![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[fanfic] Poetic Justice (3/4)
Title: Poetic Justice
Chapter: Three (of four)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiptoe39
Pairing: Dean/Gabriel
Rating: NC-17
Words: 17,500 total
Summary: Without Gabriel, the world needs a Trickster. Dean is offered the job.
Author’s notes:
* Written formorganoconner for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_japan.
* Set in Season 6, sometime after the Dean/Lisa breakup.
* Beta’d by the fantasticstellamaris99.
* The auction was for a ‘verse. That means I will take requests for side stories, drabbles - anything set in this ‘verse. So if you have an idea, please share it!
Dean's wearing a ten-gallon hat and sitting in a saloon in South Texas, because that's where Gabriel says his next mark's going to be, but right now Dean's getting awfully distracted by the sheer amount of vice streaming into his mind. After last week's bully got hugged half to death by an overamorous koala at the local zoo, Dean got the power to read minds, and although he technically knows how to shut off the spigot, he’s still amused enough by what he's hearing that he can't help but let it all filter in, the cacophonic thrash metal of sin and guilt. This girl's looking for a lay because her husband doesn't get her off. That guy's trying to forget the ginormous mistake he made at work today. The bartender's rating everyone by hotness and likelihood of leaving a tip, and the cop by the door is still on duty. It's so fascinating, Dean doesn't much want to get down to business.
Of course, when Randy "Bubba" McGraw comes swaggering into the bar, the sheer stream of hate and avarice that flows from his head drowns out everything else. Something about damned Mexicans, and damned hobos, and that damned woman who thinks she can just shove a baby in his face and make him fork over a handful of his hard-earned money when she'd said she was on the pill, and then his own damned wife who wasn't much better.
And with all of this, not a whiff of real anger, as though he'd just been living with this swimming around in his belly so long he'd made it a point of pride. Yep, this is his mark. Dean watches him through narrowed eyes as he comes and sits a few stools away at the bar.
Dean tilts his head. "You look like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders." He snaps his fingers at the bartender and declares, "His is on me."
Bubba stares him down. "What's yer game?"
"Just making an observation." Dean runs a finger around the rim of his own glass.
Before long Dean's got him on the hook, chatting back and forth about how men of McGraw's character ought to be sipping champagne near pools with beautiful women instead of presiding over old backwoods oil rigs staffed with illegals who just eat up the nation's money and leave none for good old red-blooded Americans. At least, Dean points out to McGraw's vehement agreement, McGraw knows he can stand anything, having to put up with that travesty.
"See, for a for-example," Dean drawls pretending that fifth shot of whiskey had some effect, "that. I bet you could last a full minute on that." He hooks his thumb backward at the mechanical bull that's on a platform in the back of the bar.
"I ain't never tried that," McGraw says.
"Give it a shot?"
McGraw kicks up off the barstool and saunters over. He runs his hand over the seat and slings his leg over it experimentally. Dean walks up, slaps a quarter into his palm, and backs off, grinning, arms folded over his chest.
The quarter slides in. The machine comes to life. Dean lifts one hand to snap his fingers.
And all at once Randy McGraw is in the middle of a bullring, atop a ten-foot monster of a bull, with sawdust and cheering crowds all around, and just as soon as he's on the bull he's off it, sailing through the air and landing flat on his back and staring up at the blazing sun. Dizzy, nauseated, aching, he tries to move but can't, not until a hand slides into his and he's being hauled to his feet. By Dean, and he looks around and only sees the environs of the bar and the vaguely amused stares of the drunks watching.
"That was real," he says. "Just now, that-- that was real--"
"Real good riding, yeah," Dean says. "You hung on for a while there." This brings a laugh from the hangers-on. McGraw scowls, still looking a bit dizzy and like he's gonna lose his liquor.
"It's a hell of a machine," Dean goes on. "Wouldn't you say?"
McGraw nods.
"Good old American ingenuity," Dean adds. "Give it another stab?"
"That's -- that's right," McGraw says, seizing on it. "That's what I'm talking about. American innovation. Hell yeah." He pulls a quarter from his own pocket and slings his legs around the plastic seat in a manner that has the potential to be pornographic. "Let's do this thing."
"Let's," Dean echoes and he snaps his fingers again.
McGraw's back in the bull ring, but this time he's standing in the sawdust, surrounded by jeering crowds. Jeering, not cheering, and one twist of his head to the side and he knows why. This isn't a hometown crowd. He's being shouted at in Spanish, more than one gringo among the swears he doesn't understand, and McGraw panics, tries to run, heads toward the side of the arena, and ends up facing down the one thing that seems to hate him more than every Mexican (or Spaniard, or Puerto Rican -- McGraw sure as hell doesn't care about the difference) in that stadium combined: a real, huffing, snorting, gigantic bull.
Somewhere in the panic that besets him afterward, McGraw realizes he's dressed in all red.
He screams like a girl, panics, and runs like hell. Another stumble and he's tasting sawdust; he gets up and can't see the bull. There's a shout of Toro, toro from the crowd, and then there's a rip of pain through his ribs and he can feel the bull's fetid breath hot on his shoes. Horns have ripped into him from behind. He struggles, but his own bulk is too great to free him from the prongs. The bull tosses its head, and McGraw is ripped from its grasp. He flies through the air and lands on his back on the sawdust.
Except it's not sawdust, it's wooden planks, and he's inside the bar, watching blood drip from a pair of pool cues that are protruding from the rack at the side. He tips his head back, the gasps of the bargoers ringing in his ears, to look up at the underside of the mechanical bull. MADE IN CHINA is the last thing he sees before he blacks out.
"Stab, shot-- you were practically telegraphing it." Gabriel says, getting up from an adjoining table to join Dean. They make their way out of the bar, unseen by the panicking patrons in their rush to help out McGraw. "Want to be less obvious next time?"
"Because you're always so subtle."
"Because I finish the job," Gabriel snipes. "He's gonna live. And he's gonna remember your face."
"Good," Dean says. "Let him remember. Racist wackjob."
Gabriel thinks about saying something, then drops it. Dean's already playing with the telekinesis he's just picked up, and he's completely distracted anyway.
And that's how Dean works as a Trickster-in-training. He's all swagger when approaching his marks, all good-natured All-American boy. The wife who's screwing the gardener while slowly draining money from the husband's fund gets a load of him and swoons; he grins his sunny grin and convinces her to run away with him to Tahiti; she ends up in Iceland unexpectedly and has to use her considerable fortunes and connections to figure a way home, by which time the gardener has quit.
The banker who's jacking up mortgage rates and filing false paperwork discovers one day that his ID doesn't have his picture on it, and that his credit cards are all registered to someone else. In fact, he can't convince anyone that he is who he says he is, and Dean takes great pleasure in giving him the eternal runaround when it comes to the customer service call. He's inordinately pleased when the trick earns him an ability to jump through time, and he takes a round of golf with John Wayne before returning to the present and declaring he is officially impressed with himself.
Gabriel's less impressed. Gabriel's critical. He doesn't like Dean's tendency not to go after the hardest cases, and he attributes it to Dean being squeamish about killing someone. Dean argues differently. He says it's way better to keep them alive to learn their lessons. Gabriel says they're too dumb to learn.
They tail a high school bully who's well on his way to becoming a class-A asshole, learning about his addiction to others' pain in small steps, starting with his early years, when he made the life of a local redheaded girl miserable.
"You know what would work well?" Gabriel says in his ear, and Dean nods and fast-forwards the hands of time. She grows boobs, her red hair goes crazy wild, and the bully pines after her uselessly until he's a tubby lard bucket. But then Dean shakes his head, saying he feels kinda bad for the poor fucker, and Gabriel sighs and throws up his hands.
"You can't even get the poetic justice right for these poor schlubs, what happens when you start dealing with the seriously screwed up?" he says,
"What's your definition of seriously screwed up?" Dean counters. "They don't all have to be killers, do they? Don't you get sick of working the same job over and over?"
"The variety's in the punishment," Gabriel says.
"But you're never building anything that lasts. Your bad guys go down, end up in hell, go full demon after a few years. How does that make the world a better place?"
"I'm not here to make the world a better place," Gabriel snaps. "And neither or you. You're here because you have to be here. You have to do this work."
"You know, I think we have creative differences," Dean says. "We come from different places. You were an angel, a god, whatever, I'm a guy. I'm a human being. I don't kill people just because they're screwed up, or have done something stupid. That's not who I am."
"Really?" Gabriel's eyebrows curled upward into wide arches. "Because last time I checked, Dean, not only did you kill monsters, you did a lot of threatening people. Your grandfather, for one. Hell, even that idiot prophet friend of yours. What was the name of that lady thief?"
"Enough!" Dean roared. "There's a big difference between telling someone you're gonna kill them and actually doing it."
"Not to that person," Gabriel said quietly. "Not while they're waiting for you to come after them."
Dean stared at him. "So now you're trying to make me feel bad about it? Regret telling Gramps that he had his name on the list?"
"I'm not telling you to feel anything," Gabriel said evenly. "I'm pointing out the truth. Tell me honestly, Dean. With a little more power, with a little less of the Jiminy that was your brother's big, admiring puppy-dog eyes, what might you have become? What might you have done?"
"I don't want to know," Dean says, his eyes steely, and Gabriel looks up and immediately runs out of words. That's how their conversations end. Gabriel looks up and sees something in Dean's eyes that stops him. And Dean's left alone, wondering. Confused. Feeling like he's missing a piece of the puzzle.
Also? Gabriel's still pranking him.
Dean wakes up with a mustache drawn on his face. Or he leaves the house with a kick-me sign on his back. Once, Gabriel switched his shampoo with something that turned Dean into a redheaded spiky-haired anime character of a guy for the day. Dean hasn't been able to get a shot back at him. Despite the fact that they're still sharing the same place (teleporting, now, to various destinations for training runs), with Gabriel ostensibly sleeping in the bedroom next door, Dean's so exhausted and exhilarated from everything he's doing and learning, he's barely even able to give a thought to getting Gabriel back. Which is a bad thing, if Gabriel's serious that Dean has to get one in on him before he can graduate to full Trickster status.
Or maybe it's not such a bad thing.
Because if Gabriel's serious about the other things he's been saying, the minute Dean graduates to full Trickster status, Gabriel drops dead. And Dean's starting to think he'll miss him.
It's Gabriel, after all, who helps him get the hang of each new superhuman power he gains. Not just the hang, but a billion ways to use them that Dean wouldn't think of ordinarily. Who else would suggest that Dean use his brand-new power of regeneration to plaster over a pimple? Or even that a bit of temperature control could be used to add some kink to his lonely dates with his right hand? Yeah, Gabriel went there. And what's more, Dean took the suggestion, and he liked it.
But it's more than learning new tricks. More, even, than having a cheerleader in the front row for every ruthless prank he pulls. Gabriel gets it. He understands what this means to Dean. Even before Dean can admit it to himself, Gabriel gives him a nod and a smile, and that's as far as he needs to go.
"So how does it feel?" he asks one afternoon as Dean's practicing making things pop in and out of thin air.
"Hm? How does what feel?"
Gabriel plunks right down in front of him and grins. "Being a fully functional god."
"Is that what I am?"
"Well, sure! You've got the goodies, you've got the panache. Dean the Deity, poised on the edge of godhood. It's a damn sight better than greasy diner food and getting clawed by mangy werewolves."
Dean summons a can of beer into existence. Not PBR. The good stuff. "Yup, it's pretty good."
"And it's what you deserve." Gabriel's voice drops to seriousness. "It's the payoff the world's owed you all this time."
Dean's brow furrows. He eyes Gabriel suspiciously. "What's with the hard sell? I'm already on the program, remember?"
"But you're stuck at Step 11," Gabriel intones.
"This is about me not killing anybody yet?" Dean rolls his eyes. "I told you, I'm not interested--"
"Well, get interested." A fist comes down on the floor where Dean's squatting. Gabriel's trembling minutely, looking at him with unrestrained frustration. "This isn't about you being some kind of bleeding heart, Dean. I know you too well for that. So what's the hangup?"
Dean sets down the beer, gives Gabriel a long look, and frowns. "I don't get it," he says. "The minute I knock someone off, that makes me a full-fledged Trickster, right?" Gabriel nods. "And that's when you kick the bucket again. So why the hell would I want you to die again? How is that fair?"
"It's going to happen eventually," Gabriel says, irritation clipping his syllables. "You're gonna kill someone, because you're gonna run into someone who deserves it. Just get it over with, take your place in the pantheon already. I'm gone after our thirty-day trial anyway."
"So why d’you want to drop dead before then? You got some kind of ultra-deluxe angel heaven to go to?"
"No!"
It comes out in a shout. Dean's lips curl into a confused pucker. His eyes fix on Gabriel, and he goes still.
Gabriel ruffles his hair. "Angels don't have heaven or hell. I don't remember being dead. I've got no idea what comes next. If anything. For all I know, we just disappear."
"So why the hell you want to--"
"Because I'm scared, okay?"
The words reverberate in the room. Dean still can't bring himself to move. His eyes have gone rounder, more surprised, and Gabriel's now burning with a flush of embarrassment and fear and frustration. "I have to live every day now knowing that eventually - soon - I'm going to drop dead and disappear. It's fricking terrifying, and I'm sick of living with it. I just want to go, so I don't have to keep thinking about it. What's that look for?"
For Dean has started smiling, a barely-there, pale smile through thin lips. He doesn't say a word.
"What?" Gabriel demands again, and his shoulders are starting to tremble.
Dean parts his lips, stares thoughtfully at Gabriel for another moment, and then says, "So, how does it feel?"
"How does what feel?"
"Being a fully functional human being."
Gabriel takes in a breath. Dean's smile cracks open, unfolds across his face.
"Feel pranked yet?" he says softly.
"What?" Gabriel can barely get the word across the threshold of his lips.
"Seems to me you've just joined the human race." Dean shrugs. "You know, that's why we are the way we are, right? Because we don't know what comes next? That's the reason we give a crap. We've only got one shot."
"So, what?" Gabriel says. "You're telling me you brought me back to show me how the other half lives?"
"You did kind of jump in with us at the last minute there," Dean says, shrugging. "Would kinda be just deserts, right?"
Gabriel stares at him for a long moment. His brows, knotted into the center of his forehead, quiver. A word, or a shout, seems to be lingering just behind his closed lips, trapped there to keep from exploding into something irrevocable. He fights with himself for a long moment and then turns away, leaves the room, without a word.
Dean feels as though he's been struck. That didn't go at all the way he thought it would. He keeps forgetting that Gabriel isn't some sort of joke book come to life. Human or angel, he feels things. He cares about things. And something about Dean's suggestion had hit him exactly the wrong way. Something he cares about was betrayed, just now. And Dean doesn't have a clue what it is.
But still. Dean's not the kind of guy who goes and chases after other dudes when their feelings are hurt. Gabriel'll get over it. And Dean has no intention of apologizing.
So instead of apologizing, he drinks.
Back at a Texas saloon, back under the ten-gallon hat, Dean drinks. He sighs and buries his head in his hands and tries to figure out something to do with himself. There's pretty girls, sure, and there's guys playing pool and looking eminently hustle-able. But those are vestiges of Dean's old life, the things from which he's currently navigating a trial separation. They don't interest him.
What interests him now? Stretching himself, that's what. Spreading his proverbial wings, trying to be everything he could possibly be. Finding that place where he feels utterly and brilliantly himself. But full up with power as he is, he's rudderless. He doesn't know where to go. And he's starting to understand a bit Gabriel's impatience. What does he do with all of this, if he doesn't do what Gabriel's advising him to do? Just keep on practicing forever? Wind out these thirty days and then slap himself back into his old life? Or take up the mantle of a god, be immortal, take everything he wants and amuse himself with poetic justice for eternity?
Screw that. Eternity scares the crap out of Dean. Before this all started, he'd been terrified of dying of old age, of not getting cut down before his time. Immortality would be a bad joke.
No, what's made this fun is the limited nature of it. The idea that for a while, he can fly out of the nest, do crazy things, laugh, kick ass, be with someone who isn't Sam and enjoy it, feel like himself -- the himself he could be, once all his potential is tapped, all his wishes are his to fulfill.
He takes another drink and it's unpleasantly bitter. Since Gabriel promoted him, he's started to have more of a taste for sweets. Part of the transformation to Trickster, he figures. Either that or just Gabriel's influence.
Gabriel's influence is everywhere lately.
Dean frowns, and with a sigh of defeat, he squints and lets his vision telescope out into farsight. He looks beyond the bar, beyond the town and beyond all limits. He looks everywhere, until he sees a man with a flipped-up coif of sandy hair and green-gold eyes, sitting on a pier, toes dipping into the Gulf of Mexico, expression uncharacteristically glum. He looks lonely. And scared. And like he just needs a friend.
And as far as Dean knows, he's only got one.
Gabriel stiffens but doesn't look back when Dean's feet land on the pier, when his body's weight settles into the wood. Dean coughs. The wind rustles. Gabriel still doesn't turn.
"Look, uh, Gabriel," he says, feeling like a world-class idiot. "I didn't-- I didn't do it on purpose, OK? I was just giving you a little hell. I wouldn't do that to you, pull you out just to make you feel miserable."
"I would," Gabriel says. He gets to his feet, and after a beat and a deep breath, he turns. A plastic smile is molded to his face. "It's the sort of thing the Trickster would do."
"I keep trying to tell you, I'm not that kind of Trickster. I'm not a dick."
Gabriel gives him a quizzical look.
"OK. But I'm not that kind of dick. I don't screw with people who are already in the dirt, and you know it. And even if I were gonna do that to somebody, it wouldn't be you. You don't deserve it."
"And let's count on the fingers of one hand the times I've gotten things I deserve."
Dean blinks. "what?"
Gabriel's voice revs up into a growl. "You think I'd like the idea, huh? The guy who goes around delivering poetic justice, never getting it himself. I love my brothers, I don't want to watch them fight, so I take off and end up stuck in the front row with my eyes plastered open. I throw my lot in with you muttonheads, and end up on the floor with a blade in my chest while the rest of you roll merrily along. I give you the chance to be a god, and you--"
He cuts off, eyes burning with tears, and stares at Dean as though he's expecting something.
Dean's watching the blaze in his eyes, and he's thinking about the things that Gabriel's given him, the things that Gabriel's shown him. All the time, suffering. Fearing, bitter, feeling like the butt of some cosmic joke. Dean knows that feeling, he knows it painfully well, and his heart spins unevenly in his chest, whirring there like a broken motor.
He doesn't even know what he's doing as he's doing it. He feels his feet stumble forward, his arms fill up, and then at once he's embracing Gabriel, holding him tight and whispering into his ear. "It's OK. I'm here. I'm not gonna hurt you, OK? I'm not."
Gabriel makes a whimpering, choking noise next to his neck. It makes Dean's heart constrict.
"Look," he murmurs, "for what it's worth-- I needed this, really badly. And I should say thank you. Thanks for this. For letting me do this. Thank you."
Hands that have snapped fantasy worlds into existence are now trembling, clutching his coat. It's possibly the most powerful Dean's ever felt, despite the flight and the invisibility and the pulling things out of thin air. Gabriel's clinging to him, depending on him. And his body is warm, flush with human fears and feelings, but his mind is the strange, alien, whirring and whizzing province of an angel. Dean's got both his worlds in his arms.
And it occurs to him that he's a Trickster now. He can have whatever he wants. He can have both worlds.
He pulls back far enough to find Gabriel's eyes and lock onto them. In his peripheral vision, the water ripples as it reflects startlingly bright moonlight.
Dean's hand slides over Gabriel's shoulder, holds tight. The muscle tenses, then relaxes beneath his touch. Gabriel blinks innocently. Dean takes a deep breath. The engine of his heart turns over and roars into full slamming life as he finds Gabriel's mouth with his own, locks them together, puckers, licks briefly, and lets go.
Gabriel lets out a brief, shuddering breath.
Then hands cup around his spine, curling upward. Dean's pulled, or he pushes, and he finds Gabriel's lips again. This time they've got the whole night, and the universe, and all the powers in the world. Dean listens beneath Gabriel's skin, hears his heart pound, and Gabriel's fingers trace careful lines of fire up Dean's back. Dean nips at Gabriel's lower lip, enjoying the soft plushness between his lips as he sucks. Gabriel's mouth opens to his and when their tongues touch Gabriel gives a moan that doesn't even sound like him. The wind blows past Dean's neck, and a shudder begins there and ripples down the length of his body.
"You better not be pranking me now," Gabriel murmurs. His voice is lazy, lust-charged, and the growl in it makes Dean tremble hard. Gabriel presses against him, and there's a hard lump there, and at the feel of it Dean tips back his head and grunts uncontrollably.
"We need to be somewhere else," he manages to say, and for once, he makes it happen before Gabriel can remind him he can.
There was a time in his life when Dean would be afraid of this, or even turned off by it, but this month has been about nothing but pushing beyond his old limits, and right now, the idea of stripping Gabriel down, putting his mouth to every square inch of his body is the most titillating thing that ever occurred to him. Screw conventional notions of sexuality. Dean doesn’t even have conventional notions of gravity anymore. He's a god.
So maybe that means he's calling his own name when Gabriel lies him down, crawls over him and grinds their cocks together. Or maybe it's one of Gabriel's. They're funny little lightning zigzags of thoughts that streak across the landscape of his mind. They don't take much effort, and they're over as soon as they begin. Unlike Gabriel, who just keeps going, working a hot mouth over Dean's stomach and then taking his cock in for a long, suckling exploration. Every piece of Dean goes rigid, his muscles, his bones, the whole frame of his body waiting to move during the whole time Gabriel has him swallowed down.
When Gabriel lets go, a "Fuck!" explodes from him, and he goes from paralysis to endless convulsions. He's never needed anything as badly as he needs Gabriel's body -- that borrowed body, a body that isn't even his own -- to be touching his. It doesn't make sense, to want human contact more when you're becoming less and less human every day. It's a paradox, and somewhere in the depths of his mind it's chiming a deep chord, a warning bell. But that's deep down, and on the surface there's nothing for Dean but the touch of Gabriel's fingertips, his deep wet mouth and the lines of his legs spreading above Dean's. Gabriel slides up over him and touches their lips together briefly, then gives a sharp thrust up, thighs to groin to stomach dragging against Dean's, and Dean cries out and grabs his ass, doesn't let the contact end.
"Fuck, you're so good at that," he gasps, squeezing tight and delighting in Gabriel's wince.
"I have a lot of tricks," Gabriel says, innocent and blank, and Dean growls in frustration, rises up, and rolls over, flattening Gabriel into the bed.
"You're not the only one."
And the tricks come in handy, one by one - above and beyond making the trip to the pharmacy unnecessary, they find their place in the frenzy, each one snapping like a firecracker through Dean's consciousness. Hands that are hotter than hands ought to be. Gravity sliding away as Gabriel cants his hips up to catch Dean between hooked ankles, force him tighter, deeper into Gabriel's body. The mental language of forward, this way, yes, yes, just like that that frees up their mouths to ravage each other's and cry out in incoherent ecstasy when they roll over the edge into shuddering madness. Gabriel is smiling through most of it; he's used to the tricks of lovemaking, just as he's used to every other trick in the book, and he's relishing Dean's every gasp of surprise and desperate clutch of tight fingers against the bedsheet, Gabriel's arms, his hips - and then then they open wide, white starpoints, the tension ripping through every bone in Dean's body the instant before it bursts.
And when Dean thinks they're done, when Gabriel's fingers have teased him to every height the universe has to offer, Gabriel disappears and reappears inside him, space suddenly full and welcoming that had been tight and closed, any number of minute changes in Dean's muscles happening instantly instead so that one minute he's relaxed, the next he's panting and pumping back into Gabriel's thrusts with energy he could have sworn he ran out of ten minutes ago.
"Do you ever get tired?" he breathes, giddy, into Gabriel's collarbone, after he's flown off the edge and come down again.
"Are you tired?" Gabriel says.
Dean surveys his body, and he starts to laugh. "No, I guess I'm not."
Gabriel captures his upturned lips. The night's no longer young, but they are, still, and forever -- at least for now.
Chapter: Three (of four)
Author:
tiptoe39Pairing: Dean/Gabriel
Rating: NC-17
Words: 17,500 total
Summary: Without Gabriel, the world needs a Trickster. Dean is offered the job.
Author’s notes:
* Written for
morganoconner for help_japan.* Set in Season 6, sometime after the Dean/Lisa breakup.
* Beta’d by the fantastic
stellamaris99.* The auction was for a ‘verse. That means I will take requests for side stories, drabbles - anything set in this ‘verse. So if you have an idea, please share it!
Dean's wearing a ten-gallon hat and sitting in a saloon in South Texas, because that's where Gabriel says his next mark's going to be, but right now Dean's getting awfully distracted by the sheer amount of vice streaming into his mind. After last week's bully got hugged half to death by an overamorous koala at the local zoo, Dean got the power to read minds, and although he technically knows how to shut off the spigot, he’s still amused enough by what he's hearing that he can't help but let it all filter in, the cacophonic thrash metal of sin and guilt. This girl's looking for a lay because her husband doesn't get her off. That guy's trying to forget the ginormous mistake he made at work today. The bartender's rating everyone by hotness and likelihood of leaving a tip, and the cop by the door is still on duty. It's so fascinating, Dean doesn't much want to get down to business.
Of course, when Randy "Bubba" McGraw comes swaggering into the bar, the sheer stream of hate and avarice that flows from his head drowns out everything else. Something about damned Mexicans, and damned hobos, and that damned woman who thinks she can just shove a baby in his face and make him fork over a handful of his hard-earned money when she'd said she was on the pill, and then his own damned wife who wasn't much better.
And with all of this, not a whiff of real anger, as though he'd just been living with this swimming around in his belly so long he'd made it a point of pride. Yep, this is his mark. Dean watches him through narrowed eyes as he comes and sits a few stools away at the bar.
Dean tilts his head. "You look like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders." He snaps his fingers at the bartender and declares, "His is on me."
Bubba stares him down. "What's yer game?"
"Just making an observation." Dean runs a finger around the rim of his own glass.
Before long Dean's got him on the hook, chatting back and forth about how men of McGraw's character ought to be sipping champagne near pools with beautiful women instead of presiding over old backwoods oil rigs staffed with illegals who just eat up the nation's money and leave none for good old red-blooded Americans. At least, Dean points out to McGraw's vehement agreement, McGraw knows he can stand anything, having to put up with that travesty.
"See, for a for-example," Dean drawls pretending that fifth shot of whiskey had some effect, "that. I bet you could last a full minute on that." He hooks his thumb backward at the mechanical bull that's on a platform in the back of the bar.
"I ain't never tried that," McGraw says.
"Give it a shot?"
McGraw kicks up off the barstool and saunters over. He runs his hand over the seat and slings his leg over it experimentally. Dean walks up, slaps a quarter into his palm, and backs off, grinning, arms folded over his chest.
The quarter slides in. The machine comes to life. Dean lifts one hand to snap his fingers.
And all at once Randy McGraw is in the middle of a bullring, atop a ten-foot monster of a bull, with sawdust and cheering crowds all around, and just as soon as he's on the bull he's off it, sailing through the air and landing flat on his back and staring up at the blazing sun. Dizzy, nauseated, aching, he tries to move but can't, not until a hand slides into his and he's being hauled to his feet. By Dean, and he looks around and only sees the environs of the bar and the vaguely amused stares of the drunks watching.
"That was real," he says. "Just now, that-- that was real--"
"Real good riding, yeah," Dean says. "You hung on for a while there." This brings a laugh from the hangers-on. McGraw scowls, still looking a bit dizzy and like he's gonna lose his liquor.
"It's a hell of a machine," Dean goes on. "Wouldn't you say?"
McGraw nods.
"Good old American ingenuity," Dean adds. "Give it another stab?"
"That's -- that's right," McGraw says, seizing on it. "That's what I'm talking about. American innovation. Hell yeah." He pulls a quarter from his own pocket and slings his legs around the plastic seat in a manner that has the potential to be pornographic. "Let's do this thing."
"Let's," Dean echoes and he snaps his fingers again.
McGraw's back in the bull ring, but this time he's standing in the sawdust, surrounded by jeering crowds. Jeering, not cheering, and one twist of his head to the side and he knows why. This isn't a hometown crowd. He's being shouted at in Spanish, more than one gringo among the swears he doesn't understand, and McGraw panics, tries to run, heads toward the side of the arena, and ends up facing down the one thing that seems to hate him more than every Mexican (or Spaniard, or Puerto Rican -- McGraw sure as hell doesn't care about the difference) in that stadium combined: a real, huffing, snorting, gigantic bull.
Somewhere in the panic that besets him afterward, McGraw realizes he's dressed in all red.
He screams like a girl, panics, and runs like hell. Another stumble and he's tasting sawdust; he gets up and can't see the bull. There's a shout of Toro, toro from the crowd, and then there's a rip of pain through his ribs and he can feel the bull's fetid breath hot on his shoes. Horns have ripped into him from behind. He struggles, but his own bulk is too great to free him from the prongs. The bull tosses its head, and McGraw is ripped from its grasp. He flies through the air and lands on his back on the sawdust.
Except it's not sawdust, it's wooden planks, and he's inside the bar, watching blood drip from a pair of pool cues that are protruding from the rack at the side. He tips his head back, the gasps of the bargoers ringing in his ears, to look up at the underside of the mechanical bull. MADE IN CHINA is the last thing he sees before he blacks out.
"Stab, shot-- you were practically telegraphing it." Gabriel says, getting up from an adjoining table to join Dean. They make their way out of the bar, unseen by the panicking patrons in their rush to help out McGraw. "Want to be less obvious next time?"
"Because you're always so subtle."
"Because I finish the job," Gabriel snipes. "He's gonna live. And he's gonna remember your face."
"Good," Dean says. "Let him remember. Racist wackjob."
Gabriel thinks about saying something, then drops it. Dean's already playing with the telekinesis he's just picked up, and he's completely distracted anyway.
And that's how Dean works as a Trickster-in-training. He's all swagger when approaching his marks, all good-natured All-American boy. The wife who's screwing the gardener while slowly draining money from the husband's fund gets a load of him and swoons; he grins his sunny grin and convinces her to run away with him to Tahiti; she ends up in Iceland unexpectedly and has to use her considerable fortunes and connections to figure a way home, by which time the gardener has quit.
The banker who's jacking up mortgage rates and filing false paperwork discovers one day that his ID doesn't have his picture on it, and that his credit cards are all registered to someone else. In fact, he can't convince anyone that he is who he says he is, and Dean takes great pleasure in giving him the eternal runaround when it comes to the customer service call. He's inordinately pleased when the trick earns him an ability to jump through time, and he takes a round of golf with John Wayne before returning to the present and declaring he is officially impressed with himself.
Gabriel's less impressed. Gabriel's critical. He doesn't like Dean's tendency not to go after the hardest cases, and he attributes it to Dean being squeamish about killing someone. Dean argues differently. He says it's way better to keep them alive to learn their lessons. Gabriel says they're too dumb to learn.
They tail a high school bully who's well on his way to becoming a class-A asshole, learning about his addiction to others' pain in small steps, starting with his early years, when he made the life of a local redheaded girl miserable.
"You know what would work well?" Gabriel says in his ear, and Dean nods and fast-forwards the hands of time. She grows boobs, her red hair goes crazy wild, and the bully pines after her uselessly until he's a tubby lard bucket. But then Dean shakes his head, saying he feels kinda bad for the poor fucker, and Gabriel sighs and throws up his hands.
"You can't even get the poetic justice right for these poor schlubs, what happens when you start dealing with the seriously screwed up?" he says,
"What's your definition of seriously screwed up?" Dean counters. "They don't all have to be killers, do they? Don't you get sick of working the same job over and over?"
"The variety's in the punishment," Gabriel says.
"But you're never building anything that lasts. Your bad guys go down, end up in hell, go full demon after a few years. How does that make the world a better place?"
"I'm not here to make the world a better place," Gabriel snaps. "And neither or you. You're here because you have to be here. You have to do this work."
"You know, I think we have creative differences," Dean says. "We come from different places. You were an angel, a god, whatever, I'm a guy. I'm a human being. I don't kill people just because they're screwed up, or have done something stupid. That's not who I am."
"Really?" Gabriel's eyebrows curled upward into wide arches. "Because last time I checked, Dean, not only did you kill monsters, you did a lot of threatening people. Your grandfather, for one. Hell, even that idiot prophet friend of yours. What was the name of that lady thief?"
"Enough!" Dean roared. "There's a big difference between telling someone you're gonna kill them and actually doing it."
"Not to that person," Gabriel said quietly. "Not while they're waiting for you to come after them."
Dean stared at him. "So now you're trying to make me feel bad about it? Regret telling Gramps that he had his name on the list?"
"I'm not telling you to feel anything," Gabriel said evenly. "I'm pointing out the truth. Tell me honestly, Dean. With a little more power, with a little less of the Jiminy that was your brother's big, admiring puppy-dog eyes, what might you have become? What might you have done?"
"I don't want to know," Dean says, his eyes steely, and Gabriel looks up and immediately runs out of words. That's how their conversations end. Gabriel looks up and sees something in Dean's eyes that stops him. And Dean's left alone, wondering. Confused. Feeling like he's missing a piece of the puzzle.
Also? Gabriel's still pranking him.
Dean wakes up with a mustache drawn on his face. Or he leaves the house with a kick-me sign on his back. Once, Gabriel switched his shampoo with something that turned Dean into a redheaded spiky-haired anime character of a guy for the day. Dean hasn't been able to get a shot back at him. Despite the fact that they're still sharing the same place (teleporting, now, to various destinations for training runs), with Gabriel ostensibly sleeping in the bedroom next door, Dean's so exhausted and exhilarated from everything he's doing and learning, he's barely even able to give a thought to getting Gabriel back. Which is a bad thing, if Gabriel's serious that Dean has to get one in on him before he can graduate to full Trickster status.
Or maybe it's not such a bad thing.
Because if Gabriel's serious about the other things he's been saying, the minute Dean graduates to full Trickster status, Gabriel drops dead. And Dean's starting to think he'll miss him.
It's Gabriel, after all, who helps him get the hang of each new superhuman power he gains. Not just the hang, but a billion ways to use them that Dean wouldn't think of ordinarily. Who else would suggest that Dean use his brand-new power of regeneration to plaster over a pimple? Or even that a bit of temperature control could be used to add some kink to his lonely dates with his right hand? Yeah, Gabriel went there. And what's more, Dean took the suggestion, and he liked it.
But it's more than learning new tricks. More, even, than having a cheerleader in the front row for every ruthless prank he pulls. Gabriel gets it. He understands what this means to Dean. Even before Dean can admit it to himself, Gabriel gives him a nod and a smile, and that's as far as he needs to go.
"So how does it feel?" he asks one afternoon as Dean's practicing making things pop in and out of thin air.
"Hm? How does what feel?"
Gabriel plunks right down in front of him and grins. "Being a fully functional god."
"Is that what I am?"
"Well, sure! You've got the goodies, you've got the panache. Dean the Deity, poised on the edge of godhood. It's a damn sight better than greasy diner food and getting clawed by mangy werewolves."
Dean summons a can of beer into existence. Not PBR. The good stuff. "Yup, it's pretty good."
"And it's what you deserve." Gabriel's voice drops to seriousness. "It's the payoff the world's owed you all this time."
Dean's brow furrows. He eyes Gabriel suspiciously. "What's with the hard sell? I'm already on the program, remember?"
"But you're stuck at Step 11," Gabriel intones.
"This is about me not killing anybody yet?" Dean rolls his eyes. "I told you, I'm not interested--"
"Well, get interested." A fist comes down on the floor where Dean's squatting. Gabriel's trembling minutely, looking at him with unrestrained frustration. "This isn't about you being some kind of bleeding heart, Dean. I know you too well for that. So what's the hangup?"
Dean sets down the beer, gives Gabriel a long look, and frowns. "I don't get it," he says. "The minute I knock someone off, that makes me a full-fledged Trickster, right?" Gabriel nods. "And that's when you kick the bucket again. So why the hell would I want you to die again? How is that fair?"
"It's going to happen eventually," Gabriel says, irritation clipping his syllables. "You're gonna kill someone, because you're gonna run into someone who deserves it. Just get it over with, take your place in the pantheon already. I'm gone after our thirty-day trial anyway."
"So why d’you want to drop dead before then? You got some kind of ultra-deluxe angel heaven to go to?"
"No!"
It comes out in a shout. Dean's lips curl into a confused pucker. His eyes fix on Gabriel, and he goes still.
Gabriel ruffles his hair. "Angels don't have heaven or hell. I don't remember being dead. I've got no idea what comes next. If anything. For all I know, we just disappear."
"So why the hell you want to--"
"Because I'm scared, okay?"
The words reverberate in the room. Dean still can't bring himself to move. His eyes have gone rounder, more surprised, and Gabriel's now burning with a flush of embarrassment and fear and frustration. "I have to live every day now knowing that eventually - soon - I'm going to drop dead and disappear. It's fricking terrifying, and I'm sick of living with it. I just want to go, so I don't have to keep thinking about it. What's that look for?"
For Dean has started smiling, a barely-there, pale smile through thin lips. He doesn't say a word.
"What?" Gabriel demands again, and his shoulders are starting to tremble.
Dean parts his lips, stares thoughtfully at Gabriel for another moment, and then says, "So, how does it feel?"
"How does what feel?"
"Being a fully functional human being."
Gabriel takes in a breath. Dean's smile cracks open, unfolds across his face.
"Feel pranked yet?" he says softly.
"What?" Gabriel can barely get the word across the threshold of his lips.
"Seems to me you've just joined the human race." Dean shrugs. "You know, that's why we are the way we are, right? Because we don't know what comes next? That's the reason we give a crap. We've only got one shot."
"So, what?" Gabriel says. "You're telling me you brought me back to show me how the other half lives?"
"You did kind of jump in with us at the last minute there," Dean says, shrugging. "Would kinda be just deserts, right?"
Gabriel stares at him for a long moment. His brows, knotted into the center of his forehead, quiver. A word, or a shout, seems to be lingering just behind his closed lips, trapped there to keep from exploding into something irrevocable. He fights with himself for a long moment and then turns away, leaves the room, without a word.
Dean feels as though he's been struck. That didn't go at all the way he thought it would. He keeps forgetting that Gabriel isn't some sort of joke book come to life. Human or angel, he feels things. He cares about things. And something about Dean's suggestion had hit him exactly the wrong way. Something he cares about was betrayed, just now. And Dean doesn't have a clue what it is.
But still. Dean's not the kind of guy who goes and chases after other dudes when their feelings are hurt. Gabriel'll get over it. And Dean has no intention of apologizing.
So instead of apologizing, he drinks.
Back at a Texas saloon, back under the ten-gallon hat, Dean drinks. He sighs and buries his head in his hands and tries to figure out something to do with himself. There's pretty girls, sure, and there's guys playing pool and looking eminently hustle-able. But those are vestiges of Dean's old life, the things from which he's currently navigating a trial separation. They don't interest him.
What interests him now? Stretching himself, that's what. Spreading his proverbial wings, trying to be everything he could possibly be. Finding that place where he feels utterly and brilliantly himself. But full up with power as he is, he's rudderless. He doesn't know where to go. And he's starting to understand a bit Gabriel's impatience. What does he do with all of this, if he doesn't do what Gabriel's advising him to do? Just keep on practicing forever? Wind out these thirty days and then slap himself back into his old life? Or take up the mantle of a god, be immortal, take everything he wants and amuse himself with poetic justice for eternity?
Screw that. Eternity scares the crap out of Dean. Before this all started, he'd been terrified of dying of old age, of not getting cut down before his time. Immortality would be a bad joke.
No, what's made this fun is the limited nature of it. The idea that for a while, he can fly out of the nest, do crazy things, laugh, kick ass, be with someone who isn't Sam and enjoy it, feel like himself -- the himself he could be, once all his potential is tapped, all his wishes are his to fulfill.
He takes another drink and it's unpleasantly bitter. Since Gabriel promoted him, he's started to have more of a taste for sweets. Part of the transformation to Trickster, he figures. Either that or just Gabriel's influence.
Gabriel's influence is everywhere lately.
Dean frowns, and with a sigh of defeat, he squints and lets his vision telescope out into farsight. He looks beyond the bar, beyond the town and beyond all limits. He looks everywhere, until he sees a man with a flipped-up coif of sandy hair and green-gold eyes, sitting on a pier, toes dipping into the Gulf of Mexico, expression uncharacteristically glum. He looks lonely. And scared. And like he just needs a friend.
And as far as Dean knows, he's only got one.
Gabriel stiffens but doesn't look back when Dean's feet land on the pier, when his body's weight settles into the wood. Dean coughs. The wind rustles. Gabriel still doesn't turn.
"Look, uh, Gabriel," he says, feeling like a world-class idiot. "I didn't-- I didn't do it on purpose, OK? I was just giving you a little hell. I wouldn't do that to you, pull you out just to make you feel miserable."
"I would," Gabriel says. He gets to his feet, and after a beat and a deep breath, he turns. A plastic smile is molded to his face. "It's the sort of thing the Trickster would do."
"I keep trying to tell you, I'm not that kind of Trickster. I'm not a dick."
Gabriel gives him a quizzical look.
"OK. But I'm not that kind of dick. I don't screw with people who are already in the dirt, and you know it. And even if I were gonna do that to somebody, it wouldn't be you. You don't deserve it."
"And let's count on the fingers of one hand the times I've gotten things I deserve."
Dean blinks. "what?"
Gabriel's voice revs up into a growl. "You think I'd like the idea, huh? The guy who goes around delivering poetic justice, never getting it himself. I love my brothers, I don't want to watch them fight, so I take off and end up stuck in the front row with my eyes plastered open. I throw my lot in with you muttonheads, and end up on the floor with a blade in my chest while the rest of you roll merrily along. I give you the chance to be a god, and you--"
He cuts off, eyes burning with tears, and stares at Dean as though he's expecting something.
Dean's watching the blaze in his eyes, and he's thinking about the things that Gabriel's given him, the things that Gabriel's shown him. All the time, suffering. Fearing, bitter, feeling like the butt of some cosmic joke. Dean knows that feeling, he knows it painfully well, and his heart spins unevenly in his chest, whirring there like a broken motor.
He doesn't even know what he's doing as he's doing it. He feels his feet stumble forward, his arms fill up, and then at once he's embracing Gabriel, holding him tight and whispering into his ear. "It's OK. I'm here. I'm not gonna hurt you, OK? I'm not."
Gabriel makes a whimpering, choking noise next to his neck. It makes Dean's heart constrict.
"Look," he murmurs, "for what it's worth-- I needed this, really badly. And I should say thank you. Thanks for this. For letting me do this. Thank you."
Hands that have snapped fantasy worlds into existence are now trembling, clutching his coat. It's possibly the most powerful Dean's ever felt, despite the flight and the invisibility and the pulling things out of thin air. Gabriel's clinging to him, depending on him. And his body is warm, flush with human fears and feelings, but his mind is the strange, alien, whirring and whizzing province of an angel. Dean's got both his worlds in his arms.
And it occurs to him that he's a Trickster now. He can have whatever he wants. He can have both worlds.
He pulls back far enough to find Gabriel's eyes and lock onto them. In his peripheral vision, the water ripples as it reflects startlingly bright moonlight.
Dean's hand slides over Gabriel's shoulder, holds tight. The muscle tenses, then relaxes beneath his touch. Gabriel blinks innocently. Dean takes a deep breath. The engine of his heart turns over and roars into full slamming life as he finds Gabriel's mouth with his own, locks them together, puckers, licks briefly, and lets go.
Gabriel lets out a brief, shuddering breath.
Then hands cup around his spine, curling upward. Dean's pulled, or he pushes, and he finds Gabriel's lips again. This time they've got the whole night, and the universe, and all the powers in the world. Dean listens beneath Gabriel's skin, hears his heart pound, and Gabriel's fingers trace careful lines of fire up Dean's back. Dean nips at Gabriel's lower lip, enjoying the soft plushness between his lips as he sucks. Gabriel's mouth opens to his and when their tongues touch Gabriel gives a moan that doesn't even sound like him. The wind blows past Dean's neck, and a shudder begins there and ripples down the length of his body.
"You better not be pranking me now," Gabriel murmurs. His voice is lazy, lust-charged, and the growl in it makes Dean tremble hard. Gabriel presses against him, and there's a hard lump there, and at the feel of it Dean tips back his head and grunts uncontrollably.
"We need to be somewhere else," he manages to say, and for once, he makes it happen before Gabriel can remind him he can.
There was a time in his life when Dean would be afraid of this, or even turned off by it, but this month has been about nothing but pushing beyond his old limits, and right now, the idea of stripping Gabriel down, putting his mouth to every square inch of his body is the most titillating thing that ever occurred to him. Screw conventional notions of sexuality. Dean doesn’t even have conventional notions of gravity anymore. He's a god.
So maybe that means he's calling his own name when Gabriel lies him down, crawls over him and grinds their cocks together. Or maybe it's one of Gabriel's. They're funny little lightning zigzags of thoughts that streak across the landscape of his mind. They don't take much effort, and they're over as soon as they begin. Unlike Gabriel, who just keeps going, working a hot mouth over Dean's stomach and then taking his cock in for a long, suckling exploration. Every piece of Dean goes rigid, his muscles, his bones, the whole frame of his body waiting to move during the whole time Gabriel has him swallowed down.
When Gabriel lets go, a "Fuck!" explodes from him, and he goes from paralysis to endless convulsions. He's never needed anything as badly as he needs Gabriel's body -- that borrowed body, a body that isn't even his own -- to be touching his. It doesn't make sense, to want human contact more when you're becoming less and less human every day. It's a paradox, and somewhere in the depths of his mind it's chiming a deep chord, a warning bell. But that's deep down, and on the surface there's nothing for Dean but the touch of Gabriel's fingertips, his deep wet mouth and the lines of his legs spreading above Dean's. Gabriel slides up over him and touches their lips together briefly, then gives a sharp thrust up, thighs to groin to stomach dragging against Dean's, and Dean cries out and grabs his ass, doesn't let the contact end.
"Fuck, you're so good at that," he gasps, squeezing tight and delighting in Gabriel's wince.
"I have a lot of tricks," Gabriel says, innocent and blank, and Dean growls in frustration, rises up, and rolls over, flattening Gabriel into the bed.
"You're not the only one."
And the tricks come in handy, one by one - above and beyond making the trip to the pharmacy unnecessary, they find their place in the frenzy, each one snapping like a firecracker through Dean's consciousness. Hands that are hotter than hands ought to be. Gravity sliding away as Gabriel cants his hips up to catch Dean between hooked ankles, force him tighter, deeper into Gabriel's body. The mental language of forward, this way, yes, yes, just like that that frees up their mouths to ravage each other's and cry out in incoherent ecstasy when they roll over the edge into shuddering madness. Gabriel is smiling through most of it; he's used to the tricks of lovemaking, just as he's used to every other trick in the book, and he's relishing Dean's every gasp of surprise and desperate clutch of tight fingers against the bedsheet, Gabriel's arms, his hips - and then then they open wide, white starpoints, the tension ripping through every bone in Dean's body the instant before it bursts.
And when Dean thinks they're done, when Gabriel's fingers have teased him to every height the universe has to offer, Gabriel disappears and reappears inside him, space suddenly full and welcoming that had been tight and closed, any number of minute changes in Dean's muscles happening instantly instead so that one minute he's relaxed, the next he's panting and pumping back into Gabriel's thrusts with energy he could have sworn he ran out of ten minutes ago.
"Do you ever get tired?" he breathes, giddy, into Gabriel's collarbone, after he's flown off the edge and come down again.
"Are you tired?" Gabriel says.
Dean surveys his body, and he starts to laugh. "No, I guess I'm not."
Gabriel captures his upturned lips. The night's no longer young, but they are, still, and forever -- at least for now.