#moonfire1

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG THIS PROMPT IS SO MUCH YES.  

Sam is dead.  He knows that much.  Not permanently dead, because, well, this had been a part of the plan, of course, but that didn’t mean that the few minutes he spent dead weren’t going to be surreal.  He hadn’t seen a reaper either, which meant that-

“You’re being ridiculous.”  

“You’re ridiculous.”  

Sam blinked and turned in the direction of the voices.  He knew that one.  But it’d been years, almost a decade since had heard it, but it was the same.  Like it hadn’t changed.  But here it sounded brighter, almost as though-

“I didn’t die for humanity just so you could pretend you weren’t in love with one of the best.”  

Sam blinked and stared at the other figure, tilting his head.  If he was right and it was...but then who was the other?  

“Oh fuck off, you might be my youngest sibling, but that doesn’t mean that you can give me shit.”  

Sam’s head was spinning and he stared at the two figures.  They didn’t know he was here.  They couldn’t.  But who, who were they talking about?  

“Gabriel.  You love him.”  

Sam’s heart dropped.  It WAS Gabriel.  He’d known it and felt his heart start to pound.  Gabriel was alive?  He was, he was, wherever they were right now? 

Gabriel’s voice was shuttered.  “So?” 

“Well, perhaps you should tell him.”  

Sam watched as Gabriel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.  Who was Gabriel talking to?  Younger brother?  Some of Gabriel’s siblings knew that he was alive?  How?  Who was Gabriel in love with?  

Gabriel hummed and looked back down at earth.  “No, I don’t think so.  He’s better off without me.  Besides, he would never forgive me for the shit I’ve done.  Rightfully so.”  

“I think you underestimate the human capacity to forgive, Gabriel.  Sam would forgive you.”  

Sam made a noise and both of them turned to him.  And just like that he felt the pull of the real world.  Gabriel’s wide golden eyes were staring at him, and the calm, kind eyes of the other man were on him too, smiling.  He wanted to apologize for eavesdropping, but Gabriel was, Gabriel was...

The thought faded as Dean’s hand hit his chest again and Sam jack-knifed upright, sucking in desperate breaths of air.  He looked around the bunker and then at Dean, his mind still swimming.  

“Fuck, Sam, you scared me!” Dean snapped, grabbing Sam’s face between his hands and forcing his little brother to look at him.  “Are you all right?”  

Sam tried to focus on Dean, but all he could see was the panicked golden eyes of Gabriel staring at him.  He slumped forward and let unconsciousness take him.  It was much easier than trying to stay awake.  

~!~!~

“Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?” Gabriel said, examining his fingernails as he sank into a chair across from Sam.  

Sam blinked and looked up from his book at Gabriel.  He couldn’t remember what he’d been writing, or working on.  Nor had he felt Gabriel arrive as a presence in the room.  “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” 

Gabriel grunted and stared at Sam.  “Yes.”  

Sam looked down at the table.  “Who were you standing with?” 

Gabriel snorted and rolled his eyes.  “You can’t guess?” 

Sam had a dozen guesses, each the more ridiculous than the last.  “I don’t know how good I’d be at guessing.”  

“You’re smart.  Figure it out.”  

“Jesus,” Sam said, keeping his eyes on Gabriel.  “I think it was him.”  

“Ding ding, got it in one,” Gabriel said, waving a finger.  

Sam nodded and kept staring at Gabriel.  “Why are you here?”  

“You’re remarkably alive considering you were dead only an hour ago,” Gabriel said, narrowing his eyes at Sam.  

Sam shrugged.  “Long story.” 

Gabriel hummed.  “I’m sure it is.  It always is with you.”  

He wasn’t sure if that was meant to be an insult or a simple statement of truth.  Probably both, knowing Gabriel.  “Why are you here?” 

Gabriel looked at Sam and tilted his head, studying him.  “I’m not precisely sure.”  

Sam nodded.  He could understand that.  Was Gabriel ever going to mention...  “Are you still dead?”  

Gabriel shook his head.  “No.  Dad brought me back not that long ago.”  

Sam nodded again, shifting to lean back in the chair.  “Were you ever going to come back?  You know, tell us?”  

Gabriel considered that question for a long time.  “No.”  

Sam sighed and stood up.  “Of course not.  Want me to live with the guilt of your death.  You made the ultimate sacrifice for us.  Or her, I’m not sure which.” 

“Sam-” 

Sam shook his head and didn’t turn to look at Gabriel again.  “I want you to leave, Gabriel.”  

Silence came from behind him, and when Sam looked, he was alone.  He sank into another chair and covered his face with his hands.  He’d forgiven Gabriel a long time ago.  But Gabriel would, of course, have left him to shoulder the guilt of his death.  Fitting payment for his death, maybe.  

Maybe he should just stay dreaming.  Then he wouldn’t have to face reality.  Or Dean.  Or, or, any of this.  

“Hello, Sam.”  

Sam’s head snapped up and he stared at the man sitting across from him.  Who, if Gabriel wasn’t lying, was Jesus.  The Jesus.  The son of God.  He groaned and dropped his head into his hands.  “Why are YOU here?”  

“I wanted to be, and so I am.”  

“Fuck, could you be any more like your father,” Sam grumbled, rubbing his hands over his face.  “Why do you want to be here?” 

“You hold Gabriel’s heart.  I wanted to meet the person who had captured something so unwilling.”  

A small sound escaped him and he took a deep breath.  “No, no I don’t.  You’re mistaken and he’s just-”  

Jesus smiled.  “In love with you.”  

Sam’s protests died off and he stared down at the table.  “Unwilling?” 

“Gabriel never wanted to fall in love.  Not after Lucifer fell.  He learned that love, even brotherly love, would hurt him.  He shuttered himself to it all.  Then you came along.”  

Sam swallowed hard and he put his hands under the table, hiding how they were shaking.  “He tortured me.”  

Jesus nodded.  “Yet you have forgiven him.  True forgiveness.”  

Sam didn’t bother to deny it.  It was true.  “Why me?” 

Jesus tilted his head and stared at Sam.  “You are everything he loved about Lucifer, with the strength his brother never had.  With the purest of intentions and brightest of souls.”  

Sam’s mouth went dry.  

“For the same reason little Castiel has never been able to deny Dean, and would follow him to the ends of this universe and the next, so will Gabriel follow you.”  

(SHIT THIS GOT REALLY LONG, PUTTING THE REST UNDER A CUT)

“A…what?”  Lucifer sneers, holding the shawl delicately between two pinched fingers.  “What exactly am I supposed to do with this?  Pray?”

He laughs, high and manic, until he chokes on blood.  In a move that rips decaying skin, he swings the shawl around his shoulders.  It sticks to the leather, the autumn colors slowly saturating with red. 

Lucifer seems to wait for a moment, glancing around the room expectantly.  When nothing happens, he laughs again.

“Is this what you humans do?  Put on pieces of cloth and commune with Daddy Dearest?  Because, and I really do love to break it to you, but Dad ain’t listening.  No matter how much you pray or scream or weave bits of sheep together, He’s not answering. But…” he pauses, adjusting the shawl so it overlaps across his chest, “I do like your gift.”

He grins, and his eyes flash with Hellfire.

“Oh, sure,” Gabriel says a hushed voice, “give me an ‘easy’ question, why don’t you.”

He peers through the doorway at the pile of sleeping figures on the bed.  Sam is sprawled in the center, with his brother snoring on one side and Castiel reading a book on the other.  Morpheus is tucked against the back of the boy’s knees.  Mary is asleep on the other bed next to them.  The archangel gives a nod to his brother, and quietly walks down the hall toward the kitchen.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe this is my life now,” he admits as he goes about making himself a hot chocolate.  “Emphasis on the ‘life now’ part–I really didn’t see that coming.  I knew it was over when I walked into that hotel to confront Lucifer.  I wasn’t there to fight him–just buy time to get the Winchesters and Kali out.  And I knew Luci was gonna kill me.  I’d hoped he wouldn’t, but I knew he would.

“I wish I’d had time to explain.”  He stares down into his drink as he slowly stirs the dark chocolate.  “They thought I was there to fight.  But besides the fact that I could never kill one of my siblings, they have no idea what it means for two archangels to fight–really fight.  The destruction it would have done to this world, the lives lost, would have been unimaginable.”

Heaving a sigh, he piles whipped cream over top the cocoa and takes a sip.  It leaves white foam covering his nose and he wipes it on his sleeve.

“I wish I’d better explained a lot of things actually.  I mean, my performance in Casa Erotica was pretty legendary if I do say so myself, but I never intended for Sam to say ‘yes’ and jump.  I guess I don’t know what I intended in the end.  I just knew it was the only alternative to allowing my brothers their showdown.

“But I think of my encounters with the Winchester boys before then, and I see where I went wrong.  I knew who they were the very first time I saw them at that university.  It was just harmless fun back then–as a trickster, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to mess with them a bit.

“It all went wrong at the Mystery Spot, though.  I didn’t understand Sam then, or the brothers’ relationship.  I thought if I could teach him to accept Dean death then maybe he wouldn’t be so vulnerable to manipulation.  Oh boy, did I get that one wrong!” 

He gives a low whistle and shakes his head.

“Now that I know these boys, know who they are and how they work, I can see why all my plans failed.  I wish I could go back and do things differently, but,” he shrugs, “who’s to say it would have even changed anything?  We have to move forward from here.”

The archangel smiles, reaching out with his grace to check on his little family.  Castiel reaches back to reassure all is well, and Gabriel feels a tiny tendril of Sam’s grace wrap around them in his sleep.

OMG BUT ALL OF THE HURT COMFORT CUDDLING, I NEEDS IT.  

Sam sighed and stared at the television. 

For the hundredth time (or so) since the election, and since the endless subsequent fucking mess of a fall out, he wished that Gabriel would still be willing to fuck with the bastard.  

He deserved a fucking hot poker to the spine.  Sam turned off the television and hid himself under a blanket, making a grumpy noise.  He needed the world to go the fuck away for a couple of hours.  For his own sanity.  Before he decided the bastard was possessed and he had a legitimate reason to kill him.  

“Sam?” Gabriel called.  

Sam grunted from underneath the blanket.  He didn’t need to come out.  He didn’t need to go anywhere near anything that was going on.  

Gabriel raised both of his eyebrows and grinned a little bit.  “What has you hiding in a blanket?”  

“Fucking politics,” Sam muttered, clutching the blanket a little bit tighter around him.  

Gabriel hummed and sat down on the couch, wrapping an arm around Sam’s shoulders, giving him a squeeze.  “Would you like me to murder him for you?”  

Sam huffed and poked his head out of the blanket, opening them up when Gabriel crawled into his lap and cuddled up close.  “Don’t offer, it’s too fucking tempting, and I’ve learned not to fuck with the world like that.”  

Gabriel wrapped his arms around Sam’s waist.  “Would it help if I told you this is going to be the catalyst for so much good?”  

Sam hummed and nuzzled into Gabriel’s neck.  “What do you mean?” 

“Well,” Gabriel said, smiling.  “When a certain someone, pisses off everyone, everyone fights back.  And I mean everyone.”  

Sam relaxed a little and smiled.  “Yeah.  That helps.  Gonna suck for a little while.”  

Gabriel considered that and looked up at the ceiling before he gave Sam a wicked grin.  “You know.  I won’t kill him.  But how about I give him a case of explosive gastrointestinal distress?”  

Sam snickered and pressed another kiss to Gabriel’s neck.  “Not going to hurt him?”  

“Nah,” Gabriel said.  “Just make him very uncomfortable.”  

Sam gave in to the part of him that wanted to see the bastard squirm.  “Sounds great.”  

Gabriel laughed, raised his fingers, and snapped.  

Oooooh, so this is an interesting one.  

So, in canon Supernatural, I do not ship them in the slightest.  There are a few too many hints from Sam himself (and his abject freaking TERROR of Lucifer) at what transpired IN the cage and hints from other characters for me to condone the relationship in canon - no matter what Lucifer has said about respecting and not lying to Sam.  

Now.  That being said?  I LOVE the dynamic between these two characters.  So if you were to take canon and TWIST it, or write an AU, I can get all over this.  I have a GLORIOUS Samifer fic bookmarked (and a couple others) that I LOVE, because it changes their dynamic, but not their CHARACTERS and that is just fun to enjoy!  

So, Samifer AU?  Hells yeah.  Samifer canon?  Not my jam!