It had been six weeks since they’d found him. Six weeks since they’d dragged him back to the bunker, one arm over deans shoulders and one over Sam’s, with Cas ready to fight in front of them and Jack trailing behind asking questions and clutching a blade like a foreign object.
“Is this my uncle?”
“I guess so, yeah,” Sam grunted under the weight of Gabriel. It wasn’t that he was even particularly heavy, but the dead weight of his barely-conscious body, even shared with Dean, required effort that Sam had to muster up somehow from who-knows-where.
“Is Asmodeus going to find us?
“No,” Castiel replied possesively. Sam knew that Jack had become Castiel’s charge, almost his son, from the moment he and Kelly had gone on the run. He was glad the kid had someone to parent him. Sam was enjoying his role of honorary uncle.
So out they had dragged him and into the world, with Gabriel squinting like he hadn’t seen the sunlight in forever – and, of course, he hadn’t – and then they had packed into the impala, with the general consensus being that Jack was to sit in the front and stay away from the trauma that Gabriel radiated.
Six weeks on from watching Castiel hold Gabriel’s knee as the archangel cried pitifully, Gabriel hadn’t made much progress.
They had kitted him out with new clothes, a phone, a room and a whole lot of Winchester-style issues… well, actually, he had that last one covered on his own.
Even after they’d freed him from the physical and ritualistic bounds over his speech, he’d refused to say a word. He hadn’t eaten, drunk, slept- anything. He didn’t have to, but it was Gabriel- he used to want to.
He’d only used his phone twice- once, in a gleaming moment of hope, to ask for a sandwich, which when served to him he’d stared at for an hour then walked away in a daze, as though he hadn’t even seen it; and once to text Sam ‘Nightmare. Help.’.
So when the text came through, Sam was shocked. He was up the table with Dean, drinking old scotch and talking strategies when he got it.
“Let me just check this- shit. Gabriel.”
That was all the explanation his brother had needed. Dean had called an unwritten truce on anything he’d had against Gabriel, as had Sam. In fact, Sam had found himself growing close to Gabriel, even with the barrier of trauma and mutism.
All Gabriel had text was ‘Lips.’
When Sam ran into Gabriel’s room, he saw him sat on the bed. He was not bound once more, like Sam had imagined, or bleeding. He was simply sitting, staring into space, like he always did.
When he saw Sam in his peripheral, however, his head swung round sharply and he stared at him.
“Hey, buddy. Can I sit down?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Lips, huh? They hurt? Memories?”
“No and… sort of.”
Gabriel just spoke. He spoke! Sam’s face breaks out into a grin.
“Rude… laughing at me when I’m- I’m- I’m- suffering,” Gabriel said, his words stilted but somehow carrying his old sarcastic tone regardless.
“This is… this is fantastic.”
“My lips, Sam. Remembering. They don’t… feel real.”
“Okay. Well, is there- is there anything I can do to help?”
“Yes.”
“What can I do, Gabriel.”
“Kiss me.”
“What?” Sam responded in shock, leaning instinctively away and then back again, staring at Gabriel in a new way now. He wanted him to kiss him and-
Oh god, this was a joke. There was the flirting the first time they met, and then Sam had forgotten it all. But now, nursing Gabriel, of course he’d picked up that Sam was crushing like a child. Of course he had.
“Kiss me.”
“Very funny.”
“I said-“
“I heard you. Okay. Hands up. You got me. But in this family, we don’t play with each other’s feelings.”
“Family?”
“Yes. You’re family now,” Sam said, the words becoming truer in his mind as he spoke them.
“Well… Cas and Dean do.”
“They don’t mean to. It’s complicated.”
“Sheesh.”
“But- and I know you’re the trickster, I get it- you can’t do that to me.”
“‘M serious, Samster. Give me a new memory for my lips.”
“I’m sure you’ve got plenty of those.”
“Thousands. But they’re old.”
“Gabriel, I’m not here for some one-sided, pity-party mess, okay? I care about you, yes. But I’m not going to kiss you just ‘cause.”
“‘Just ‘cause’? Asking you to help me out here, Sam!” Gabriel replied, his ever-growing voice showing indignation.
“Okay. I get that, but-“
“Always did think you were special,” Gabriel cuts him off. “Never knew you made me feel special, too. Not ‘til recently. But… I feel like some dumb human with you nursing me. But in a good way. Guess I have a nurse kink now!”
Sam couldn’t help but laugh at Gabriel’s joke, and his heart sped up as he processed the rest of what Gabriel had said fully.
“Let me kiss you, Sam.”
“Okay.”
So Gabriel leaned closer, looking the most engaged he had in months. He locked a hand into Sam’s hair and pulled slightly. Sam leaned into him and when their lips touched, the light flickered for just a second.
Not that Sam knew, because his eyes were shut tight as he melted into the kiss.
Neither knew how long it lasted, but it wasn’t stopping any time soon. No, they both needed this. They both wanted this.
When Gabriel’s lips parted slightly wider, allowing him to slip his tongue out, Sam’s body shuddered for a moment. He hadn’t been kissed properly, tenderly, in so, so long now. He’d forgotten what it felt like.
Eventually, inevitably, they both pulled back, seeming to know when it should end, when it was enough to keep it beautiful, magical, healing. But neither were ready to pull away, either. So they just sat there, foreheads leaning together. Sam’s hand had found itself caressing Gabriel’s cheek, and Gabriel’s grip on Sam’s hair had softened.
When they eventually pulled away completely, Sam opened his eyes, and Gabriel was smiling.
——
Should I also write some smut for this? I really wanna but haven’t written smut in FOREVER so I just don’t know. Opinions?
So I was just talking about how Sam’s reactions are often postponed, displaced, made indirect. But think about how that overlaps with the places where Sam is literally displaced from himself. Meg stole his body and mind and played out some of Sam’s deep fears about his darkness. It was, among other things, an intrusion into and disruption of Sam’s own grappling. And I’ve mentioned before that, so far from being excessively emotional, Sam’s anger about Gadreel is unnervingly rational and temperate. There are lots of reasons for that, but one of them may be that by the time Sam became aware of the possession, Gadreel had already played Sam’s reaction. By the time Sam actually had a chance to react as himself, he would have been able to remember Gadreel pretending to be Sam punching Dean, Gadreel pretending to be Sam saying “Maybe I would have liked the choice” (and how horrifying is it that that bid for agency in his own life was not Sam speaking at all, but the being who was using his tongue and the contents of his brain without his will or knowledge? that’s a whole lot of irony, there). If Sam just sounds emptied and exhausted when he’s finally aware and face-to-face with Dean at the end if 9.10, it’s partly because he’s bleeding out of holes in his brain, but it must also have been partly because he’s crucially belated: the immediacy of his response to what was stolen from him is one of the things that was stolen from him.
It’s no wonder Sam has trouble with direct, immediate reactions to his own experience.
I often wonder how much Sam dissociates on average.
Between depression, PTSD, constant retraumatizing events that impact his autonomy, and actually having his personality split three-ways (s6 finale, anyone?), Sam has to have some some hardcore dissociation skills.
And that goes with delayed emotional reactions.
Compartmentalizing trauma is a survival technique. It allows him to function each day with all these memories weighing him down. But eventually, that stops working or one of those carefully sealed “boxes” breaks open and all those issues pour out.
Karate, SPN Demonic Octopus Guardian 