifer said, his voice so sticky with sympathy that Sam could almost see the words in the air above him, dripping syrupy letters. And why not? This was all a fucked up hallucination anyway, so why not go for the full-on Looking Glass experience? "That you should have to go through this again, it seems so unfair, doesn't it?"

"You should know," Sam replied in a low voice, leaning his head back against the salted walls of the panic room and wrapping his arms tightly around his legs as the next wave of pain started to swell within him. "You're the one who had this done to me."

Lucifer lifted his hand to his chin in a pensive gesture. "Hmm, I'd debate that. Will you hear me out?"

Sam snorted. "Why bother asking when you know you're just gonna do it anyway? That's what you do, isn't it? Exactly what you want to do, regardless of rules, objections, or the suffering of others?"

"Hmm." Lucifer tipped his head slightly to one side, resting it on two outstretched fingers from the hand at his chin. His fingertips pressed into one of the open ulcerations on his face and twitched as if absentmindedly scratching at an itch. "We really are so alike, aren't we? Almost like... soul mates."

"That's not fair." Sam ground the back of his head against the rough surface, the pain a small distraction from the real pain eating him away inside. He closed his eyes tight. "I care when others suffer. I care a lot."

"As do I," Lucifer said, his voice almost sing-songy. "Truly. We both just happen to think our own agenda is even more important than their pain. And we're both correct, of course. We are more important. It's not egotism when it's the truth. You are important, Sam. Unique, even."

A shuffling noise made Sam open his eyes. Lucifer was moving closer, studying Sam, and Sam winced under both the attention and the stink of putrefying flesh.

"Mmm," the Devil said, smiling and half-closing his eyes as if savoring a scent worlds apart from the one filling Sam's nostrils. "All that delicious guilt, broiling away in your gut, fuel to the anger that drives you. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, don't they, Sam? You know I understand."

"You are so full of shit."

He heard Lucifer laugh quietly. "I'm a projection of your own psyche, Sam. Here to help your conscious mind become aware of a few helpful facts." He crouched down beside Sam, joints popping alarmingly. "I told you that I'll never lie to you, remember? Just the God-given truth... well, with 100% less God." He chuckled at his own joke. "I feel for you, Sam. You've been dealt one hell of a messed up hand, the end result of millennia of angelic manipulation. It's not fair. It really isn't."

Sam was prevented from telling Lucifer where he could stuff his 'feelings' by the next wave of building agony finally breaking, eating up his insides and spitting them out into distilled acid. For an endless while, all he could do was scream and mash his head back against the wall.

Later, he wouldn't be able to say which came first – the new voice or the pain receding. "You really know how to fuck yourself up, don't you?"

Panting for breath, Sam uncurled just enough so that he could look at whoever his subconscious had decided to bring out to play now because that voice wasn't Lucifer's. It was familiar, but... Oh.

The Trickster – Gabriel – was sitting cross-legged beside him, wearing a knowing smirk. "Fell off the wagon but hard, didja, Sammy-boy?"

"Fuck the hell off," Sam told him, too exhausted to grant a hallucination any respect.

Gabriel put a hand to his chest with a mocking shocked expression. "Is that any way to talk to an angel who's answering your brother's prayers? I'm wounded, Sam. Really."

"Yeah, right." Sam snorted. "You're for real." His mental projections weren't even trying any more. At least the pain had subsided for a little while; he should be making the most of it. Stretching his legs out, Sam heaved in a deep breath, trying to ease all his constricted muscles. "Like Dean would pray, let alone to you."

"Not to me specifically, no," Gabriel said. "Doesn't mean I didn't intercept it, Dad's Messenger and all that." He stretched out as well, leaning back on his elbows. "Just because I'm not on the job anymore doesn't mean all the perks have gone away."

"So... what? You heard this prayer Dean supposedly offered up and thought you'd zap yourself over here to gloat?" Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I drank a couple of demons, so laugh it up. Have yourself a freaking ball." Even just the words were enough to make his eyelids flutter, trying to close in reaction to the memory. It had felt so good to finally give in, to let himself have what he'd needed for so long, Christ, the taste of it...

The staccato sound of Gabriel snapping his fingers broke him out of the memory. He looked up to see the archangel unwrapping a chocolate bar and regarding Sam with an almost thoughtful expression. "Gotta say, I wasn't expecting that. You surprised me, and that doesn't happen very often."

Sam looked at the vision of Gabriel properly for the first time, if only to direct a scathing expression his way. "I surprised you by drinking demon blood? In what universe have you been hanging out?"

"Not that," Gabriel said, waving it away with his candy bar. "You stopped. With Famine egging you on, you stopped. You still said 'no'. Which means you've either taken being contrary to a whole new level, as a way of life, or-" And he stopped, regarding Sam with that weird thoughtful expression once more.

"Or what?"

But Gabriel just smiled enigmatically. "Y'know, there's easier ways to detox than to go all cold turkey."

And that was supposed to mean what? "Yeah, there's no such thing as demon blood methadone, Gabriel. Anyway–" Sam lifted his chin defiantly "–it's not so bad this time. It'll be over soon, and you can go back to hanging out with your older brother in the dark recesses of my apparently way more messed up than I'd realized psyche." And that was saying something.

Gabriel laughed at that. "As amusing as it would be to think I'm running around in your subconscious being awesome, I'm real, Sam."

Sam snorted again, louder this time. "Well, what do you know? Looks like Lucifer was telling the truth about not lying to me. He at least admitted to just being a figment." He drew his legs up again as he felt the next wave starting to build, and he wrapped his arms around them. "Makes sense you'd be in here, really, symbolizing my internalised douche."

"Just goes to show, you don't know everything," Gabriel said with a half-shrug and a smile. "Like how there's something that will make detoxing from demon blood easier. If you're very nice, I might even tell you what it is."

Sam could never decide whether his hallucinations were a helpful distraction from the pain and breath-stealing need of withdrawal, or if they just added to the torture. He glared blearily at Gabriel across the ridge of his folded arms. "We tried nice with you, remember? Didn't seem to get us anywhere."

Another shrug. "Yeah, well, first you have to get a guy's attention. And you and your brother, you've got mine. But especially you, Sam."

Sam curled his lip. "'Cause I'm special. Right. I'm special, and I understand what Dean fails to see. I'm the only one strong enough. Last detox, this role was played by my mom; can't say I care for the change in casting. It won't work this time, you know. I know what I am. What I really am."

"Do you?" Gabriel was all amusement. "And what's that?"

Was he really going to have to say it? Of course he was, more painful that way, and it made sense psychologically to get it all out and acknowledged. He could see that. "I'm a freak. A freak and a loser, cursed from birth and full of... of futile anger." He shook his head slowly. "I was so desperate to believe I could be something better than that. I let a freaking demon hook me on her blood so she could make me better, but it just made it all the more true. I've– I've fucked up everything I've touched." He let his head rest in his hands for a few moments, mumbling, "I deserve this pain a hundred times over for what I did, for what's happened already as a result of me doing it."

Silence made him raise his head again, half-expecting Gabriel to be gone and a new character from his line up of torturers to have arrived for their turn, but no the archangel was still there, watching him. Rubbing his hand over his mouth, Sam studied Gabriel right back.

"Anyway," he added with a little half-shrug. "I need to stay alive and un-ridden in order to keep the real hero of this piece from going completely nuts."

If it wasn't already too late for that. Dean seemed to be breaking a little more with every passing day. It was worse than withdrawal, watching that. What Sam was going through here in the panic room would pass, at least until the next time he found himself drinking a demon again. He knew that it was finite, and that gave him the strength to survive it. But Dean was carrying his own personal Hell around with him, and Sam wasn't sure now if that would ever pass. Every time his brother closed his eyes...

Gabriel shook his head. "You don't get it, do you, Sam? When – if – you manage to beat this, it's going to be you and your brother acting together. That's the wild card that none of us saw in this whole damn prophecy. Hey, you managed to change an archangel's mind, and that's none too shabby, so don't sell yourself short."

Sam closed his eyes, too tired to argue any further. "I wish that were true," he said softly. "I really wanted to convince you. Dean thought I was crazy, or going dark again, wanting to recruit a... Well, we thought you were a monster then."

"I've been called a lot worse," Gabriel said, seemingly unperturbed by the name. "'Coward', for starters, but... I can't say there's not truth to both. Maybe I want to prove otherwise now. If you'll let me."

Sam didn't bother opening his eyes. "Go away, Gabriel. Stop tempting me with hope. It's the only thing I crave more than the blood these days, and it's even more dangerous to let me have it." God, he must really hate himself. Lucifer was only to be expected, but to taunt him with the conversion of the one person who could really make a difference to their hopeless fight, who really could put a dent in destiny, was too much. He pressed his forehead into his knees as the pain peaked again, racking his body.

He heard Gabriel sigh and then the sound of fingers snapping again. Suddenly things, including the pain, seemed much further away. "We'll have this conversation again, Sam Winchester," Gabriel said as Sam spiralled down into warm, painfree darkness. "And maybe you'll even remember that one."

Day One

"Gabriel?" The voice was coming from very far away. If everything else hadn't been so very quiet, he wouldn't be able to hear the voice at all. "Gabriel! Hey, come on now. Don't do this. You promised that you– Gabriel, please!"

His thoughts seemed murky in a way that would probably alarm him more if things were clearer, but he still managed to drag his eyes open. "Whoa."

"Oh, thank God..." The pressure he now realized he'd been feeling in his shoulders lessened, and a shadow moved away from the bright light above him. "You just scared the– Are you all right?"

"Let's leave Dad out of this," Gabriel muttered, raising a hand to rub at his face, which took a depressing amount of energy.

"Look, I know you need time to recover, but... We're not in Kansas anymore." The voice sighed heavily, and Gabriel could feel movement beside him. "Or in Detroit for that matter."

Gabriel's memory was slowly drifting back. "Are we somewhere?" he asked. "Because that's better than what I was expecting."

There was a short pause, then, "So all that stuff about it taking more than one freak kid from Lawrence, K-S, to drain you dry was just what I thought it was? Lies and spin to get me to do it?" The voice – Sam – laughed, kind of hollowly. "Or were you just expecting me to fail? Don't ever change, Gabriel."

"Did you?" He managed to turn his head to the side enough to bring Sam into view.

Sam was crouched beside him against a backdrop of dappled greenish hues. His clothes were ripped up and covered in dried blood. "D'you really think I'd still be here to shake you awake if I'd failed? Lucifer's dead. I'm... I'm sorry for your loss." The kid actually sounded sincere when he said that.

Gabriel closed his eyes against the sympathy, remembering what his brother had been before all of this had started. "He was lost long ago," he said softly, the eons-old grief from the first war heavy in his words. He forced his eyes open again, not wanting to have the memories so clear, his gaze once more focusing on the man beside him. "And unlike a certain pair of stubborn humans, he didn't have the ability to change. No angel does."

Sam cast him a disbelieving look. "You changed and so did Cas. Anna too. The 'we can't change' line is an excuse for cowards and the lazy. You're neither, not anymore. How are you feeling?"

And there was Sam, once again, casually denying the facts of the universe. Really, it was no wonder the Winchesters had actually managed to pull off this insane plan. As for how he was feeling, he tried to think of an accurate description. "Like a used battery that's been kicking around the floor of a movie theater that hasn't been cleaned in weeks – sticky, weak, and just all around gross, thanks for asking."

"Can you..." Sam seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. "Can you clean yourself up okay? Your body's hurt."

Gabriel was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but he had to try anyway. Reaching for his grace, he snapped his fingers. The world went away for a while again.

When he came back, someone had hold of one of his hands and was dabbing something wet on his wrist. It kind of stung. "What are you doing?" he asked, opening his eyes again. Or at least, that was what he intended to ask; it came out sounding more like "Whaaaa..." and then trailed off into incoherent noise, much to his annoyance.

"Gabriel?" The wet dabbing stopped, though his hand wasn't dropped. When Sam spoke again, he was closer. "Don't rush yourself; you passed out. It's okay. I found us a place out of the sun. Not exactly five star accommodation, but it'll do for now so take it easy."

Gabriel continued to work on getting his eyes open since talking wasn't working all that great, finally managing it and even managing to get them to focus. He found himself looking up at a dark and cobwebbed wooden ceiling.

"This wound needs a real bandage," Sam went on. "but I can't find any clean cloth in this place. So I boiled the water on the propane stove, and I found some old vodka to sterilize it all."

"You're holding my hand." Sure, now his voice worked.

"You'll live. I need your arm still while I clean the incision. Did you have to cut so deep?" Sam sighed again. "Don't answer that."

"It should've healed by now," Gabriel said, frowning. He was forgetting something; he just couldn't remember what.

"You've shorted out," Sam said, starting to dab at Gabriel's sore wrist again. "Trying to use your power made you pass out the second time. We'll lay low, give you a chance to recharge, and I'll work on finding out where the hell we are."

"Not Hell," Gabriel said helpfully, frowning up at the ceiling. "It's too mundane. Not Heaven either, though. It's too..." He started to gesture with the hand that Sam wasn't holding onto, but stopped when it felt like his arm weighed several tons. His hand fell back to what he guessed was some sort of mattress.

"It's hot enough here for Hell. Don't move this." Sam put the hand he was holding gently down onto Gabriel's stomach. A noise Gabriel translated as a bottle opening came from nearby. "This'll sting like hell too," Sam said as he lifted Gabriel's hand again.

"Yeah, that," Gabriel said, gasping against the swift, surging prickling that seemed to start at the wound Sam was tending and spread through his whole body. "'s too stingy for Heaven." Heaven was a lot of things, not all of them pleasant. Things that happened there could rip your heart open and leave it bleeding on the floor, but it didn't generally sting.

He was still reeling from the sharp pain while Sam did something else to his wrist, but then it seemed like it was all over, his hand lying on his belly again and being patted before Sam straightened up with a weary sounding sigh. "That's the best I can do without better supplies."

"I'm sure it's fine," Gabriel said magnanimously. He would've waved the hand about to prove it if it had weighed a little less.

"I'm going to scout around a little," Sam said, moving away. "Don't try to get up 'til I get back, okay?"

"Not going to be a problem," Gabriel told him, eyes drifting shut again. It was going to take some time to work up to even sitting up, much less any more.

He thought Sam had gone, but then he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. "You're gonna be all right. We just have to be patient, let time do its thing."

The world slid away again before Gabriel could answer.

***

Sam opened the door back into the little hut as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake Gabriel if he was still sleeping. He found it easier to think of Gabriel being asleep rather than unconscious. Angels, let alone archangels, shouldn't pass out cold. Seeing Gabriel of all people so weak and helpless was disturbing in a whole new way, and Sam, let's face it, was a freaking connoisseur of disturbing. What made it even worse was knowing how Gabriel had gotten into this state. Sam couldn't even look at him without feeling a hot flush of guilt pass over him.

Not that Gabriel's depletion was the only disturbing thing Sam was having to contend with – far from it – but it was the only one he could do anything about right now. Strange how whenever he'd let himself imagine the aftermath of a successful end to the Apocalypse, it had been full of celebrations and happy survivors. Not this. Definitely not this at all. He guessed that not all successes really deserved the name.

Things had gotten so dark and cataclysmic before the end. So much death, whole populations gone as the world reshaped itself – Sam knew he was going to spend the rest of his life with the burden of 'why couldn't we have figured out the way to kill Lucifer earlier?' on his shoulders. It was a good thing his shoulders were so broad really, considering that he was already carrying around the knowledge that he rose Lucifer in the first place.

With his eyes adjusted to the strong sunshine outside, Sam couldn't see a damned thing inside the hut, just dark shapes against a slightly less shadowy background. Shutting the door behind him, he walked as softly as he could over the bare, creaking, and on the way to rotting floorboards, over to the dirty cot bed. "Gabriel?" he asked in a lowered voice. "You awake?"

"Yeah."

Sam was close enough now to see that Gabriel had managed to sit up and was leaning heavily on the wall behind the bed. He hoped he'd gotten rid of all the living spiders during his initial sweep of this hut, what with Gabriel being unable to heal himself right now. It wasn't exactly Sam's area of specialist knowledge, but he was pretty sure some of them had been recluses. He'd shooed out a snake too, one with bands of different colours that had just screamed VENOMOUS.

The wildlife together with the heat and humidity were encouraging his growing conviction that he knew where he and Gabriel had touched down. Even if he was right, that did nothing to answer the questions of how the fuck they got here and where the fuck everyone else was. The lack of answers to those two questions was already making him tense and twitchy, jumping at all those strange noises the wildlife around here seemed happy to provide in abundance.

"Though I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet," Gabriel added after a pause.

Frowning with concern, Sam drew closer and tried to study Gabriel without making it too obvious what he was doing. Even with his eyes now adjusting to the low light, he couldn't see that clearly. The archangel – or, at least, his vessel – looked pale and grayish. "I scavenged some aspirin. Will they work on you?"

Gabriel cocked his head to the side in that way he shared with Castiel; Sam had begun to think of it as the angelic headtilt. "I have no idea. It's not something that's come up before now."

"Let's give it a try." Sam put down the bags containing the meager supplies he'd managed to loot from the place he'd found up the track, and he took out one of the bottles of water. "I found a deserted house nearby," he said as he rummaged for the aspirin. "It's been ransacked. There are a few corpses stinking up the place that'll need to be salted and burned, but it's still a better place to hole up in than this hut. I'll help you get there later on, when you can stand without passing out."

Stepping back over to the bed, he sat down on the edge and put the pills in Gabriel's nearest hand. "Here. I'll lift the water for you. It's heavy."

"My hero," Gabriel said dryly, rolling his eyes, which heartened Sam. Any sign of Gabriel's usual attitude was better than the 'out of it' disconnectedness he'd been showing up to now.

"Yeah, well, I owe you. The world owes you." After Gabriel put the pills in his mouth, Sam lifted the open water bottle and carefully tipped it enough for Gabriel to drink. "I found you some other medicine too."

Gabriel swallowed and made a face. "Y'know, I'm not actually a wounded human," he reminded him. "You don't need to keep pouring human medicine down my throat."

"So you don't want this?" Sam reached out with his free hand and then slowly waved the Snickers bar he'd picked up in front of Gabriel's face.

The speed with which Gabriel snatched at the candy was way more than just heartening. "Now that's more like it."

"There, see? You're getting better already. I guess human medicine is more effective than you thought." Sam smiled warmly, at least until he remembered, well, pretty much everything else. "Gabriel, do you remember the end at all?"

Gabriel slowed in his devouring of the chocolate bar. "Not really," he admitted, voice suddenly and uncharacteristically serious. "Not sure I want to either. There's too much... stuff involved. Even for an archangel."

Sam wondered what 'stuff' was, but he didn't ask. He guessed he could figure out some of it anyway. "It's just... I think we're in Florida, and I don't know why since, y'know, we were fighting the Devil in Detroit. I don't know why it's just us here, either." He looked down at his hands. "My cell phone isn't working. I don't think anything electrical is. I think when Lucifer, uh, came to his end, the explosion maybe caused some kind of EMP wave. If I'm right, it could be widespread."

"Florida, huh?" Gabriel chewed thoughtfully. "Could've been worse. That was a lot of energy being released all at once. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd woken up to penguins staring us in the face."

And wouldn't that have been fun? To have survived the Apocalypse only to freeze to death a few minutes afterwards. Sam rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth and then unthinkingly licked his lips. Not his best idea, he quickly realized when he tasted the flecks of dried blood. "I need a shower real bad," he said, and despite his best attempts to cover it, the words came out a little shakily.

"You've stank worse," Gabriel assured him around another mouthful of candy. He seemed unfazed by how Sam looked.

Sam flicked his gaze up, frowning. "I'm covered in dried blood. Mostly yours and Lucifer's." If he shut his eyes he could still see the scalding light, feel the wet splatter of what was left of a poor sap named Nick. He could still hear the scream that went on and on and on, even when there was nothing physical left to be screaming. Sam had no idea how he still had eyes to see or ears to hear with after that. It was another one of those mysteries, like how come they were in Florida now, and how they'd ended up on that plane back at the start of Lucifer's reign of hell on Earth. "It's... not good for me."

"It's going to make it hard to get a date, yeah," Gabriel said. "But it's not bad for you either. Other than maybe being itchy. It's not like demon blood, Sam."

"Methadone isn't heroin, but it still isn't exactly good for you," Sam said pointedly. He shook himself and stood. "Do you think you can walk now with help?"

"I can give it the old college try." Gabriel sat up more fully and swung his legs over the side of the cot.

Sam didn't let himself hesitate. He moved closer immediately, slipping an arm around Gabriel and holding him firmly, just as he would do for Dean or Cas in circumstances like these. Considering what he and Gabriel had shared just before the end, it would be beyond stupid to worry about this small intimacy.

Gabriel peered down at his feet. "They seem to be working. Sorta."

"I could carry you," Sam offered, wondering if angels would be as bothered by such a suggestion as most human males would. "I carried you to this hut earlier."

That earned him a suspicious look. "You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?"

Sam gave him a pointed look in return, having to twist a bit to focus on Gabriel in this position. "Yeah, you've caught me out. It's a fantasy I've had since I first met you - to hold you tight in my arms, keep you helpless in my power." He rolled his eyes. Not that there wasn't a touch of 'turn around is fair play' to be grasped at here, but Sam had no intention of doing that grasping. He was better than that. So was Gabriel, these days.

"Always knew you were hot for my bod," Gabriel quipped, reaching up to pat Sam's chest.

Giving up on waiting for a sensible answer, Sam slipped his other arm under Gabriel's knees and hoisted him up. All things considered, the archangel didn't really weigh that much. Of course, this was speaking as someone who'd had to carry Dean significant distances in the past, and whoever wrote that 'He Ain't Heavy' song had never tried to heft an unconscious Dean through a raging storm. "Whose bod is it really, anyway?" he asked Gabriel. "I was half expecting to meet him when you finally woke up."

"It's mine," Gabriel said. "Taking a vessel leaves a trail. When I left, I didn't want to be found, so I made sure there was no trail."

Sam walked to the door and kicked it open, which was how he'd gotten them into this hut in the first place. "You can do that? Make a human body out of nothing?"

"It takes patience, a whole lot of power, and a certain... finesse that not everybody has." Gabriel wasn't exactly the most humble of beings, but Sam liked him that way. In truth, and though he'd never in a million years say it to his brother, Gabriel reminded Sam of Dean when he bragged, and that felt familiar and weirdly comforting. Chuckling, as much at himself as at self-satisfied archangels, Sam hefted Gabriel up a little as he walked them through the door. He started up the low hill outside.

Of course, thinking about Dean made the worry start eating at his insides again. Sam's smile fell into a grimace, and he stifled a sigh. "When do you think your mojo will start returning?" he asked as casually as he could.

Gabriel was silent for a moment. "That's going to take some patience too, I think."

Sam didn't answer, just thrust his most major concern even further down in his mind.

Day Four

Patience was a lot more difficult for Gabriel to achieve once he'd recovered enough to be able to move under his own steam. He was more than fidgety, unable to sit still for five minutes. He knew he was irritating Sam more than usual, and he wasn't even trying. Gabriel was ready to claw his way out of his own skin if they didn't get moving soon. He said as much to Sam.

Sam gave him a sour look from the green recliner he was slumped in. "Move how and where? Nothing works, remember? Including you."

Gabriel scowled back at him. "You're not remotely funny."

"I thought that was your job. Not like you can do any-" Sam stopped, but it was obvious what he'd been about to say so Gabriel didn't know why he'd bothered. Sam looked down. "Sorry. I know this can't be easy for you." He rubbed his hand over his mouth and then admitted, "It's not exactly a walk in the park for me either."

"It should be!" Gabriel declared as he paced the length of the room again. "A walk in the park, or down the highway, or along the beach, or anywhere but here! Anything but sitting here licking our wounds!"

"So... what? This is you saying you're fit enough to leave?" Sam looked disbelievingly at him. "Okay, let's pack some stuff and go. We'll walk to somewhere a little closer to civilization, steal a car if we can find one that still works, and hope for a full tank since there'll be no working pumps anywhere. Where do you want to head? You know, seeing as we haven't a freaking clue where the others are, or even if they're still-" Sam cut himself off again and turned away.

Yeah, and there was the elephant in the room that they'd both been avoiding, why Sam hadn't even so much as spoken his brother's name in over forty-eight hours now. Gabriel took a deep breath then let it out slowly. He looked over at Sam. "They're alive."

Sam turned around slowly, his face a picture of uncertainty. "How do you know?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

Gabriel sighed. "I just do," he said, knowing that wouldn't be enough. "Archangel, remember?"

"Archangel who's currently powerless," Sam pointed out with an apologetic look. "How can you be sure your senses are right under the circumstances?"

"Look, do you want to believe our brothers are dead?" Gabriel asked point blank.

Sam's jaw set, the sympathetic expression hardening into something a lot less attractive. "You don't get to ask me that, Gabriel. Do I really need to remind you just how many freaking times I've seen Dean die? You made me hyper aware of every single way it could happen, however remote or stupid. Not just the obvious, not just the monsters. I walked into an empty room, and I saw danger everywhere, from the light switch to the bottle of beer in the fridge. I saw him die to all of them, again and again, and then it was over, and I was just supposed to act like everything was fine. Even when Dean was dead, I was still half-convinced it was another trick of yours..." He stopped himself with obvious effort, running his hand hard over his mouth.

Pressing his head back into the recliner, Sam continued in a much softer tone of voice. "Look, I need... I just need to know for sure he's okay." He sounded like he was pleading with Gabriel. His eyes, when he turned his head enough to glance over, were large and seemed full of sincerity – the classic Sam puppy-dog look.

Gabriel sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair, feeling an unfamiliar niggling of guilt. Damned Winchesters were always upsetting the natural order of things, and damn him for falling under their influence. "There's a way," he finally, reluctantly said.

"A spell?" Sam said, instantly alert and sitting up, putting his feet on the floor to the side of the recliner and leaning forward. "I watched Cas do one once when we were looking for Anna. That could maybe be adapted?"

"I can probably do one better than that," Gabriel said, a little of his usual confidence creeping back into his voice. "Well, not quite yet, but soon."

"You need power," Sam said, his face falling. "I wish I could give you back whatever I have left."

Gabriel thought it unlikely that Sam could have any left, considering what he'd needed so much power for in the first place, but it wasn't as if anyone had ever done anything like that before, so who was to say how much was enough to kill the Devil?

It had all happened so quickly once it had started. The ragtag group of allies had broken out of the apathy that had been holding them despondent and stagnant by coming to a crazy decision. There was, they agreed, only one way left that they were ever going to beat the constricting destiny channeling the Winchesters ever closer to their inevitable – so Gabriel had once thought – vesseldom. That was to do something so completely left field, something so big and so unexpected, that no one could have predicted it – a black swan event.

Humans of the classical world had once thought that black swans simply didn't exist. A good man was as rare as a black swan, some ancient wit had once proclaimed. But after the big reveal of black swans alive and kicking water in Australia, the expression of impossibility had taken on on a new and more ironic meaning. A guy called Taleb crystallized the whole concept. A 'Black Swan', he defined, was an unpredicted event that changed the world irrevocably. The internet and 9/11 were two of the examples he gave.

Every time the Winchesters and their allies had done something unforeseen by either prophets or celestial manipulators – Castiel rebelling, for instance – it had thrown destiny for a short time, derailing the express, but such was the power of this particular railroad of fate that things had always gotten back on track far too soon afterward. A true Black Swan would throw the lines of destiny into such a corrugated, higgledy piggledy mess that it would take a far more significant time for the tracks to realign. In that time, the allies would be free to act unhindered.

That much had been Sam's idea. Of course, it was one thing to say what they needed and another thing entirely to think up something so completely unexpected and yet still achievable. Black Swans, by their definition, were not possible to plan for. But Gabriel had known as soon as he'd heard the idea that he and Sam would be the key and the lock. It had just made sense to the trickster inside of him, the kind of sense that Heaven and Hell combined could never see, but he could. Destiny wanted Dean to kill Lucifer, so that was the one thing Dean shouldn't do. Destiny wanted the Winchesters as vessels, so nobody should say 'yes' under any circumstances.

No. Sam with his ferocious will, and not Dean, would kill the Devil. He would be charged up not by demon blood – the way Hell wanted him – but by the grace of an archangel, an archangel who prophecy said shouldn't even have been there in the first place, let alone helping to kill... his brother.

Fighting his survival instincts while he'd let Sam take and take and take, almost endlessly, the ache inside growing ever more intense, had probably been the hardest thing Gabriel had ever had to do, especially knowing he was charging up the WMD that would kill Lucifer, and now... Now Sam was looking down at his own wrists and giving the disturbing impression that he was contemplating feeding Gabriel his blood.

"Don't even think about it," Gabriel said, holding up his hands. "I'm an archangel and a trickster, not a vampire. It doesn't work that way."

"One-way street?" Sam said with a wry smile. "So is there anything that will jump start your grace?"

"There's a few types of places that angels can typically recharge at, if they know how," Gabriel admitted, running over the options in his head. "Though with what's happened, that might have changed."

Sam pushed his fingers through his hair, pulling it briefly back from his face. "What sort of places? Somewhere we could travel to?"

"Maybe. Places that hold a little more of Dad's essence than others – untouched wilderness, really old churches, the kind of place that humans call 'Holy Ground'." He ran through what he knew of Florida, trying to think of any place that might fit the bill.

"There's the Everglades," Sam said, sounding dubious. "If you like alligators and poisonous snakes."

Gabriel grinned. "I've got a soft spot for 'gators."

"I remember examining what was left of your soft spot on the slab."

"Yeah, that was really fun," Gabriel said, hit by a wave of happy nostalgia. "The best tricks were always the ones I based on human sources. You're all just so wonderfully creative." Sam didn't look very impressed at the praise. He stood and started moving around their borrowed house, putting things in a canvas bag he'd found somewhere. Gabriel rolled his eyes. Humans. "I never tricked anybody who didn't ask for it," he said, wondering why he was trying to justify himself to Sam. Again.

"There's a difference between tricking somebody to persuade them to mend their ways and murdering people in elaborately brutal ways," Sam pointed out. "Dead people learn no lessons. But let's not have this stupid debate again. It gives 'pointless' a whole new depth of meaning."

"Some people are beyond mending their ways," Gabriel said, but lifted and opened his hand as if to physically drop the subject. "So do we go visit the 'gators in their natural habitat?"

"If we have to." Sam didn't sound very keen. "Feels like the wrong direction to me though, and there's got to be sacred ground to the north as well as to the south. There's a real nice beach in the Pensacola area, I think. Won't that do?"

"You just don't want me to visit the 'gators." Not that Gabriel was all that eager to go wading out into the 'glades when he'd have to do it like a human, but needling Sam was pretty much second nature by now.

"I just don't want me to visit the 'gators," Sam said wryly. "Haven't we got enough on our plates? If I'm right about what's happened, even those places that survived the end days more or less unscathed are going to be getting kinda desperate soon – no electricity, no clean water, no medical care, no fresh food unless they're growing it themselves..."

"You mean the way humanity's had to live for most of its existence? People will manage." He wasn't too worried about humanity surviving. He'd watched it survive other dire situations, though granted rarely so widespread as this. He always found humanity particularly fascinating during such times though. There was always plenty for him to do as that kind of thing seemed to bring out the worst in people, but contrarily, it also brought out the very best. It was like privation stripped humans down to their most basic essence; like blades they were honed and tempered and either came through shining and stronger than ever, or broken in pieces. Gabriel had been careful over the millennia never to wonder if that was just as true for angels.

"Yeah, they will 'manage'," Sam said, "but that doesn't mean it'll be easy or that many more won't still die thanks to the Apocalypse, despite it being over." His voice was taking on that familiar hectoring tone again. He was one step away from manifesting a lectern and breaking out the sermon notes.

It made Gabriel want to smile because it was just so quintessentially Sam, and he'd found the human fascinating for some time now. Sam was definitely someone who had been tempered and honed by adversity, becoming even more himself than before as the puppy fat of innocence was trimmed away. "Fine," he said, letting a little of the smile show through. "Because people are dying, we won't make you make nice with the 'gators."

Sam paused and narrowed his eyes at Gabriel, but he apparently didn't find anything worth complaining about in Gabriel's acquiescence and went back to packing. "We'll head to the nearest town and see if we can pick up a map or road atlas," he said decisively, coming to stand by Gabriel with his overstuffed pack on his shoulder. "Ready?"

Gabriel made a grand gesture of waving Sam before him. "Lead the way, Tonto."

Outside, the sun hit him like a falling meteorite, his human body's eyes wincing as they tried to adjust too fast to sudden brightness. The heat was even worse, and he wasn't yet anywhere near recovered enough to be able to ignore it. Sam shouldered his bag more firmly as he marched off ahead of Gabriel, his gargantuan shoulders rigid as he passed the makeshift grave mound he'd dug for the house's original occupants while Gabriel was still bed-bound. He didn't stop and look around at Gabriel until he'd passed right by it.

The sight didn't affect Gabriel in anything near the same way, of course. While he had feelings about humanity in general and certain humans in particular, other individual humans had a hard time registering with him. There were always more where those came from, after all. But out of respect for Sam, he didn't say anything about it one way or the other. "So which way is the nearest town?" he said brightly instead.

Sam shrugged. "This path meets a real road after a mile or so, but which way then I've no clue 'til we can find a signpost. We're in Columbia County, Florida, according to the address on the mail I found in the house, so I guess we're somewhere near Lake City."

Generally, Gabriel could picture a location with just a name or something to latch onto – a person or item that was there – and if he could picture it, he could fly there. But with his grace as depleted as it was, nothing came with the city's name other than the thought that the name was highly unoriginal. He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair in frustration. "Guess we pick a direction and hope then."

"Guess so."

The track they were walking down was little more than dried mud with a frosting of rough gravel. Long grass grew at either side, and even with his senses as dull as they were currently, he knew it was teeming with life, most of it of the creepy crawly variety. The smaller the lifeform, the more likely it was to survive any upheaval. The persistence of life against all odds never ceased to amaze and amuse him.

The track ended when it hit the highway. Sam stopped, looking one way and then the other. "Any instinct pulling you in a certain direction?" he asked.

Gabriel looked one way, then the other, but nothing was really coming to him. With an inner shrug, he closed his eyes and spun around, then stopped and pointed.

"Left it is," Sam said with a smirk. "So how many big ass decisions have you made that way over the centuries?" he asked as they started walking again.

Gabriel smirked back. "A few. Sometimes there's really nothing to choose between two choices, and you just gotta pick." He didn't elaborate that most of the time he was choosing between which target to play his tricks on next when he had too many options. He could live without another rendition of Disapproving Sam, at least for the next hour or so.

"Toad," Sam said – kind of inexplicably until Gabriel looked ahead and saw what was sitting in the middle of the road in front of them, a huge cane toad eyeing them evilly. "Nature's reclaiming her space already."

Not so long ago, a toad that chose to sit there would've presumably been roadkill quick enough. "Yeah," Gabriel said, eyeing the toad back. "Just goes to show that a few less humans might not be a bad thing for the planet."

"From a distant enough perspective," Sam said, and he sounded almost like he was agreeing. "Not one that's easy for me to assume this close to the ground."

"It's ironic, really. Lucifer fell because of the same vice that in humanity does the most damage – arrogance." Gabriel felt a pang as he mentioned his brother. He guessed that would stop happening eventually.

He could sense Sam looking sideways at him and was expecting some dig about arrogance not being restricted to archangels named 'Lucifer', but all Sam said in a soft voice was, "I wonder what's happening in Heaven right now."

"Zachariah's probably having the mother of all hissy fits," Gabriel said, his smirk back full force at the thought. He'd never liked that pompous blowhard, even back before he'd left home.

"We made him look like the fool he is." The way Sam said it, and the grin Gabriel saw twitching at his mouth, made it clear how pleased that prospect made him.

"Michael...." Gabriel trailed off, thinking of his eldest brother. "Michael, I think, has to be relieved underneath everything that he didn't have to kill our brother after all. Not that I think he'll unbend enough to actually admit it."

"He spent a very long time preparing himself for the task."

"Yeah. He's always been all about being the good son, the one who carried out Dad's wishes without question." There was more to Michael than that, but thinking about that more just made everything harder.

"Will you go home now?" Sam asked, suspiciously casual. "I mean, once you're all mojoed up again?"

Home. The word, the concept, sent a surprising wave of longing through Gabriel. To go back, the prodigal son, to find his place again among those like him – he could admit that part of him yearned for that. But the Heaven he knew, the one where he'd been happy and that was home, it didn't exist anymore. Lucifer was gone forever, dead, not just fallen, and Dad...

He broke off that train of thought abruptly. "I think that ship sailed a long, long time ago," he said quietly.

Sam didn't say anything in reply to that, and when Gabriel glanced his way, Sam looked pensive, almost troubled.

"You're not brooding over my lack of an invite to Sunday family dinner, are you?" Gabriel asked accusingly.

"Family's important," was all he got in reply to that.

"Sometimes they're better at a distance," Gabriel told him.

"Yeah, until they come in the night to steal you away," Sam muttered.

That confused Gabriel for a second until he remembered what he knew of the Winchesters' history. "I'm pretty sure Michael's not going to be showing up to tell me he can't do this without me," he said.

"That's only because he's too stupid to know it," Sam replied. If Gabriel didn't know better, he'd think Sam was sticking up for him.

"Michael's a lot of things, but stupid's not one of them," Gabriel said, not liking the memories this conversation was stirring. "Not as cunning as I am, but then, who is?"

"There's different kinds of stupid," Sam insisted, but then seemed to let it drop, going back to trudging in silence.

***

"The tank's at least half-full," Sam said, straightening up beside the SUV. "I've just got to find the right key fob."

"I have faith in you and your thieving abilities," Gabriel said, from his place leaning against the side of another SUV a few feet away, watching.

It felt wrong to Sam, doing this in full view of both security cameras and anyone who happened to be around, but the security cameras, like most things electrical, were dead, and there wasn't anyone around at all, not that they could find. No bodies either. The township of Kingsville, Florida, seemed to have done the full-on Mary Celeste, right down to the food still on tables, books fallen open on the floor, bathtubs full of water, the lot. They hadn't seen anybody on the long walk to the town either, but at least they'd seen plenty of wildlife. Here, there weren't even any pets around to go feral, no bird song in the air, not even insects.

Without his meter, Sam couldn't be sure, but he was willing to bet the EMF would be off the scale here.

Still, the lack of people meant they could take their pick of many vehicles, which made it worth the meter-breaking levels of spooky. They'd found a executive business center on the edges of the town, and that meant expensive cars, valet-parked. Sam had chosen a 2003 Ford Escape Hybrid because he had a vague memory of it coming out top on some fuel economy table for SUVs.

Four-wheel drive and good mileage to the gallon seemed just what they needed right now, providing it would still start. Hybrids relied on their electronics in a major way, so in that respect, it was a crappy choice, but this far away from ground zero, there was a good chance that it would be fine. Cars, with their metal bodies and rubber wheels, were innately grounded and – according to the many survivalist sites Sam had read while there was still an internet on which to read them – were more likely to still function than most modern appliances after an EMP attack.

He wanted to make sure they were out of this place before sundown, and since it was late afternoon already, that didn't give them much time. He was hoping for a little luck here.

"Once we have a working vehicle, our options will expand big time," he said, heading for the valet office. Yeah, it was stating the obvious, but it made him feel better to say it out loud. The trudge to find this town had not been the best time he'd ever spent with the increasingly weary and fractious Gabriel. Though, all things considered, it was far from the worse one either, so there was that.

"Right." Gabriel followed behind with his hands stuck in his pockets. He'd been quieter since they'd gotten to town and started the search for an appropriate vehicle.

Sam tried the door of the office, but it was locked. "This place doesn't have the feel of a Croatoan town," he remarked, trying to stir up conversation as much as anything else. Gabriel being quiet was almost as spooky as the town itself. The archangel was maybe trying to hide how tired he was. Hell, Sam was tired too – trudging through the heat of a Florida summer carrying a heavy bag wasn't a whole load of fun. Tiredness was hardly a crime. "Everything's too pristine still," he added, remembering the towns they'd seen before the end.

"It's not one," Gabriel said with certainty. "The people wouldn't have just vanished. Croatoan was my brother's endgame. We'd be in a hell of a lot more trouble if he'd managed to spread out this far with it."

The virus had been appearing in the small towns surrounding Detroit just before the final fight, turning them into battlegrounds. Hearing about that, seeing some of it with their own eyes, had been what finally forced them into action, however insane their plan had seemed. Sam had had enough deaths on his conscience already, enough for a thousand men or more. He'd known he had to do something, even if it was only to die trying. Now he hoped to God that killing Lucifer had stopped the Croatoan spread. The angels had thought that killing Lucifer would dispel the Horsemen, including Pestilence who must have had something to do with the virus, so maybe, just maybe, that was one worry Sam didn't have to hold onto now.

And if not, hell, maybe Michael would man up now that Sam had taken on his burden and succeeded. It didn't seem hugely likely though.

"Yeah." He half-smiled over at Gabriel, trying and failing to feel good about this place not holding the Croatoan virus whatever else had happened here. In the end, it didn't really matter. The townsfolk here were still most likely dead. Because of him. Because of what he'd done. He'd hoped killing Lucifer would somehow be his redemption, but... no. That was still a long way out of reach.

He stepped back once and then kicked the door in. The sound of cracking wood echoed through the lot.

"How violently straightforward of you." There was a hint of his usual dry amusement in Gabriel's voice as he watched.

Sam shrugged. "I guess I could've tried to muster up some grace-fed TK, but..." He shrugged again and walked inside, grabbing all the key fobs from the hooks above the desk. It was best to save whatever power he had left for emergencies, he told himself.

"The way you were talking, I was expecting something a lot more technically competent than kicking the door in," Gabriel explained from the doorway, examining the damage to said door.

"Such as?" Sam frowned at him. "All my hunter gear is back in Detroit, remember? I don't even have a hairpin."

"See, I told ya you should start styling your hair."

Sam gave Gabriel a look that normally only Dean would deserve and resisted the sudden, annoying impulse to drag his hair back from his eyes. One by one, he went through the fobs, pointing them in the general direction of the vehicles and pressing the buttons. Some made cars respond, and those he handed to Gabriel, and some got no response, so he dropped them. Finally, with just three fobs to go, his chosen SUV blinked its lights. He exhaled a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. Luck was with them, finally.

"Make yourself useful and go through the trunks of the other cars I've just opened," he told Gabriel. "Scavenge anything that might come in handy."

"Aye-aye, mon capitan," Gabriel quipped, snapping his heels together and mock-saluting before going off to rummage.

Sam watched him for a few moments, part of him still having trouble believing that not only could he give orders to an archangel, but the archangel in question might actually obey them. If he didn't have anything better to do at the time, anyway. "Find something good and I'll break us into that Walmart we passed," he called out. "We can stock up on candy." As well as other, far more useful, supplies.

Gabriel shot him a smirk over his shoulder as he opened the first trunk. "You're planning on breaking into it anyway. Just because I'm a little low on the powers at the moment, doesn't mean my brain's stopped working."

Sam chuckled as he walked over to the SUV. It looked like a nice vehicle, even though he could hear his brother's opinion as clearly as if Dean were standing right by him. A good 4-wheeler was wasted on a soccer mom, in Sam's opinion, however. "No candy? Sure. It'll mean more trunk space for other things."

"I'm perfectly capable of walking over to the candy aisle and picking it up all by myself, grace or no grace," Gabriel said more than a little testily as he pulled a blanket and what looked like some kind of emergency kit out of the trunk he was looking through.

Sam opened the driver's side door. "Driver gets to decide what's important enough to pack," he pointed out, hiding a smirk as he ducked down to look inside the SUV.

"Unless you intend to pat me down every time we get in the vehicle, not really much you can do to stop me grabbing candy," Gabriel replied. His voice suddenly took on its usual tone of sardonic humor as he added, "And you won't do that because you might enjoy it too much."

What, just because he'd filled up on Gabriel's blood – in the name of saving the freaking world for God's sake – he was now meant to be craving other physical pleasures of the archangel kind too? It was true that over the last few days he'd been wrestling with an impulse to get closer to Gabriel, in terms of the physical space between them. But he knew what that was about, unfortunately, and it wasn't the kind of attraction Gabriel seemed to be hinting at.

Those kind of comments from Gabriel were getting more frequent. Sam pulled his head out of the car and looked over at him. "Missing our mojo-summoned playmates, are we?"

"More missing mojo-summoned comfort," Gabriel retorted. "And what's this 'our' stuff? You want me to create you a playmate too when I can again?"

Sam pulled a face. "No thanks. I prefer my friends to be less imaginary."

Gabriel grinned. "Hey, I'm better than Memorex. I'd challenge you to be able to tell the difference between mine and the 'real thing'."

"You're better?" Sam raised his eyebrows. "Just how much of you do you put into your creations?"

"I'm an artist," Gabriel boasted, waggling his eyebrows at Sam. "An artist always puts himself into his work."

"So if I'd taken you up on your offer just then...?"

"You'd be very, very grateful. Trust me."

Sam stared at him for several long moments before going back to rummage in the car. The words, "Rather have the real thing," had left his lips before he'd even thought about what he was really saying.

He felt the heat of a body pressed close behind him a few seconds later. "That can be arranged," Gabriel murmured wickedly against the back of Sam's neck, then was gone again.

Sam remained frozen in position for several seconds afterwards. That had not just happened. None of it, not Gabriel pressed so close, not the surge of answering heat Sam had felt in parts of his body that had no right to be taking any notice of archangels in male bodies. It was the blood, that was all. Drinking from Gabriel had forced an unnatural intimacy between them and gotten them both confused. Best to just ignore it really. He slipped into the driver's seat and put the key in the ignition with a hand that was just a tiny bit shaky.

The backseat driver's side door opened, and Gabriel started tossing things he'd found into the vehicle. "Are we good to go?" he asked brightly, for all the world as if he hadn't just propositioned Sam.

"You sit in the front where I can see you," Sam told him, turning the key. The engine purred into life and eased at least one of the causes of his tension.

"Don't trust me behind you?" Gabriel teased, but obligingly moved around the SUV and got in the shotgun seat.

"I don't trust you anywhere," Sam told him.

It wasn't true though, not anymore. Somewhere along the broken and twisting line of the Winchesters' lives, things had changed. Gabriel had appeared in their motel room three months before the end and announced he was there to help. None of them had believed Gabriel's sincerity to start with, though they weren't stupid enough to refuse him, just in case. But his help, day in and day out, had slowly whittled away their resistance until they couldn't imagine how they'd ever coped without him. Well, in truth, they hadn't. They'd just about been at the point of crumbling by the time he'd come to them. Since then, Sam had somehow slipped into trusting Gabriel with his life, without even really noticing he was doing it, at least until afterwards, and this was after everything Gabriel had done to him in the past.

So, yeah, he trusted Gabriel with his life. Whether he trusted Gabriel with his 'virtue' was, it seemed, another matter.

"I'm wounded. Really." Gabriel sounded anything but as he settled himself in the passenger seat, pulled out a candy bar and started unwrapping it.

Sam didn't ask where he'd found it, just released the parking brake and started off towards the Walmart that they'd spotted earlier. He was beginning to feel hungry himself, but he was hoping for something better than candy. Maybe even better than the dusty cans of corned beef they'd been living on while Gabriel recovered enough to move.

"We should do our ransacking fast," he said as he pulled up outside the deserted store. "It'll be dusk soon."

"It's like a new game show," Gabriel said with a grin as they climbed out of the SUV. "Loot this store in sixty minutes or less!"

Glancing at the sky, Sam muttered, "Make it thirty," before looking to see what Gabriel had put in the cargo space. He grabbed a tire iron and walked to the side of the largest window. "Stay back," he warned.

"So, more demonstrations of your cat burglar-like breaking and entering prowess?" Gabriel teased as he stopped well out of range.

"Hulk smash," Sam said dryly, refusing to rise to the bait this time. Keeping most of his body to the side against the brick wall, he swung with the tire jack, smashing a hole through to the other side of the glass window. A spider web of cracks spread out from the hole, but the majority of the glass remained in place. "Hurricane proof," he muttered with a sigh, and he moved around to start smashing through the hard way.

"Guess we're lucky it's not Winchester proof." Gabriel didn't move to help though, continuing to stand back and observe with a smirk on his face.

"Enjoying the show?" Sam asked, feeling a little exasperated as he knocked away jagged edges from the side of the frame.

"I'd give it an eight and a half," Gabriel answered serenely.

"Out of how much?"

"Ten. You'd have to lose some clothes to get it any higher."

Sam opened his mouth to start some kind of lecture about how smashing plate glass naked would be asking for interesting scars, but then wondered why he was bothering. "Do you keep saying those things in some sad attempt to get your trickster kicks mojo-free?" he asked instead.

"Maybe," Gabriel admitted easily. "Or maybe I just have eyes and I'm not bound by specific gender attractions."

Sam opened his mouth and then, again, shut it. Frowning, he stepped into the store, his feet crunching in the shreds of laminated glass. He licked his lips. The memory of Gabriel's blood pumping into his mouth was suddenly strong. It had tasted so different from demon blood. To start with, he hadn't even been sure he liked it. Not that that mattered - he hadn't been all but draining an archangel for pleasure, but it had been a pleasure in the end as his body had filled with the rich, sweet and weirdly familiar tang of it, making him dizzy, making the world around him sharp-edged and hyper-real, making him hard...

A hand closing around Sam's shoulder, coupled with Gabriel yelling, "Sam!", shook him out of it. He jolted away from Gabriel, staring at him wide-eyed before he got himself under control. He looked away in a hurry, feeling himself flush. "Sorry," he mumbled and strode quickly away to liberate the biggest cart he could find.

Gabriel followed after him. "Something you want to talk about?"

"Really no." Sam freed a cart from a train of them and pushed it towards Gabriel. "Try to fill it with at least a few useful things among all the tooth-rotting accessories."

"If I go off on my own, you're not going to go all fugue state on us again, are you?"

"I'm fine." Sam grabbed a cart of his own and headed off with it without another word.

He heard an exasperated sigh behind him. "Try not to be so 'fine' that you run into things," Gabriel called after him.

Ignoring everything but the task at hand, Sam followed the overhead signs to the hunting sub-department where, with the aid of some heavy bolt cutters, he freed a range of hunting rifles and a crossbow. The rifles were only air guns, but pretty freaking powerful all the same, and he had this idea that he could make pellets from rock salt. He grabbed several boxes of 'armor piercing' pellets for general use as well and moved on to the hardware department.

By the time he'd visited clothing and then filled all the remaining space in the quickly over-flowing cart with groceries, the store was growing very dim as the daylight from outside began to fade. He hadn't seen Gabriel once since they'd parted, and realizing that, Sam had to quell a sudden, brief panic that the archangel had grown fed up with Sam's odd moods and left him to fend for himself. It was a stupid worry, he told himself. Not only would Gabriel not do that, not the Gabriel he now knew, but, well, it wasn't as if Sam wouldn't be just fine on his own. If the cravings kept at bay. He hopefully wouldn't be on his own forever, of course. The sheer lack of humanity anywhere so far would be totally freaking him if he let it. Grimacing, he headed for the doors.

Gabriel was standing by the window where they'd entered, three large duffel bags at his feet that looked packed to the brim. "I was about to play search party and go looking for you."

The bags were a good idea that Sam should've thought of for himself. Oh well. "Let's get this all in the car and get out of here. My hackles are up."

For once, Gabriel didn't make any smart comment, just nodded and piled two of the bags precariously on top of Sam's already unsteady cart, before shouldering the third. Using some muscle power, Sam maneuvered the cart through the broken window, Gabriel picking up the items that toppled off in the process. He opened the SUV's lift-gate, and they began piling the plunder into the cargo space. As Gabriel threw in the last of the canned goods, Sam rubbed at the back of his neck and looked around. He hadn't been kidding. The hairs on the back of his neck really were standing up.

"I don't like this."

Gabriel was looking around with narrowed eyes as well. "Maybe you should not like this while we're on the road," he suggested.

Nodding, Sam pushed the cart away into the street, shoved the lift-gate shut, and hurried to get into the driver's seat. He had the SUV started before Gabriel had even finished sliding in beside him. "I grabbed some local maps and a tourist guide," he said, dropping them in Gabriel's lap. "We should be able to find you somewhere high on the natural beauty scale." The sooner Gabriel got some mojo back the better far as Sam was concerned. The moment Gabriel's door was closed, Sam started to drive.

Gabriel divided his time between sorting through the maps and guide and looking out the window. It was just as the last of the sun's rays were touching the horizon that he suddenly stiffened and sat up straighter, staring at the passing landscape. "I think..."

They were in the outskirts of Kingsville, the other side of the town from the business park. The houses here were older, but well preserved. Sam was about to ask Gabriel what it was that he thought when suddenly they were driving straight at a crowd of translucent people, milling across the road.

"Shit!"

Years of hunter experience was the only thing that stopped him from braking in a panic. Instead, after a second of blind OMG non-reaction, he hit the accelerator.

The figures flickered and shredded into tendrils of fog when they drove through them, but it was merely the beginning. The darker it got, the more spirits appeared, not only of people, but of vehicles and just general all around life. Every one they hit twisted and dissolved, and it felt like they were destroying them all over again.

Gabriel gave a strangled laugh. "I think this gives new meaning to the phrase 'ghost town.'"

"A whole haunted town," Sam said, shaking his head, his fists clenched around the wheel. "There's not enough rock salt in all of Florida, and where the hell are the bodies anyway? What went on here, Gabriel? Is this another place like Carthage only without the reaper presence?"

"Don't know," Gabriel said. "What we did, what happened with Lucifer, that's never been done before. There's no predicting what kind of fallout that could've had."

Sam cast a horrified glance at Gabriel. "You think we did this?"

"I think it's probably a side effect of Lucifer's destruction," Gabriel said grimly. "Don't know if you can put it on us, or on him taking as much with him as he could."

Sam felt coldness settle into his bones as if the ghosts themselves were taking up residence. "How many more towns will be like this?" he asked, staring blankly out of the windshield as he drove through a train of small ghostly children holding hands with each other as they crossed the road with their equally ghostly teacher.

"Don't know," Gabriel said. "America will be the worst off of any country. It was the focus of both side's attention."

Sam's mouth formed an 'o' ready to ask 'why?'. He'd noticed that, of course, but had thought it was simply media bias. Then he realized he already knew the answer, and seriously? No one's freaking shoulders were that broad, that strong. "Because of us," he said dully. "Because Dean and I were here."

Gabriel's silence was answer enough. Sam drove through a series of cars and wondered if an infinity in Hell would be enough to pay for what he'd done.

"But if we hadn't stopped him," Gabriel said quietly, "it would've been all the world like this. Or even worse."

"If we'd said yes, if we'd both had said yes at the start of all this..." Sam trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought.

"Worse than this," Gabriel said immediately. "Take what Lucifer's death did and multiply it many times. Michael and Lucifer, they never paid attention to the collateral damage their fighting caused." He grimaced, though Sam, glancing that way, thought it was maybe meant to be a smirk. "Why do you think I ran away?"

Sam shot him a sympathetic look, but didn't say anything. The ghosts here seemed peaceful, just getting on with their old lives as if they didn't know they were dead. How much worse were the places still out there for them to find?

Day Five

Gabriel took a deep breath as Sam brought their SUV to a stop, deep inside Big Shoals State Park. Of all the nearby places mentioned in the books and maps Sam had acquired, this was the one Gabriel had concluded would probably replenish his grace fastest. Not that just about anything wouldn't be faster than the slow trickle he'd known since finding himself in Florida, but there were no guarantees. They wouldn't know for certain how effective this place was until Gabriel actively tried it out and that made him nervous.

"Well, it's certainly scenic," Sam said. It was the early hours of the morning, and the air had that sense of clean crispness that often came with dawn. Dark green grass and trees surrounded the parking lot. Even through the metal and glass of the car, Gabriel could hear the flow of the wide Suwannee river, which was the main attraction for him here. Gabriel was hoping the energy released by the white water rapids would be more accessible to him than that of a more gentle waterway.

"Better than the Everglades?" Gabriel asked, his head turning automatically in the direction of the water, like a flower following the sun.

"Swamps aren't really my thing." Sam smiled over at Gabriel. With every mile they'd put between themselves and Kingsville, Sam had seemed to relax a little more. He was starting to look positively laid back now, like all was right with the world, and who knew what that was about. "So what do you need to do here? Should I give you some space?"

"And have you wander off and get et by a bear or something?" Gabriel teased, pulling his attention away from the beckoning river. "No need. This isn't something I need a ritual for or anything."

"Well, I'm going to wander off a little," Sam insisted. "I want to collect some firewood for a cooking fire. Mere mortals need to refuel too, you know."

"Don't go too far," Gabriel warned as he opened the car door. "I don't want to lose track of you." There was comfort to be found in knowing where Sam was, and he wasn't going to examine that any closer than he already had.

He heard Sam make a low and probably amused humphing sound, but nothing was said. Sam got out of the SUV and started to stretch the kinks out of his long body. After getting out himself, Gabriel stood and watched a moment. He'd spent a lot of time since this all started just watching Sam, and he'd long since ceased to try and hide it. It might not replenish his grace, but it fed something in him nonetheless.

When Sam glanced his way and saw him watching, he didn't look surprised. He just made a wry face, repeated the humphing sound, and set off for the trees. "You take care around the local wildlife yourself," he called out as he went. "I don't want to have to bandage up any gnawed off limbs."

"The only thing that's gnawed on me in recent memory would be you," Gabriel called after him.

He saw Sam kind of falter, like he'd just tripped on a protruding root. Sam's shoulders seemed a little more rigid and a little more stooped as he started walking again, soon disappearing within the trees.

There was something he was missing going on there, but Gabriel wasn't in the right mindset to puzzle it out. The quick flowing water was calling to him siren style, and he gave into its pull, letting it guide his steps through the trees and right up to the edge. He paused there, staring out at the churning water and feeling a little of the same awe he'd felt the first time he'd set foot on this creation of Dad's. There was a reason why places like this fed the grace of angels; it reminded them all of what their Father was capable of and touched that place deep inside each of them where the wonder and the magic of creation lived.

Needing to be even closer, Gabriel took off his shoes and socks and waded out into the middle of the water, the current almost knocking him off his feet more than once. There was a rock dead center that the water was rushing around and over. Carefully, Gabriel perched on it. Then he let his mind sink into the movement around him, becoming one with the river...

Time, or at least his awareness of it, took a vacation for a while, so he didn't know how long it had been when he slowly became aware of Sam's voice calling his name.

He blinked and refocused his sight, turning his head to see Sam standing on the bank of the river with a dish of what looked like food. "That for me?" he asked, hopping off the rock and wading over to him.

"If you want it." Sam had his jacket off, and his overshirt sleeves rolled up. His face looked a little red. It seemed like cooking and/or the Florida sun had gotten him heated up. "It's nachos. Kind of."

"Kind of?" Gabriel stepped up onto the bank, shaking the water off as best he could.

Sam shrugged, leaning back from Gabriel as he shook himself dry-ish. "Best I could do with a campfire, a couple of cans of over-processed mush, and a bag of tortilla chips. They taste all right if you don't think too hard about what you're eating."

The temptation to see if maybe he had enough power to bring forth a much bigger and palatable feast was hard to resist, but Gabriel did resist it. He needed to hoard every bit of regained strength so he'd be able to attempt to contact Castiel as soon as possible. It was imperative, not only to allay his own worry, but even more to ease that quietly panicked look that didn't ever seem to leave the back of Sam's eyes. "You can distract me from paying attention to my food then," he said, reaching out and taking a chip.

Sam watched him eat that before saying, "Did it work at all?"

"Yeah," Gabriel said around a mouthful of cheesy, meaty crunch. Really, they weren't nearly as bad as Sam's excuses had led him to believe. "It's just going to take time."

"How much time?" Sam asked. Gabriel got the impression Sam was trying for a casual tone there. If so, it hadn't worked.

"If I hoard every drop I can, I should be able to try the communication ritual in a couple of days," Gabriel said, answering what he was sure was Sam's actual question.

Sam looked down, no doubt trying to hide the look of disappointment Gabriel nonetheless saw. "We have enough supplies for about a week, if we're careful."

"It won't take that long, I'm certain." Well, almost certain. Really, if he didn't attempt to use anything he gained back, how long could it take?

Sam nodded and sat down on the bank, leaning back against a tree. He put the plate down beside him. "Being in this place, it's so easy to believe that nothing's happened, that the rest of the world is still out there, still fine, that all the earthquakes, massacres, and the rest of the unnatural disasters didn't happen..."

"It's still there," Gabriel offered, moving to sit beside him. "Bloodied but not broken."

"I think our definitions of 'broken' may differ," Sam said dourly, staring out at the river, but then he seemed to brighten. "There's meant to be good fishing here. I wish I'd thought to pick up a fishing pole and some bait while we were ransacking Walmart. Fresh fish would do us good." He paused before adding, "Maybe the visitors' center will have a pole I can, uh, 'borrow'."

He did it without thinking. A snap of his fingers and Gabriel was holding out a pole to Sam. "This do?"

"Uh, yeah." Sam took the pole a little hesitantly. A frown seemed to be trying to duke it out with his smile. "I hope that didn't take too much mojo. It was just a passing thought, Gabriel. There was no need to..." He pulled a face and looked down.

"Reflex," Gabriel admitted, though at the same time he was pleased. Coming here had been the correct thing to do if he was already able to pull off little tricks like that. "Besides, if you can catch some fish, it'll augment your food supply, make the rest last longer."

"Yeah." Sam's smile this time was sheepish but uncomplicated. "Thanks."

Gabriel nodded and leaned back against the tree behind him. His attention, now that he wasn't trying to focus on something, soon drifted back to the river and the power of the rapids. He could hear the small noises of Sam playing around with the fishing pole, and those noises, as well as the energy in the air here, were soothing, which was probably why he noticed pretty quickly when the noises stopped altogether. Glancing around, he found Sam still sitting in the grass close by, but he was now staring at Gabriel, his eyes obviously unfocused.

"Sam?" he ventured cautiously, reaching out with the faint grace he'd regained to see if he could sense anything. He could, or at least he thought he could, but the impression was so vague it could mean anything. Sam was, maybe, being pulled to Gabriel somehow? It felt like some kind of reaching out, anyway.

Sam seemed to jolt as if he'd suddenly become aware of Gabriel's attention. "Uh, did you say something?"

"You wouldn't have heard me if I had. Where were you?" he asked, wondering if Sam could throw some more light on the subject.

"Right here. I... I guess I was daydreaming." Sam stood and stretched, his eyes not meeting Gabriel's. "I'll dig up some worms for bait, I think. Dean's the fisherman in the family, not me. I'll need all the help I can get."

And Gabriel knew avoidance when he saw it. "What aren't you telling me?" he asked point blank, hoping the direct approach would get him somewhere.

That drew Sam's gaze to meet his in a hurry, though Sam looked away again almost as quickly. "Nothing that matters. Things are under control."

"You know when I'm sure things are out of control?" Gabriel asked, standing up, alarm bells going off in his head. "When you're assuring me that things are under it."

Sam's shoulders noticeably hunched up. "Now you sound like my brother."

"No need to get insulting," Gabriel objected. He moved a little closer. "Come on. Tell me what's going on."

Sam shot him an angry look, but the anger, if that's what it really was, soon melted into a more simple expression of pain. "I'm a not-so-recovered addict in need of methadone, and my supplier's all out. Okay?"

Oh. "I don't suppose it'll help if I tell you one more time that it doesn't work like that," Gabriel said carefully. "Grace isn't like demon blood, even if transferred through a vessel's blood. That it's all in your head?"

"This is not imaginary or psychosomatic or what the hell ever, Gabriel." Now Sam looked really pissed. "What I'm feeling? Is real. And if you hadn't wasted your depleted grace on trying to impress me with this-" he brandished the fishing pole just like an angry tribesman with a spear in an old Tarzan movie "-you'd be able to look at me and see that it's real."

"Grace doesn't work like that," Gabriel said again. "Trust me, if there's one thing I've learned, it's how to make my grace do stuff it's not supposed to do, but this is one way it'll never work."

Sam shut his mouth, but he might as well have yelled at Gabriel since the tense jaw and taut neck tendons, not to mention the accusing gaze, made it all too clear what he was feeling. He turned his back on Gabriel and stalked off towards the parking lot and visitors' center.

Gabriel let out a breath and leaned his head back against the tree behind him. Humans. And Winchesters in particular. More trouble than they were worth, really. Except that he'd accepted rather definitively that they were worth it. Well, he'd let Sam have his little sulk for now. Gabriel suspected it was partially because Sam was trying not to focus on his worry for his brother, and that wasn't going to get better until they were able to get in contact. That meant that the best thing to do was what he wanted to do anyway – answer the call of the rapids and get back to work recharging his grace.

He stood, shook off the lingering worry about Sam, and waded back into the river.

Day Nine

Sam took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

The last thing they needed out here was for him to half-sever a finger gutting a fish 'cause his mind was on other things. But today was the day, the one he'd been waiting for on strung out tenterhooks all week. Gabriel finally felt ready to attempt to link minds or something similar with Castiel, and presuming Cas was with Dean – and that was a big presumption, but for some reason it didn't feel like one – Sam would soon know if Dean was all right. Gabriel had been more than a little vague with the details of what it would involve, so Sam was having to guess what would be happening, but the important thing was that it would be happening. Today. Within the hour, in fact.

He threw the gutted fish in the bucket of clean river water and grabbed the next one, looking over at Gabriel who was sitting quietly, cross-legged, preparing himself for the attempt.

It was strange seeing Gabriel like that, just as strange as it had been to see him in a similar pose in the middle of the river. It was the stillness – something that Sam had long learned to associate with angels, but only angels that were not Gabriel. Gabriel himself was never still, always in motion, a joke or a trick always ready to attract or distract attention. Seeing him so inwardly focused, so angel-like continued to be strange if not outright wrong.

"If you're going to keep gawking at me, you might want to put the sharp objects away," Gabriel said the next time Sam glanced over at him. Gabriel's eyes were still closed, and he hadn't moved an inch, but there was the ghost of a smirk curling his mouth up now.

"Stop wasting mojo," Sam told him with a pretence of crossness. He was smiling really as he slit open the small fish in his hand.

"Bite me," Gabriel shot back with good humor.

"Enough with the oral references, Gabriel." Sam rolled his eyes. Every opportunity taken...

"There's never enough oral," Gabriel complained. But then he opened his eyes, which were practically glowing with power. "I'm ready."

Christ. Sam couldn't help staring now. Was it just that he was more aware of Gabriel's power, that he was sensing it more clearly having pigged out on it, or was Gabriel simply letting him see now where he hadn't before? "You look..." he started, but he didn't finish. He couldn't think of suitable superlatives that couldn't be deliberately misconstrued by Gabriel.

"Like an archangel?" The smirk Gabriel gave him was pure trickster. "Yeah, I get that."

Sam decided to ignore the smirk. "Is there anything I can do to help the process?"

"Just hang around. Like calls to like; I can use you to help locate your brother and mine."

"You'll have better luck with Cas," Sam said, thinking of the book's worth of Enochian symbols engraved into Dean's ribs as well as his own. Not that those had ever stopped Gabriel from finding them once he'd joined the war effort. Sam had been suspecting for a while now that Gabriel had somehow tagged them.

"I'll have better luck if I use both," Gabriel replied.

"Hmm." Now wasn't the time to start the third degree, Sam guessed. He washed his hands as best he could and dried them on his jeans before coming to sit down close to Gabriel. "I'll just 'hang around' then."

Gabriel closed his eyes again and went even more still. There was a growing heaviness to the air around them, an expectancy as if lightning were about to strike. Then Gabriel's eyes snapped open, but they weren't the same. They were now shining blue, the exact same shade of blue as Castiel's eyes.

"Gabriel?" Sam asked softly, not wanting to interrupt anything.

"Sam?" But it wasn't Gabriel's voice coming from that mouth. It was Dean's.

"Dean? How-" No, that didn't matter. "Are you all right? Where are you?"

"Washington. Just outside of Seattle. Where– how– You're not possessing Cas, are you?"

"What? No. I'm, uh, talking via Radio Gabriel. We're in Florida. Are you both okay?"

"I am now. Though this is... weird. Gives a whole new meaning to 'angel radio'."

"Yeah." Sam swallowed. "It's good to hear you though, no matter what."

"Same here. You don't know what I've been thinking."

"Believe me, I do. Christ knows, I do. Gabriel kept telling me you were alive, but I couldn't see how he could possibly know. It's taken him this long to get the power together to-" Sam stopped. The blue had gone from Gabriel's eyes.

"Sorry," Gabriel said, and it was Gabriel again, though he sounded pretty rough. In fact, he looked about ready to pass out. "Couldn't hold it any longer. No more juice."

Without thinking, Sam reached out and put his arm around Gabriel, lending him support. "Take it easy. You did good." It was kind of awful to be given that brief moment of connection with Dean only to have it taken away again so quickly, but on the other hand, he now knew his brother was alive and whatever constituted 'all right' for them these days, and that was the best gift Gabriel could've given him. "You did real good."

"We aim to please," Gabriel said, waving a hand weakly to punctuate his words. "I'm probably going to fall over and go boom for a while now if that's all right with you."

"I've got you," Sam told him, taking more of his weight. He chuckled softly. "Sleep tight. Humans are watching over you, Gabriel."

Gabriel gave a weak snort of laughter at that even as his eyes were already closing.

Day Thirteen

"Come on, Gabriel," Sam called out from the open door of the car. He sounded a little pissed off.

Gabriel rolled his eyes, but reluctantly left the hill and the river and its grace-restoring power and headed over to where Sam was waiting with their fully packed car. "Keep your pants on. I'm coming."

"You agreed it was time to leave here," Sam pointed out – unnecessarily, Gabriel thought.

"Maybe I just couldn't take any more of watching you twitch because you were in one place too long," Gabriel shot back peevishly and a little unfairly. It wasn't as if he didn't understand the deep inborn need to keep moving; it was something he had himself usually. It was just difficult to force himself to leave a ready source of renewal, even if he knew there were others out there.

"It's not the place I have a problem with," Sam muttered, starting up the SUV.

"If it's the company, I should probably point out, you're taking me with you," Gabriel said, enunciating each word slowly and clearly as if talking to a child. Or an idiot. "And we'll be in a lot closer quarters on the road."

Sam shot him a look under lowered brows. "Fishing for compliments, Gabriel? That's not like you. It's not the company either. It's who's not here that's the problem which I'm pretty sure you already know." He let out the parking brake, and they were on their way again.

Gabriel resisted the urge to turn his head and look at the park and its river retreating behind them. "Driving aimlessly toward the other end of the country, while I'm sure your brother is doing the same thing in reverse, isn't necessarily the best plan either. It's a really big country, Sam."

"Sooner or later, you'll be strong enough to contact Cas again," Sam said firmly. "Then we can arrange a place to meet up."

"We could've done that from where we were a lot faster though," Gabriel pointed out. He wasn't sulking. Really. No matter what it looked like.

Sam just snorted, clearly not thinking much of Gabriel's reasoning, and the first few miles of the journey passed without any more chatter.

They met Interstate 75 north of Lake City, at which point Gabriel was expecting Sam to really hit the gas. They had the roads to themselves, after all. But for some reason, Sam was keeping at a steady 55 to 60 miles per hour.

After a few minutes of watching that, Gabriel ventured, "I don't think you need to worry about getting pulled over for speeding."

"This is the best speed for fuel conservation," he was told in reply.

Gabriel really wanted to mock that answer, but considering the situation, he really couldn't. So he sighed and sank back in his seat, glaring out the windshield. Traveling by car at the best of times was far too slow and confining for him, and these were far from the best circumstances.

An hour passed of empty roads and little conversation. They left Florida behind, heading up the interstate through Georgia.

Then, "Hey!" Sam said loudly, jolting Gabriel from his reverie. "People. Look, other people."

Well, another car anyway, traveling towards them on the other side of the median strip.

"See, I told you there were others," Gabriel said, feeling a strange relief at the sight of the other car.

"Should we stop?" Sam asked, seeming uncharacteristically uncertain, but the other car just drove on by anyway, though it did flash its lights a few times.

"If they wanted help, they wouldn't have kept going. Besides, our brothers are that way," Gabriel said, pointing in the direction they were currently going.

"Yeah." Sam nodded and put his foot down for a few miles before slowing back to that ridiculous 55mph.

It wasn't all that long before they saw another vehicle heading the other way. This was a jeep and looked the worse for wear, scorched and battered.

"Huh," Gabriel muttered to himself. That wasn't exactly the best of things you want to see coming from the direction you were going in.

"It doesn't necessarily mean anything," Sam said. "Could be old damage."

"Yeah, because everybody drives around in a half burnt jeep," Gabriel said sarcastically.

"They do if it works when nothing else does," Sam said, his jaw beginning to take on that too familiar tension.

"Let's hope that's all it is." Gabriel was tensing up himself, bracing for... he wasn't sure what.

Another ten miles up the interstate saw another vehicle, a pick-up truck with the back full of people. Even from the other side of the median, Gabriel could see that some were injured. He could also see them waving and gesturing, and the message was clear enough – go back the way you came.

Sam became more hunched in his seat. "It's good to see survivors together at least."

"Though it's less comforting that they're all going as fast as they can in the opposite direction we're going," Gabriel pointed out, briefly wishing he'd held out at the park a little longer so he'd have more juice to work with now.

"Do you want to turn around?" It was clear Sam didn't want to, so the fact that he was offering meant something, Gabriel guessed.

He gave the question serious thought before answering, weighing up everything. "No," he finally decided. "Running away when we don't even know what we're running from will just end with us not getting anywhere."

"There's not gonna be many places unaffected," Sam said. "I can only hope we get to somewhere safe enough to scavenge up some fuel before it becomes a moot point. We'll run on battery power alone for a while, but after that we'll be dead in the water."

"Well, looks like there's some of that up ahead anyway, judging by how many vehicles are actually working for people to flee in. Silver lining, right?" Gabriel privately admitted he wasn't actually that good at optimistic thinking.

"I said 'safe'," Sam pointed out with a wry chuckle. Then he leaned closer to the wheel, peering out of the windshield. "Is that smoke?"

Gabriel followed Sam's gaze and frowned at the dark smudge against the sky in the distance. "It's something."

"Maybe we should be surprised that it's the first smoke we've seen." Sam frowned thoughtfully. "Nothing about this damn war finally being over is what I expected. Blind optimism was just too important to let go of at the time, I guess."

"It's one of your greatest gifts," Gabriel said. 'Humanity, I mean. The sheer stubborn refusal to see that things are complete shit." He smiled a little. "You and your brother take it to entirely new levels though. But then, when don't you Winchesters take things to entirely new levels?"

Sam snorted. "Guess you like extreme people then, seeing as how you opted to hang around."

The reasons why he had were so tangled and complicated that Gabriel could barely begin to explain them to himself, much less anyone else. "One thing you'll never be, Sam Winchester, is boring."

Sam laughed again. "It's not that we don't see the shit, anyway. It's that we refuse to believe it can't be made better, that we can't make it better somehow." He paused and added in a darker tone. "Which, of course, makes the whole starting the Apocalypse thing totally hilarious." He wasn't laughing anymore though.

"That was more my family's responsibility than yours." It was easier to admit that than he would've thought. "They weren't going to let you take any other path but that one. But even though the only answer they were ever going to accept was 'yes', you managed in the end not to just tell them 'no', but 'hell, no'."

Sam shot Gabriel what looked like a genuine and very warm smile. "Thanks. Appreciate you saying that, Gabe. You've gotta know we couldn't have done it without you, though. You made all the difference."

Gabriel snorted. "You just used the resources you had and that included me. If I hadn't pulled my head out of my ass and chosen your side, you would've come up with something else."

Sam pulled a face. "Not so sure about that." He peered through the windscreen again. "You know what that smoke's starting to remind me of?"

It was moving in a way that was not quite natural, but not quite sentient either, and though he couldn't honestly say he saw lightning shooting through it, Gabriel had the feeling that was just because they weren't close enough yet. "Something demonic," he answered, staring at it.

"Yeah. Like the storm cloud of demons we saw escape when Azazel manipulated one of his kids into opening that hell gate." Sam bit at his lip and then added, "It begs the question – what do the denizens of Hell do when their prince is dead?"

"Somehow I think 'have a respectable funeral and quietly mourn' isn't the right answer."

"Maybe we should turn around," Sam said after another few minutes of driving closer.

Gabriel shook his head. "Not unless you want to crawl into a hole and drag it in after us." He'd done enough of that already before joining the Winchesters. Eyeing the cloud as they got closer, he added, "I'd advise against checking out that particular city though."

He saw Sam look down at the dashboard. "Okay, yeah, sure. Our fuel seems to be lasting a little longer than I was expecting. That or the gauge is faulty."

As they slowly drew closer and almost parallel with the cloud and the city underneath it, Gabriel watched it warily, fingers poised to snap, all the grace he had hoarded at the moment tense and ready for... he wasn't sure what. Except that if something did happen he was betting it was going to be bad.

As they drew closer still, they started seeing cars all over the place, only a few of them actually moving. Burned out wrecks and abandoned vehicles turned the highway into an obstacle course. Then they started passing corpses... and bits of corpses. Sam's posture became more and more rigid with each body they passed, his brow heavy and brooding.

Gabriel found himself wishing he could just snap them out of there, but even if he could, it would be a stupid waste of power while he was still recovering. Still, he didn't like watching Sam pull so far into himself either. Looking for a way to distract them both he blurted out, "Tell me about the best practical joke you've ever pulled."

That won him a disbelieving glance from Sam. "What?" Then he seemed to get it and rolled his eyes. "Distraction, right. Any pranks I ever pulled would be embarrassing to admit to a professional. How about you tell me some of your favorites? Preferably ones with a low body count."

"Tit for tat?" Gabriel countered. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"

Sam snorted. "Well, you've heard us mention the Ghostfacers?"

Gabriel chuckled. "Yeah. I've checked out their website. Funny guys. Too bad they're not actually trying to be funny."

"Well, I once sent them haring off to Hollywood, convinced a big time producer was interested in their show."

"Not bad," Gabriel said, turning that over in his mind with a professional eye. "A little on the simple side, but definitely appropriate."

Sam managed a small grin. "Dean hid a not-so-fresh fish in their car for company on the long journey."

That got a laugh out of Gabriel. "Gotta admit your brother's got style," he said, giving Sam a smile. "Even if he is a pain in the ass most of the time."

"Funny. He says almost exactly that about you." Sam snickered quietly, a little of the tension definitely leaving his face and body now. They were still passing disturbing tableaux, but Sam seemed to be keeping his gaze on the horizon, when he wasn't shooting glances Gabriel's way.

"Yeah, well, he knows when he sees true art," Gabriel said. "We'll work on your artistic tastes."

"Let's not," Sam said firmly. "The last thing I want is a prank war with you."

Gabriel chuckled. "At least you know enough to admit who your betters are," he teased.

Sam reached out and clapped Gabriel's knee. "I have no problem at all admitting who the biggest ass is," he said, staring ahead with an innocent expression.

That got another laugh out of Gabriel, and he turned a genuine smile on Sam. "Keep saying stuff like that, Sammy, you're going to hurt my feelings." In truth, he liked it when Sam engaged with him in kind. The boy was wound up way too tight, any time he let himself relax and play a little was a good thing in Gabriel's opinion.

They were starting to pass by the smoke-capped city now. Gabriel didn't even know its name, having not paid attention to road signs. There was nothing even remotely natural about the smoke cloud. Close up, it was purplish and swirling, and it seemed to form screaming faces and grasping hands as the vapors broiled. He noticed a metallic taste in the air just as Sam started to cough.

"Might want to drive faster, even if it's not the best fuel consumption," Gabriel suggested, reaching out with his senses to try and determine if there was anything harmful as opposed to just irritating in the air around them.

Sam didn't have to be told twice. He put his foot down, and the SUV surged forward, swerving a bit as Sam's coughing grew worse, but still somehow managing not to hit any of the obstacles strewn over the highway. Gabriel was impressed at Sam's skill at driving around all of that, especially when he was coughing so uncontrollably. He was about to try and do something to block the fumes out of the vehicle when it began to lessen on its own, and Sam was once again visibly able to take a few breaths between coughs. Gabriel felt his shoulders relax a little as it seemed they were past the worst of it.

"Jeez," Sam muttered, slowing down as they got a little distance from the city. He took a hand from the wheel briefly to wipe his eyes. The coughing had caused tears. "We see things like that," he said a little wheezily, "every instinct I have tells me we should stop, try to help. But what could we do, just the two of us, and your battery still almost flat?"

"Get ourselves killed," Gabriel said flatly. He didn't like it either. It was one thing for him to hide because he didn't want to get involved; that was a choice. It was completely different when he was hiding because he had to in order to survive.

"Yeah." Sam shivered and then looked down at the dashboard. "I think we should be able to get another fifty miles or so before we run dry, so we need to find somewhere to stop before that where we can siphon fuel from abandoned cars. I'd like to get a full tank before we start traveling north again."

"Let's get a little more distance between us and the old doom cloud back there before we think of stopping though, okay?"

Sam nodded. After another few moments, he said, "So I told you my best prank, let's hear yours."

Gabriel didn't answer right away, searching through his memories, looking for something that was suitably spectacular, but wouldn't just end up with Sam giving him that disapproving frown. It was far easier to think of things that fulfilled the first stipulation than the second. He wasn't even sure why his mind went where it did in the end, but he started speaking before he could look at it too clearly. "Y'know, I didn't start playing pranks only when I became the Trickster."

"You did them before? In Heaven?" Sam snorted. "Bet that went down well."

"Everyone has to have an identity in a family," Gabriel said. "Michael had the dutiful good boy thing down; Lucifer was all the shining golden child, and Raphael had the serious 'find a cloud in every silver-lining' thing." He shrugged. "All three of them kinda just begged to be pranked but good."

"Tell me some good ones," Sam said, sounding genuinely keen.

"Well, there was the one time I turned all of their wings the color of rainbows," Gabriel said, smiling a little at the memory.

"What color are they normally?" Sam asked, clearly not finding it as hilarious as he should.

"It varies from angel to angel. But... if they were human it would've been like I did something to make them all wake up with a rainbow clown afro."

Now Sam grinned. "All of them or just the archangels?"

"Just the archangels," Gabriel said. "I didn't really pay all that much attention to the others back then, more fool I."

"Shame. I could enjoy the sight of Zachariah in a dayglo afro." Just the idea seemed to make Sam uncharacteristically happy.

Gabriel chuckled. "I'll keep that in mind if he ever shows his faces again."

Sam rolled his shoulders, probably easing out tension from the near encounter with the town. "His idea of being amusing was to break my legs and remove my lungs."

Gabriel scowled at that, feeling a strange possessive protectiveness at Sam's words. "He always was a unimaginative bully."

"He'd figured out that I was the lever to use against Dean. Every douche we ever meet seems to figure that out fast enough." He shot what looked like an apologetic smile at Gabriel. "It was just after the lung thing that Cas put those runes on our ribs, to stop Zach being able to find us easily again."

"Everyone works it out so fast because you and Dean practically have it tattooed in neon colors on your foreheads," Gabriel pointed out. "You two have never learned to hold that particular card close to your chest."

Sam shrugged. "We're all we've got." Then he paused and added, "Well, had, anyway."

"You have developed quite a knack at picking up stray rogue angels," Gabriel observed.

"One each," Sam said with a laugh but then frowned, seemingly at his own choice of words.

"You claiming me as your angel?" Gabriel teased. "Gotta say, even with your brother's sense of style, you were always my favorite."

He was treated to the sight of Sam's face going the reddest he'd ever seen it without exercise of some kind involved. "Heh." Sam kept his eyes facing forward and bit his lower lip.

It was absolutely fascinating. "Why, Sam! Are you embarrassed to admit I'm your favorite too? Go on, you can tell me."

"Yeah, of all the archangels that have joined us, you're my favorite," Sam said with an extra topping of sarcasm. Protesting too much, obviously.

Gabriel chuckled. "Really, is it so difficult to admit I'm actually kind of fun to have around?"

"You can be good company," Sam allowed, still not even glancing Gabriel's way.

"There, y'see? You didn't even burst into flames by saying it." He reached over and clapped a hand to Sam's shoulder. "That's progress, m'boy."

He felt Sam's over-pumped muscles twitch under his touch. "I'm not your boy. You may be the one who can count his birthdays in millennia, but I'm the mature one in this road movie partnership."

"You keep telling yourself that, kid," Gabriel said, purposely giving Sam his most obnoxious smirk.

Now that he had a reason to be annoyed, Sam apparently could look at Gabriel again. He directed one of his infamous bitchfaces Gabriel's way and then said, "There are lollipops in the glove compartment. Help yourself."

"You're just hoping that if I'm eating, I won't be talking," Gabriel said, but opened the glove compartment and pulled out one of the aforementioned candies.

"That wasn't exactly the point I was making, no, Shirley," Sam said and smiled beatifically.

It took a few beats for what point Sam was making to sink in. "It's not my fault if you're one of the sad sacks who outgrew his sweet tooth," Gabriel said, deliberately licking the lollipop salaciously.

Sam flicked a glance sideways. "The only reason you still have any teeth is angel mojo, which, now that you're running short, might spell disaster in dentist bills." He flicked another glance at Gabriel, a longer one.

Gabriel wasn't worried; he'd created this vessel himself, and he knew what its strengths and weaknesses were. "Maybe I just like having an oral fixation," he said and wagged his eyebrows suggestively.

The next glance, Sam's eyes focused openly on Gabriel's tongue as it licked up sugary, fruit-flavored goodness before he faced front again. "I guess it's pointless asking you to behave?"

"You'd worry if I did."

"You'd worry if I took you up on all the heavy handed hints you keep dropping."

Gabriel smirked. "You keep telling yourself that." In truth, he didn't expect Sam to do anything but be exasperated at him, but he wouldn't turn down anything that Sam offered along that line, all the same.

The humor dropped from Sam's expression, and he sighed heavily, slumping a little in his seat.

"What, is that thought really so depressing to you?" Gabriel asked, turning his head to look at Sam more closely.

"It's just..." Sam sighed again. "It's just the issues you think I'm making up. I wish I was."

"I don't think you're making anything up," Gabriel said, letting all teasing drop from him. "I know you fully believe that you're physically jonesing for angel grace."

"It is physical, Gabriel," Sam said, sounding resentful. "I'm not inventing it. It's not even the same as when I craved demon blood – the pain's not there, that deep gnawing ache in my bones. If it was psychosomatic, wouldn't it be the same as what I knew?"

Gabriel shook his head. "The pain, that was the physical."

"No, it was part of the physical." Sam was starting to sound pissed again. "I'm telling you, if you had enough mojo to see, you'd owe me an apology. A big one."

Gabriel considered for a moment, weighing the levels of his restored grace and if he could afford to spend any of it on this. He decided that, if it would lay this argument to rest, it would be worth it. He reached out with all of his senses, including those he had muffled, and focused all of it on Sam.

It didn't take him long to start frowning. even though he could see immediately that he was right, and Sam wasn't addicted to angel grace. The trouble was, it seemed Sam was right too, or partially so. Whatever was afflicting him was real. It was like all his cells were crying out to Gabriel. Crying out for Gabriel...

"What are you doing?" Sam asked suspiciously. "I can feel that."

Of course he could. What with the weirdness going on in him, Sam could probably sense whenever Gabriel used his grace for anything, much less when he focused it on Sam. "Just doing what you asked and taking a 'look'," he said. "The good news is that I was right, and you haven't developed an addiction to angel grace." He held up a hand before Sam could speak. "The bad news is that there's something else going on, and that's what you're feeling."

Sam shut his mouth. When he opened it again, it was only to say, "Oh," in a nonplussed kind of way. Then in a display of sheer habit over need, he indicated to turn before pulling the SUV in to the side of the highway. "So, you gonna elaborate on that?" he said, turning in his seat to face Gabriel.

"Not much to elaborate on," Gabriel said, running a hand through his hair. "For some reason your body seems to be, well, needing a shot of my grace."

"And that's not addiction?" Sam pulled a face. "C'mon now, Gabriel. I'd love to believe it isn't. I really would, but I'm not seeing the difference here."

"It's not. An addiction looks completely different. It's more of a... wasting. I can see how it goes in and changes things, breaks them down. This isn't that. It's more like..." He paused for a moment as the words he was about to say sank in. "...like a need for medicine."

"Your grace is medicine for me?" Sam frowned thoughtfully. "Because I'm sick? But I'm no– Oh, the demon blood! Gabriel, are you... Could you possibly be healing what Yellow Eyes did to me as a baby?" Sam looked wide-eyed and as if he couldn't quite dare to let himself believe in the possibility.

"I don't know."

If it were so, then it was a process that had begun when Gabriel had first come to Sam while he detoxed in Bobby's panic room. That had been the first time he'd fed Sam his grace, not that Sam remembered it at all; Gabriel hadn't been sure at the time just how public he'd wanted his involvement to be. After sucking at Gabriel's wrist and then a deep sleep, Sam had seemed so much stronger, calmer more together. Could Sam actually be right about what was going on?

Gabriel shrugged. "Possibly just the damage you did to yourself," he hedged, though even that would be something worthwhile. "But maybe Azazel's blood too. Who knows? This is completely new to me."

"So it's not addiction because it's... finite." Sam nodded, apparently to himself. "Once I've had enough, the craving will stop?" Gabriel could practically see Sam's big brain ticking over. "And, at the least, I should go back to how I was before I first drank Ruby's blood. Maybe even back to, well, what I've never had a chance to be since I was six months old." He put his hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Gabriel, this is... If we're right, this feels like a miracle to me."

For Gabriel, a miracle was something that directly had the involvement of his Father in some way. He hadn't witnessed a genuine one first hand since before he left home. But this, it was unexpected, unexplained, and rewarded someone who somehow managed to keep faith in doing what was right even in the darkest of nights. Just the kind of thing Dad loved doing. Maybe... Maybe Castiel had been right all along, and Dad really was out there somewhere still. "Yeah," he said, feeling a smile that was content and full of hope turn his mouth up at the corners. "It really does feel like that."

Sam smiled a smile beautiful in its purity. He then did something that maybe shouldn't have been as unexpected as it was. He leaned forward and gently pressed his lips to Gabriel's.

It took Gabriel by surprise – but really, by now, he was getting used to being surprised by Sam. He was still for one second before he got with the program enough to kiss Sam back, sliding a hand up to play with the hair at the back of Sam's neck. Sam seemed to freeze as Gabriel started to return the kiss, as if he only just then realized what he was doing. But then he made a low noise in the back of his throat and pressed forward, kissing Gabriel more fiercely and moving on his seat to lean over him.

Despite all the innuendo that had been flying between them, Gabriel had never seriously considered he'd end up in this sort of compromising position with Sam. But there was something about Sam that had called to the archangel even from the first time they met, and one thing Gabriel had learned was to never look in the mouths of gift horses. So he shifted himself to recline as much as he could and kept one hand on the back of Sam's neck as they kissed. The other he stroked lightly over Sam's back, down his shirt until he could get under the edge of it and slide upward again over bare skin.

This time the noise Sam made was almost definitely a moan. He thrust his tongue into Gabriel's open mouth and slid it firmly over and around Gabriel's own. One forearm was leaning on the chair beside Gabriel's head, taking Sam's weight. The other was strong and flat on Gabriel's chest as if trying to hold him down. Not like Gabriel was trying to get away. He knew very well when it was in his best interests to be caught, and this was definitely one of those times.

Sam's back was vast and smooth and firm. Gabriel could feel the muscles tense and relax as Sam moved. He was trying, it seemed, to get closer, which wasn't easy for a man his size even in a pretty spacious SUV. Sam broke the kiss and uttered an equally broken, "Gabriel, Gabe..." before moving his mouth down to suck and nibble on Gabriel's neck.

That made Gabriel suck in a breath of his own at the sensation. He briefly considered suggesting they move to somewhere a little roomier, even if just the back seat, but didn't want to take the chance of either of them coming to their senses and stopping.

"Want you so bad," Sam moaned, pressing as much of himself as he could into Gabriel, which was mainly his chest, breathing fast and shallow. "So bad, Gabriel. I need you. Oh God..."

"I'm not going anywhere," Gabriel told him with another lopsided smile. "Even if I could." He tilted Sam's head up enough to look into his eyes again. "Take what you need. I give my permission. Yes."

Sam's eyes widened, and then exactly the opposite of what Gabriel wanted to happen happened. Suddenly his arms were empty, and Sam was back in his seat, his head leaned hard back into the rest as he heaved for breath. "I can't. Oh God, I can't."

"You can." Gabriel took a deep breath and ran a hand over his face. "Why not?"

"Because you know what I want." Sam turned a pained face to Gabriel, not lifting his head from the rest first. "And you don't have that to spare, let alone heal yourself afterwards."

"I've got enough to spare a little," Gabriel said. He reached over and ran one finger lightly down Sam's arm. "As for the other, there's more than one way to share grace."

He knew when his not-so-hidden meaning became clear to Sam because Sam's eyes closed, and he groaned deeply. "Gabe, don't. Please. Stop tempting me."

"I know what I can handle," Gabriel said, moving closer. "You've gotten so used to denying yourself you're doing it even when you don't have to. It's not an addiction, something you have to overcome. It's something you need, something you should need." He was all but in Sam's lap now. "So shut up and take your medicine."

"Christ..." Sam's eyes half-opened, and he turned to look at Gabriel, his hands coming up to rest lightly, but twitching, on Gabriel's body. "Promise me," he said in a very low voice. "Promise me you won't let me– You won't feed me too much."

Gabriel smirked. "I'm not that self-sacrificing. You should've figured that out about me by now."

"Yeah, it's not that I'm worried about," Sam said, but he'd obviously surrendered to the inevitable, taking hold of Gabriel by the waist and physically lifting him over his lap. "It's you being strong enough to deny yourself something that feels good."

"That's a high opinion you have of your abilities in this area here," Gabriel observed, but he knew his smile had turned wicked as he shifted a bit before settling more firmly in his new position.

Again Sam took him by surprise. A huge hand slid around to cup the crotch of Gabriel's pants and squeeze. "All things considered, feeling this? I don't think my abilities, however unpracticed, are gonna be an issue."

Gabriel couldn't stop himself from pushing more firmly into Sam's touch, but he managed to hold his smirk as he said, "Prove it."

"God," Sam muttered, his eyes dark. One hand clutched to the back of Gabriel's neck and pulled him in for another kiss, while the other stayed over Gabriel's pants, the heel of it rubbing firmly. Unpracticed or not, the kid knew what he was doing, and Gabriel was happy to give himself over to the sensations and feeling, losing himself in the moment and blocking out everything else.

Sam was starting to sink lower in the seat, pushing up with his hips, and Gabriel could feel how hard he was. Sam's kiss was fierce, but not remotely sloppy, all his movements precise and demanding. His fingers started to tangle with Gabriel's belt, tugging the tongue through the buckle.

Gabriel wished he had the power to spare to just snap their clothes away, but he didn't, especially considering the aim of all this. So instead he slid his hands down Sam's chest, pushing jacket and open shirt off his shoulders. Kid wears too many layers, he thought, but couldn't actually voice the protest as Sam was still devouring his mouth.

It didn't help that Sam didn't seem to be prepared to free his hands up to allow the garments to be slipped off. He seemed far more interested in getting inside Gabriel's clothes. Once the belt was undone, he had Gabriel's button and zipper unfastened in seconds and then that huge hand was slipping over Gabriel's belly and down. "Commando," Sam said, a smirk in his voice as he pulled back from the kiss just a little. His hand wrapped around its objective and squeezed. "Way to go, Gabe."

"Some of us don't burden ourselves with extra layers," Gabriel replied, trying for his usual teasing tone, but not quite making it. Not with what Sam was doing and the surge of feeling it sent through him.

Sam moved his upper hand around to Gabriel's front, and he undid the buttons of Gabriel's button down with the same kind of determined methodicalness that Gabriel had seen him approach the drawing of a devil's trap. "Do you know what you do to me?" he asked huskily. "I mean, do you really know? I look at you, and I can see you, really you, all crammed into this human flesh. You're amazing, Gabriel. You're freaking awesome."

Gabriel knew that Sam couldn't really see him as he truly was; human eyes just couldn't. But Sam was probably getting much more than the average human and even that was somehow gratifying. To be seen, to be known, after so many centuries of hiding, there was a power to it that Gabriel didn't want to look at too closely. But it made him bite back his instinctive snarky reply – "I am pretty awesome, aren't I?" – and instead had him leaning in and kissing Sam like both their souls depended on it.

Sam pretty much growled into his mouth, pressing forward. They were both getting a bad case of stubble burn – shaving facilities having been limited since leaving the house in Florida – but now Gabriel could add bruised and bitten lips to the tally. He didn't care. Sam's hand around his cock, jerking him in those same precise, determined movements, meant Gabriel didn't care much about anything else right now.

It had been a long time since Gabriel had surrendered himself like this, had trusted enough to let go, to give up control. And never before in a situation like this, that was grounded in the physical, in bodies instead of spirit. He'd had a lot of human style sex. He enjoyed it, but it never overwhelmed the way more angelic ways of coming together did, at least, it hadn't, not until now. As always, Sam was the exception. The other times he'd done such things were proving to be pale imitations.

Suddenly Sam moved his hands, taking them to Gabriel's waist and lifting him a little as Sam broke the kiss. His mouth found Gabriel's neck, and he scraped the edge of his teeth down the short bristles there, ending up sucking hard on Gabriel's collar bone. Gabriel gasped and arched his back in such a way as to push himself closer to Sam.

Sam brought teeth into play again, and Gabriel knew Sam was making a mark there that would last if he chose not to heal it, but then Sam was moving again, moving him again, so that Sam could lick, suck and nibble his way down Gabriel's chest. Even with Sam sinking lower still in the seat, Gabriel found his head touching the roof of the car as Sam mouthed at Gabriel's belly, leaving a wet trail lower and lower...

When Sam's mouth closed around his cock, Gabriel jerked in reaction, banging his head on the car roof hard enough to make a human see stars. He didn't feel it though, not when all of his being was focused on what Sam was making him feel.

Sam was... Oh fuck, Sam was... It wasn't just Gabriel's flesh being sucked on and stimulated in head-spinning ways; it was his grace too. As Sam's head moved back and forth in the limited space, his tongue a living, squirming bed for Gabriel's cock to slide over, Sam was somehow also tugging at Gabriel in a completely different way. Gabriel had known Sam would be able to take his grace; that's why he'd suggested this, but he'd thought it'd just be when he came – more bodily fluids. He hadn't realized Sam could do this. He hadn't realized it would feel like this.

This was way more intense than sharing his grace via his blood and so much more fun. Gabriel could feel his essence, his real being, surging and pushing against the boundaries of his vessel, not at risk of leaving it, but making him way more aware than usual of being one thing trapped in the flesh of another.

Sam was making rumbling noises deep in his throat that vibrated around Gabriel's cock. The feeling of his grace being sucked on grew more and more intense, making it hard for Gabriel to think, hard to do anything in fact other than exist and feel. He was aching with pleasure, throbbing with it, his hands on Sam's head, half-supporting himself, half-holding Sam there. Sam's fingers were ten individual points of delicious pain on his hips, and Sam's mouth... Sam's throat...

It all culminated in a explosion of pleasure so powerful that it whited out everything else in a way that Gabriel had never experienced in all his long existence.

He was vaguely aware of being moved and then of Sam's increasingly edged voice. "Gabriel? Gabe! Shit, don't do this to me again. You promised."

"S'okay," Gabriel slurred, blinking until his sight came back. "'m fine."

The frantic hands that he now realized were moving over him stilled. "You don't exactly sound it," Sam said cautiously.

Gabriel summoned up enough energy to give Sam a smirk. "What can I say, kid? You're good."

Gabriel was, he now realized, back on the passenger's seat. Sam was leaning over him and smiling uncertainly. "How much did I take?"

He pushed himself into a more sitting position. "Not as much as last time," he said after taking inventory.

"Well, that was a surety considering how little you had available this time." Sam frowned hard. "Seriously, dude, how much? Do we need to head straight to the nearest beauty spot?" Gabriel wasn't sure if Sam even realized it, but Sam's free hand, the one he wasn't leaning on, was moving in slow circles on Gabriel's bare chest.

"I'm fine," Gabriel told him. "Not going to be doing any mojo, but I'm not on life support or anything. Let's get some more distance between us and what's behind us before we start looking for another refueling spot."

Sam snorted. "So now we're being sensible? We should never even have stopped here, you know, let alone for so long." He started to move away, but then seemed to change his mind and bent to press an almost chaste kiss on Gabriel's lips. There was, it had to be said, a lot of leeway in that 'almost'.

"So we both have bad impulse control," Gabriel said, running fingers through Sam's hair briefly before letting him pull back. "Somehow that doesn't seem like news."

"We're gonna have to watch that." Sam settled back in his seat and started the engine again. "You haven't asked, but until I started freaking out that I'd taken too much, I felt– That was really, totally freaking awesome, Gabriel. I feel so... clear, clean..." He shrugged. "Something like that."

"Then it was worth it." That he was able to do that for Sam in the face of everything, that he was allowed to be the thing that brought that kind of healing, it made Gabriel feel like his Father was closer than He'd been in centuries.

Sam shot Gabriel a sweet-looking smile before facing front and starting them off up the interstate again. "I didn't even know I could do that. It was kinda like what I do – did – when I was yanking demons from their vessels, only without all the... ripping."

"Makes sense. Turning something that's dark into something full of light. Miracles are like that."

Sam slowed the car again and turned to look at Gabriel. "You really think it was one?"

"It feels like it." Even drained of grace, Gabriel felt lighter and more hopeful than he had in a very long time. "It's the kind of thing Dad likes doing."

Sam stared for a long, drawn out moment and then sighed softly as if releasing a held breath. He starting the car moving again and didn't say anything, but even in his depleted state, Gabriel could see that Sam was different now, glowing a little to angel eyes and easier somehow in himself. It probably wasn't permanent yet. They'd probably need to do that again a few times before it took for good, but that... that wasn't going to be a problem.

And right now? Sam was beautiful.