Recharge, Part 1/2
1 Oct 2010 06:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alchemyaliceTitle: Recharge
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing/Genre: Sam/Gabriel, humor
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~5,900
Warnings: Ignores season 6, picks up three months after the season 5 finale and goes AU from there.
Summary: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_pakistan, winner ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jessebee's prompts being "first time", "in the rain", and "historical". In which Sam takes custody of Gabriel's porno, Dean and Castiel need a push, and there are shenanigans of the restorative and historical kinds.
A/N: This...completely exploded on me, but I wanted to at least give you the first half on time. The second half, in which I will actually get to the prompts, will be done as soon as humanly possible. Sorry about the delay!
In the end, Sam realized it had been really fucking dumb to assume that there’d be any sort of normality after the Apocalypse. He knew it wouldn’t have been for him, obviously, because he’d long resigned himself to the rack whether by Lucifer’s hand or his own well-meaning destructiveness. But he’d hoped for Dean’s sake…and yeah, that was where the ‘fucking dumb’ part came in.
The Impala hummed under and around him, as familiar as breathing. Its sheer trueness was still a bit of a novelty to him. As was Dean, honestly. Dean, looking this strange mixture of relieved and unsteady, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam supposed that was what came of having your three-months-dead little brother show up at your motel doorstep.
“So how come—“
“—me and Lisa didn’t work? Dude, if you’re going to give me shit about that, I will open the cage and put you back in with Lucifer myself.”
“I wasn’t,” Sam protested, wincing. He wasn’t, and Dean, as always, was in terrible taste. “I know you tried, I never believed you would do otherwise, I just…wondered.”
Dean looked sidelong at him for a second, and then adjusted his shoulders as he pulled his gaze back to the road.
“She’s a great girl. We were good together.” He paused, and then said abruptly, “We weren’t right, though.”
Sam blinked. Since when did Dean want right?
The conversation, however, seemed to be over, according to Dean’s closed expression.
It was a week in, and they were back to hunting. It was what they knew. But it was all a little too…business-as-usual for Sam to be entirely comfortable with.
“Next town over has fantastic pie, I can feel it,” Dean said, nodding at the highway sign.
“Okay,” Sam agreed, because while they might be hunting, they weren’t chasing anything in particular at the moment.
Dean’s pie instincts were almost preternatural anyway.
***
The motel was actually a step up from their usual gig. “Did some work at a garage while I was at Lisa’s,” Dean said briefly in explanation. Sam wasn’t about to complain.
As he was grabbing his bag out of the trunk, however, he frowned. “Dude. You kept Gabriel’s porno?”
Dean looked vaguely surprised. “It’s still in there? Huh. Well, it was his final words. Seemed sorta in bad taste to throw it out.”
“I guess.”
It seemed sad, though. There was something inherently wrong with a world that made an archangel’s last word manifest in cheesy porno, never mind that the archangel in question was of seriously dubious levels of holiness.
Sam found himself tucking the DVD into the side pocket of his duffle. Not to watch, but just to…keep safe.
It wasn’t weird.
It wasn’t.
***
“Put me back in the trunk.”
Sam shook his head, rather violently. “What the fuck.”
“You heard me, Sammy boy. Put the DVD back in the damn trunk. Do you know how much residual magical energy’s in there? That shit is legit.”
Sam finally got around to blinking, finding the sun in his eyes, and then whirling. They were in a dusty old state park, probably in the asshole of nowhere. Gabriel was sitting on a picnic bench with limbs indolently akimbo, rugged boots digging into the loose and dry soil that was dotted with patchy excuses for grass.
Sam decided, despite his better judgment, to state the obvious. “I’m dreaming. And you’re dead.”
“Not gonna argue with that. At least for the time being.”
“For the time being?”
“Yeah. Barring any unforeseen shenanigans, I guess.”
Sam briefly considered the possibility of post-traumatic insanity. “What kind of shenanigans?” he asked eventually.
“Meh. God shenanigans. Pagan shenanigans. There are several possibilities.”
The word ‘shenanigans’ sounded even more ridiculous in repetition than it already did to begin with. Sam was pretty sure if he kept trying to shake his head to clear it he’d start losing brain cells.
“So, what, you’re just hanging out in my head for the time being?” he said.
“Could be. Or maybe you just like thinking about me.” Gabriel grinned.
Sam woke up to warm sheets and an overwhelming sense of smugness he was certain didn’t belong to him.
It was still dark out, so he got up as quietly as he could while Dean slept like a log in the opposite bed. He was twisted up in the sheets like some sort of crazed and forgotten mannequin, and he’d probably complain about his various aches and pains when he woke up, but Sam found that he’d actually welcome that, given the circumstances. Dean complaining was Dean talking, which was better than the withdrawn silence he’d taken to since Sam came back. Or maybe just since the Apocalypse in general. Sam would have to talk to Lisa to make sure, and he was quite certain that he would never get up the courage to have that particular conversation.
In short, Sam was pretty sure that the silence wasn’t his fault. But he wasn’t really sure. And that just sucked.
He stepped out onto the motel landing. The morning was cool and slightly damp.
Gabriel—his idea of Gabriel, his subconscious manifestation of him—hadn’t been lying. Not completely. The archangel had been one of the last of the fallen soldiers, the last person to switch sides for them against his better judgment. Sam remembered being disappointed, in a vague and unformed way, that Dean had been the last to speak to him. Sam would have wanted to see Gabriel’s face, in the moment that he committed to his suicide mission. When he re-entered the Elysian Fields Motel, Sam remembered him as already wearing a mask of resignation, a lack of humor so alien that Sam had barely recognized him.
He would have wanted to see Gabriel before that, seen the spark behind the gesture. It would have perhaps made up for all the shit Gabriel had pulled before, everything he’d put Sam through. Just that final decision before everything went to shit.
He hadn’t seen it, though.
Sam didn’t tell Dean, when he finally rolled out of bed, about the dream. But he did put the DVD back in the trunk, tucked in amid the oldest reference books and most potent hex bags. Just in case.
***
Three weeks passed. They put an Alabaman werewolf out of its misery, and drenched a fire sprite in Wisconsin. Gabriel made no appearances in Sam’s dreams, and Sam began to write it off as a fluke.
Except that the second he thought that, he became aware of the fact that ever since that one dream, he hadn’t had visions of the Pit. He'd slept well, too, better than he had in years.
That sort of talismanic effect didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
“Do you think the angels are just completely gone, now?” Sam asked, when the silence became too unbearable. Dean didn’t listen to music as often or loudly now, which was probably the most disturbing thing about Sam’s post-Apocalyptic life.
Dean grunted, and continued to oil the sawed-off slung over his knees. “Certainly seems like it. Haven’t heard from any of them, at least, which I can’t say I’m inclined to complain about.”
“Not even Cas?” Sam said, without thinking.
It was the wrong question to ask. Dean didn’t even bother to make a smart remark or glare; he just seemed to hunch deeper into the bed while his knuckles turned white on the gun. “He’s busy playing sheriff,” was all he said, but there was a world of hurt in that phrase that Sam wasn’t even going to try and touch.
That night, on a hunch and an impulse, Sam took the DVD out of the trunk again and set it beside his bed, in his duffel. And lo, almost as soon as he closed his eyes, it seemed:
“The hell, Sam? Do you miss me so much you just have to interrupt me?”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as interruption if you’re still dead,” Sam said, not bothering to look at the surrounds this time. There’s a vague sort of carnival going on in the background that he has little to no interest in, except perhaps for how it gave an excuse for Gabriel to be nibbling away at a giant puff of cotton candy. “Also since you’re just a figment of my imagination,” he added.
“You sound so convinced,” Gabriel observed.
“Yeah well. You haven’t been here, I put your damn porno by my bedside—“
“—aw, you’re adorable—“
“—and now you’re here, and you weren’t before.” Sam threw up his hands. “What am I supposed to think?”
“Shenanigans,” Gabriel shrugged. “Can’t help it.”
“Can’t help it?” Sam repeated. He felt like he was asking a lot of inane and parrot-y questions these days, but it really couldn’t be avoided. “What, you’re just invading my dream by accident?”
“Pretty much. Your aura colliding with my aura, and all that jazz. If you slept in the car, the same thing’d probably happen, without you depriving me of all the occult-y goodness I was steeped in over there. Hint, hint.”
“God, you’re still so obnoxious. How can someone dead be so annoying?”
“It’s a talent.” Gabriel eyed him, and plucked a clump of cotton candy from its bag before stuffing it in his mouth. As he chewed, the coloring staining his lips pink, he cocked his head. “Speaking of which, why’d you get our auras all up in each other’s business tonight? Been a while, really.”
“Yeah.” Sam paused. It had been an impulse, really, considering he hadn’t been sure it would work. But there was a reason. “I’m worried about Dean.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Dunno how much help I’ll be with that, Sammy.”
“Yeah well, unlike Dean, I can’t just brood in silence over everything all the time, and you’re the only person I’ve got to talk to at the moment.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair—it was unreasonably long now, even by his standards. Then he listened to what he’d just said. “God, that’s depressing.”
“Glad you said it so I didn’t have to. So what is it about Deano that’s worrying you? Manpain reaching nuclear levels?”
Sam snorted. “Kinda, yeah. I think…I dunno. I mentioned Cas and he just…I don’t know, shut down.”
“Maybe they had a tiff,” Gabriel suggested with a smirk.
“They can’t have. Apparently Cas hasn’t been around since we put Lucifer and Michael in the cage.”
“At all?” Gabriel frowned. “That’s…well, no wonder Dean’s down in the dumps. Apologies for the alliteration.”
“Dean just says he’s busy,” Sam offered, but Gabriel was shaking his head in amazement.
“Seriously, he hasn’t been down here to see Dean at all? He just up and left? Hot damn, my baby brother’s stupid.” He stuffed more cotton candy into his mouth and then cut a glance back at Sam. “What, you didn’t know?” he said, through his mouthful, his tongue now an unattractive artificial blue.
“Know what?” Sam said in irritation.
“You must. You’re supposed to be the smart one.” The archangel abandoned the cotton candy next to the gate to the Scrambler and sauntered up to Sam. “Come on. The moonstruck gazing, the lack of personal space? The taut silences?”
And then he paused. And Sam became intensely aware of just how close Gabriel was to him. He could almost taste the sugar in Gabriel’s breath, and the unnatural warmth of his form radiating off of him and making the hair on his arms stand up. He swallowed.
Gabriel looked up at him, his gaze disconcerting and almost golden. And Sam was almost certain that there was the briefest flicker of that glance downward to his lips before coming back up.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Castiel’s been in love with Dean since he pulled him out of hell, I’d imagine,” he said casually, but his voice sounded odd now, and somewhat distant. “S’the only reason he could have succeeded in the task in the first place.
“And I’d imagine Dean’s just beginning to figure out that the feeling’s mutual, but of course that’s just the time Cas decides that it’s a hopeless cause.”
Sam really could not deal with having his worldview completely turned on its ass when Gabriel was this close to him. He could feel his whole face scrunching into new and interesting expressions, but he really couldn’t help it.
“Seriously? Dean and Cas?”
“Dude. I’ve been dead four months, and I’m like, 110% sure of it. I should have just put them both in a soap opera to work it out when I had the chance.”
“Jesus.”
Gabriel quirked a smile. It actually wasn’t so obnoxious up close. “I know, right?”
“They are seriously challenged,” Sam found himself marveling. Because now he found himself mulling over all of those small glances, furtive words and almost-contacts, and man, for a dude with Dean’s level of pulling experience, it was like one massive conveyor belt of fail.
“That’s what I keep telling you, kiddo.”
“I should call Cas, or something. Get him to get his ass down here.”
Gabriel grinned. “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” he said.
Sam looked back down at him. He’d failed to notice that Gabriel hadn’t backed away; he still hovered inches away from Sam, head craned back slightly, expression caught between delighted and smug. He'd almost forgotten that Gabriel was still just in his mind, just an aura, or whatever.
He couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice when he said, “Yeah. I’ll do that.”
Part II.
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing/Genre: Sam/Gabriel, humor
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~5,900
Warnings: Ignores season 6, picks up three months after the season 5 finale and goes AU from there.
Summary: For
help_pakistan, winner jessebee's prompts being "first time", "in the rain", and "historical". In which Sam takes custody of Gabriel's porno, Dean and Castiel need a push, and there are shenanigans of the restorative and historical kinds.A/N: This...completely exploded on me, but I wanted to at least give you the first half on time. The second half, in which I will actually get to the prompts, will be done as soon as humanly possible. Sorry about the delay!
In the end, Sam realized it had been really fucking dumb to assume that there’d be any sort of normality after the Apocalypse. He knew it wouldn’t have been for him, obviously, because he’d long resigned himself to the rack whether by Lucifer’s hand or his own well-meaning destructiveness. But he’d hoped for Dean’s sake…and yeah, that was where the ‘fucking dumb’ part came in.
The Impala hummed under and around him, as familiar as breathing. Its sheer trueness was still a bit of a novelty to him. As was Dean, honestly. Dean, looking this strange mixture of relieved and unsteady, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam supposed that was what came of having your three-months-dead little brother show up at your motel doorstep.
“So how come—“
“—me and Lisa didn’t work? Dude, if you’re going to give me shit about that, I will open the cage and put you back in with Lucifer myself.”
“I wasn’t,” Sam protested, wincing. He wasn’t, and Dean, as always, was in terrible taste. “I know you tried, I never believed you would do otherwise, I just…wondered.”
Dean looked sidelong at him for a second, and then adjusted his shoulders as he pulled his gaze back to the road.
“She’s a great girl. We were good together.” He paused, and then said abruptly, “We weren’t right, though.”
Sam blinked. Since when did Dean want right?
The conversation, however, seemed to be over, according to Dean’s closed expression.
It was a week in, and they were back to hunting. It was what they knew. But it was all a little too…business-as-usual for Sam to be entirely comfortable with.
“Next town over has fantastic pie, I can feel it,” Dean said, nodding at the highway sign.
“Okay,” Sam agreed, because while they might be hunting, they weren’t chasing anything in particular at the moment.
Dean’s pie instincts were almost preternatural anyway.
***
The motel was actually a step up from their usual gig. “Did some work at a garage while I was at Lisa’s,” Dean said briefly in explanation. Sam wasn’t about to complain.
As he was grabbing his bag out of the trunk, however, he frowned. “Dude. You kept Gabriel’s porno?”
Dean looked vaguely surprised. “It’s still in there? Huh. Well, it was his final words. Seemed sorta in bad taste to throw it out.”
“I guess.”
It seemed sad, though. There was something inherently wrong with a world that made an archangel’s last word manifest in cheesy porno, never mind that the archangel in question was of seriously dubious levels of holiness.
Sam found himself tucking the DVD into the side pocket of his duffle. Not to watch, but just to…keep safe.
It wasn’t weird.
It wasn’t.
***
“Put me back in the trunk.”
Sam shook his head, rather violently. “What the fuck.”
“You heard me, Sammy boy. Put the DVD back in the damn trunk. Do you know how much residual magical energy’s in there? That shit is legit.”
Sam finally got around to blinking, finding the sun in his eyes, and then whirling. They were in a dusty old state park, probably in the asshole of nowhere. Gabriel was sitting on a picnic bench with limbs indolently akimbo, rugged boots digging into the loose and dry soil that was dotted with patchy excuses for grass.
Sam decided, despite his better judgment, to state the obvious. “I’m dreaming. And you’re dead.”
“Not gonna argue with that. At least for the time being.”
“For the time being?”
“Yeah. Barring any unforeseen shenanigans, I guess.”
Sam briefly considered the possibility of post-traumatic insanity. “What kind of shenanigans?” he asked eventually.
“Meh. God shenanigans. Pagan shenanigans. There are several possibilities.”
The word ‘shenanigans’ sounded even more ridiculous in repetition than it already did to begin with. Sam was pretty sure if he kept trying to shake his head to clear it he’d start losing brain cells.
“So, what, you’re just hanging out in my head for the time being?” he said.
“Could be. Or maybe you just like thinking about me.” Gabriel grinned.
Sam woke up to warm sheets and an overwhelming sense of smugness he was certain didn’t belong to him.
It was still dark out, so he got up as quietly as he could while Dean slept like a log in the opposite bed. He was twisted up in the sheets like some sort of crazed and forgotten mannequin, and he’d probably complain about his various aches and pains when he woke up, but Sam found that he’d actually welcome that, given the circumstances. Dean complaining was Dean talking, which was better than the withdrawn silence he’d taken to since Sam came back. Or maybe just since the Apocalypse in general. Sam would have to talk to Lisa to make sure, and he was quite certain that he would never get up the courage to have that particular conversation.
In short, Sam was pretty sure that the silence wasn’t his fault. But he wasn’t really sure. And that just sucked.
He stepped out onto the motel landing. The morning was cool and slightly damp.
Gabriel—his idea of Gabriel, his subconscious manifestation of him—hadn’t been lying. Not completely. The archangel had been one of the last of the fallen soldiers, the last person to switch sides for them against his better judgment. Sam remembered being disappointed, in a vague and unformed way, that Dean had been the last to speak to him. Sam would have wanted to see Gabriel’s face, in the moment that he committed to his suicide mission. When he re-entered the Elysian Fields Motel, Sam remembered him as already wearing a mask of resignation, a lack of humor so alien that Sam had barely recognized him.
He would have wanted to see Gabriel before that, seen the spark behind the gesture. It would have perhaps made up for all the shit Gabriel had pulled before, everything he’d put Sam through. Just that final decision before everything went to shit.
He hadn’t seen it, though.
Sam didn’t tell Dean, when he finally rolled out of bed, about the dream. But he did put the DVD back in the trunk, tucked in amid the oldest reference books and most potent hex bags. Just in case.
***
Three weeks passed. They put an Alabaman werewolf out of its misery, and drenched a fire sprite in Wisconsin. Gabriel made no appearances in Sam’s dreams, and Sam began to write it off as a fluke.
Except that the second he thought that, he became aware of the fact that ever since that one dream, he hadn’t had visions of the Pit. He'd slept well, too, better than he had in years.
That sort of talismanic effect didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
“Do you think the angels are just completely gone, now?” Sam asked, when the silence became too unbearable. Dean didn’t listen to music as often or loudly now, which was probably the most disturbing thing about Sam’s post-Apocalyptic life.
Dean grunted, and continued to oil the sawed-off slung over his knees. “Certainly seems like it. Haven’t heard from any of them, at least, which I can’t say I’m inclined to complain about.”
“Not even Cas?” Sam said, without thinking.
It was the wrong question to ask. Dean didn’t even bother to make a smart remark or glare; he just seemed to hunch deeper into the bed while his knuckles turned white on the gun. “He’s busy playing sheriff,” was all he said, but there was a world of hurt in that phrase that Sam wasn’t even going to try and touch.
That night, on a hunch and an impulse, Sam took the DVD out of the trunk again and set it beside his bed, in his duffel. And lo, almost as soon as he closed his eyes, it seemed:
“The hell, Sam? Do you miss me so much you just have to interrupt me?”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as interruption if you’re still dead,” Sam said, not bothering to look at the surrounds this time. There’s a vague sort of carnival going on in the background that he has little to no interest in, except perhaps for how it gave an excuse for Gabriel to be nibbling away at a giant puff of cotton candy. “Also since you’re just a figment of my imagination,” he added.
“You sound so convinced,” Gabriel observed.
“Yeah well. You haven’t been here, I put your damn porno by my bedside—“
“—aw, you’re adorable—“
“—and now you’re here, and you weren’t before.” Sam threw up his hands. “What am I supposed to think?”
“Shenanigans,” Gabriel shrugged. “Can’t help it.”
“Can’t help it?” Sam repeated. He felt like he was asking a lot of inane and parrot-y questions these days, but it really couldn’t be avoided. “What, you’re just invading my dream by accident?”
“Pretty much. Your aura colliding with my aura, and all that jazz. If you slept in the car, the same thing’d probably happen, without you depriving me of all the occult-y goodness I was steeped in over there. Hint, hint.”
“God, you’re still so obnoxious. How can someone dead be so annoying?”
“It’s a talent.” Gabriel eyed him, and plucked a clump of cotton candy from its bag before stuffing it in his mouth. As he chewed, the coloring staining his lips pink, he cocked his head. “Speaking of which, why’d you get our auras all up in each other’s business tonight? Been a while, really.”
“Yeah.” Sam paused. It had been an impulse, really, considering he hadn’t been sure it would work. But there was a reason. “I’m worried about Dean.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Dunno how much help I’ll be with that, Sammy.”
“Yeah well, unlike Dean, I can’t just brood in silence over everything all the time, and you’re the only person I’ve got to talk to at the moment.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair—it was unreasonably long now, even by his standards. Then he listened to what he’d just said. “God, that’s depressing.”
“Glad you said it so I didn’t have to. So what is it about Deano that’s worrying you? Manpain reaching nuclear levels?”
Sam snorted. “Kinda, yeah. I think…I dunno. I mentioned Cas and he just…I don’t know, shut down.”
“Maybe they had a tiff,” Gabriel suggested with a smirk.
“They can’t have. Apparently Cas hasn’t been around since we put Lucifer and Michael in the cage.”
“At all?” Gabriel frowned. “That’s…well, no wonder Dean’s down in the dumps. Apologies for the alliteration.”
“Dean just says he’s busy,” Sam offered, but Gabriel was shaking his head in amazement.
“Seriously, he hasn’t been down here to see Dean at all? He just up and left? Hot damn, my baby brother’s stupid.” He stuffed more cotton candy into his mouth and then cut a glance back at Sam. “What, you didn’t know?” he said, through his mouthful, his tongue now an unattractive artificial blue.
“Know what?” Sam said in irritation.
“You must. You’re supposed to be the smart one.” The archangel abandoned the cotton candy next to the gate to the Scrambler and sauntered up to Sam. “Come on. The moonstruck gazing, the lack of personal space? The taut silences?”
And then he paused. And Sam became intensely aware of just how close Gabriel was to him. He could almost taste the sugar in Gabriel’s breath, and the unnatural warmth of his form radiating off of him and making the hair on his arms stand up. He swallowed.
Gabriel looked up at him, his gaze disconcerting and almost golden. And Sam was almost certain that there was the briefest flicker of that glance downward to his lips before coming back up.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Castiel’s been in love with Dean since he pulled him out of hell, I’d imagine,” he said casually, but his voice sounded odd now, and somewhat distant. “S’the only reason he could have succeeded in the task in the first place.
“And I’d imagine Dean’s just beginning to figure out that the feeling’s mutual, but of course that’s just the time Cas decides that it’s a hopeless cause.”
Sam really could not deal with having his worldview completely turned on its ass when Gabriel was this close to him. He could feel his whole face scrunching into new and interesting expressions, but he really couldn’t help it.
“Seriously? Dean and Cas?”
“Dude. I’ve been dead four months, and I’m like, 110% sure of it. I should have just put them both in a soap opera to work it out when I had the chance.”
“Jesus.”
Gabriel quirked a smile. It actually wasn’t so obnoxious up close. “I know, right?”
“They are seriously challenged,” Sam found himself marveling. Because now he found himself mulling over all of those small glances, furtive words and almost-contacts, and man, for a dude with Dean’s level of pulling experience, it was like one massive conveyor belt of fail.
“That’s what I keep telling you, kiddo.”
“I should call Cas, or something. Get him to get his ass down here.”
Gabriel grinned. “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” he said.
Sam looked back down at him. He’d failed to notice that Gabriel hadn’t backed away; he still hovered inches away from Sam, head craned back slightly, expression caught between delighted and smug. He'd almost forgotten that Gabriel was still just in his mind, just an aura, or whatever.
He couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice when he said, “Yeah. I’ll do that.”
Part II.