[fanfic] Poetic Justice (4/4)
May. 31st, 2011 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiptoe39Title: Poetic Justice
Chapter: Four (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!
* Special thanks tocassiopeia7 for saving me from further true and real embarrassment...
They stumble in late to the house, which Dean has started thinking of as his despite the awful prints and suburban stink of it. They're still laughing. Gabriel keeps changing shapes. Dean, too, since he just got that ability. They're Obama and Biden for the first five steps, Nicole and Paris for the next. When they tumble into the shower, they're Bugs and Daffy. Gabriel looks particularly funny with a beak.
Dean morphs back into himself as he lets the water run over his face. "You're way too good at that," he comments when Gabriel pouts at him through Britney Spears' lips.
"I could stay this way," Gabriel says. "Let you screw a girl for the first time in a long time."
"Nah, I'll just ogle." Dean picks up the soap and promptly drops it. "Oops, I did it again."
Gabriel rolls Britney's eyes. "So behind the times." But he rolls her bottom in a slow circle as she leans over to pick up the soap, and Dean grabs her hips, rolls his hardening cock against the firm flesh of her rear.
"I'm good with being behind the times," Dean says. "What have they got these days, anyway? Lady Goo Goo? Baby Bieber?"
"You're so judgmental." Britney's eyelashes are dark and thick, unrunnable eyeliner. It looks like she's stepped, fully naked, out from a Playboy magazine shoot. Not a hair out of place. Dean can't help but rake his eyes over her again and again. He's still learning from Gabriel. His Jessica Simpson, earlier in the evening, had started out picture-perfect but had gained 20 pounds and 5 years with a half-hour. Gabriel had said he liked Jessica better that way, but Dean had been pissed his concentration had lapsed. But Gabriel's Britney stays barely legal and perfect no matter how much shower water sprays into her face.
"I really should stay like this," Gabriel says. "You're undressing me with your eyes, and I'm already naked."
"No." Dean takes the soap from Britney's outstretched hand and then pulls her close. By the time Gabriel's flush against him, he's a he again. "It's all just smoke and mirrors anyway. I like the truth."
Gabriel settles back against him for a split second, a moment of vulnerability. It threatens to be a whole second, which is way too long.
"Get washing my hair, pupil," he demands, and stands up after a devastating teasing push of his ass against Dean.
Dean chuckles and goes for the shampoo. When they're done, they stumble through the hall, dripping water and grabbing each other in various places before falling into bed. Dean gets one glimpse of a hanging calendar in the bedroom before he buries his head in Gabriel's shoulder. Today was day twenty-seven.
They don't talk about it any longer. There's only two ways it all could go. Either Dean accepts, and Gabriel dies, or Dean says no thanks, in which case Gabriel dies. Either way, they have no more than three days together. And they'll be damned if they let one second go to waste.
They walk a lot down memory lane. In immortals' lives, death becomes a footnote, the butt of a joke, and Dean can't seem to muster up anything more than amusement at their clashes of the past. They argue over whether the piano or the choking on the Pig in a Poke was funnier, and the whole concept of Dean laughing gregariously at his own death is so absurd and borderline insulting that it just makes them laugh harder.
"You're allergic to talking," Dean says. "everything's got to be some kind of absurdist object lesson with you."
"It doesn't have to be. It's just more fun that way."
They're drinking beer on the back porch, looking into a yard that's not theirs, the deck table between them clattering whenever they set down their bottles. "But you got better," Dean said. "Hell, the TV thing was almost fun."
"You're just saying that cause you didn't get it in the nuts."
"I got shot."
"True."
"Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, you were coming around."
"Coming around? Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Pfft. I was on the damn team by the time I bit it. Give me some credit." He sets down his beer bottle and ponders. "Gotta give you some credit, too, though. If you hadn't chewed me out I might not have come around."
"You'd still be alive if you hadn't, though," Dean says darkly. His heart clenches painfully in his chest, and he looks away.
"That's the way of the world," Gabriel says quietly. His fingers brush over the tabletop, skirt Dean's and retreat. "Tricksters notwithstanding, life's not fair."
The guy literally killed a man for his iPod. Not to fence, not because he needed money or because there was sensitive information on it somewhere, but just because he wanted the damn thing. It's an ugly situation, and now the guy's just sitting on a park bench, playing Words With Friends with someone stupid enough to still consider him a friend, and Dean's more or less outraged.
"You could kill this one," Gabriel says softly. It's day twenty-eight.
"Could," says Dean, and readies the slingshot. "Won't."
The slingshot snaps. The man is hit in the face by the first of many extremely angry birds.
"You know, I've been thinking," Dean says abruptly in the dark of night. Gabriel's warm, huddled into him, and their bodies are cooling from sweaty heights.
"Never a good sign."
Dean squeezes him briefly, making him give a soft oof. The sound huffs into the pillow and is gone.
"So I can fly now. And I can time travel, and make stuff appear, and change my face. That's a lot of power."
"Mmm." Gabriel rolls over to face him. "So it is."
"So how am I not a real Trickster yet? What am I missing?"
Gabriel smirks. His eyebrows lift briefly, and he reaches out one hand to slowly walk up Dean's bare chest.
"The final ingredient." he says. "The one that gives you the power to bend time, to fracture worlds. To make Tuesday come 180 days in a row. To make sure you have to deal with the worst possible Sam, and he deals with the worst possible Dean, and yet you both had the same experiences. That's not power you've got right now."
Dean puckers his lips thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess not. That makes sense."
"And the only way you can get it is if you prove you've got the chops. So--"
"Kill somebody, yeah, right, I know." Dean rolls his eyes.
"So what's it gonna take?" Gabriel presses his palms flat against Dean's chest, looks up at him with round eyes in the dimness. "You've got me hanging by a thread here, Dean. The least you could do is cut me off."
Dean is very, very still for a long moment. Then he shakes his head. "Sorry," he says. "I gotta make this decision, and I gotta do it right."
"You only have two more d--"
Dean cuts him off with a long kiss, pressing him into the bed. His hand cups Gabriel's jaw, and when the kiss ends, his index finger slides across Gabriel's cheek to his lips, holding them closed.
"It's my choice," he says. "My timeline, and my choice. You just have to trust me."
Gabriel looks as though he's not going to let that lie. But the moonlight illuminates Dean's face, and whatever Gabriel sees there, it quiets him. He settles back into Dean's arms, and quietly they pass the night.
Day twenty-nine and a preacher is declaring the end times are near, and all good Christians should sell their worldly possessions and give to the Church of Megalomaniacal Ego. Gabriel suggests they rapture the stupid son of a bitch. Dean instead appears to him in a vision, calls himself the archangel Gabriel, and convinces him to give away his considerable fortunes away to the poor. Luckily enough, the three million he gave to the soup kitchen comes in handy when he ends up having to go there to get his next meal. Meanwhile, the several hundred followers he's scraped together each are blessed with a run of good luck that will recoup their losses over the next several months. One'll win a decent amount in the lottery; the next will have a car insurance claim settled considerably in his favor; one will get paid hush money by a celebrity they had a one-night stand with ten years ago. Et cetera, ad nauseam.
Gabriel sighs. "There's still time."
"Wonder what Sam's up to," Dean says absently. "It'll be good to see him."
"Wait, wait, wait." Gabriel stops him. "So you're saying no?"
Dean gazes at him levelly. "Did I say that I'm saying no?"
"Dean." Gabriel presses his lips together, swallows, and stares at Dean with real panic in his eyes. "Why are you putting me through this?"
To his great surprise, Dean smiles, brushes a thumb over his cheek, and leans over to drift a kiss across his lips. "Like you said. There's still time."
Dean wakes up feeling as though he's floating on water. A coolness surrounds him, and he's not sure if it's the air or the soft rush of waves or just gentle sheets rippling against his skin. He heart thuds low in his chest, and he feels almost numb, like he can't move.
The warmth beneath him, around him, makes him want to cry when he remembers what it is. Gabriel, corporeal and real, giving Dean everything before he takes it all away. Dean turns, let the mist of morning lift from his eyes so he can look at the gentle face on the pillow next to his. Amber eyes are open. They turn toward him.
"Hey," Gabriel says, simple, fresh, without intention.
Dean feels his heart lurch through his chest as though on its way to leap for freedom. He frames Gabriel's face in his hands, leans down, and kisses him - a good-morning kiss that begins sweet and quickly deepens into needing, searching. Possessing. Or at least wishing to possess.
Gabriel slides over him like water, mounting him and looking down at him as the sunlight touches his scruff and golden hair. He leans forward to kiss Dean, to trail lips against his shoulders. Dean grunts and clasps him close, whispering things in his ear that he'll never remember afterward, but that he means desperately.
Gabriel's body accepts him as naturally as the ocean accepts water, and Dean slides into him with a groan, immediately lost in him. It's more like making love than anything they've done before this. And it's sadder, truer, and more desperate than even the first time, the first frenzy to touch and be touched.
It's day thirty. One way or another, Gabriel dies today.
Dean knows who he wants to go after today. Gabriel's surprised; Dean is usually up for anything, Gabriel's suggestions or a whisper of someone's secret while reading random minds, but he’s had this idea for a long while, and he can’t think of a better target for his final trial.
"You're going to do it this time, right?" he says. "Damn it, Dean, I don't want to leave this job to some rank amateur. You've got to take up the mantle of the Bat."
"You don't have a say," Dean says. "Shut up and strap in. I know what I'm doing."
They roll up to a bar in southwestern Iowa, an outpost of sin in a land of straight-shooting corn stalks and preachers, and Dean smiles, soft and sure.
"What's here?"
"Payback."
Dean walks into the bar and almost immediately two guys stand up and try to make a run for it. They're skinny, jittery types, one has a face that twitches like a bunny, and they both look like they're about to vomit or drop dead from shock. But Dean smiles at them, wide, magnanimous, and he spreads his arms like he's going to engulf them both in a hug. "Walt. Roy. Come here, you adorable sons of bitches, share the love."
The bar's plank flooring goes to syrup beneath them, and the stunned hunters can only try in vain to pull their shoes out of the muck as Dean goes up to each of them in turn and wraps them in a huge, decidedly un-Dean-like embrace. They stare at each other, laugh nervously, and return Dean's greetings timidly. "Yeah, uh, Dean, how are you? Uh... nice to see that you're..."
"Alive?" Dean holds Walt by the shoulders, stares into his face smiling like he's the hero in a chick flick about to go in for the rotoscoping kiss. "I told you I'd be back. You should have a little faith, man!" He lets Walt go, wanders over to Roy and grins in his face. "But come on, man, no hard feelings. If I were you, I'd have done the same thing. I should probably thank you. Hell, I got sent to heaven thanks to you. And you know what else?" He winks. "I remember it."
Walt and Roy keep looking at each other like they're going to find the answer to Dean's bizarre behavior somewhere between the two of them. "R-really?" Roy says. "Uh, so, what was that like, then?"
Dean grins wickedly. "Want to find out?"
Roy freezes up and promptly wets his pants.
"I'm just kidding!" Dean guffaws and slaps Roy on the back. Liquid trickles out from the poor guy's pants leg. "Come on, guys. Drinks on me."
Five or six beers later, Gabriel's a little sick of just watching. Dean's been shooting the shit with these guys for an hour and change, and all they seem to be doing is getting sloshed and happy. A quick check of their memories reveals the reason Dean's intent on tricking them, and Gabriel sympathizes - these bastards came after him and Sam in cold blood, thinking that they could stop the Apocalypse or at least get even with the Winchesters for starting it through some good old-fashioned bullet therapy. Neither of them had any idea just how deep the roots of Armageddon ran, of course, and they've got no idea how deep they're in right now.
But when's the trick? When does Dean pull the final punch? It's dragging on too long, and Gabriel knows that any moment he could end up tossed right back into oblivion. He's hoping that Dean will at least telegraph something to him, let Gabriel at least nod goodbye at him before it's all over.
Who is he kidding? Gabriel doesn't want to go. He doesn't want Dean to pull that trigger at all. He doesn't want midnight to ever come. He wants to hold the hands of time back and hold on to every moment with this new, confident, carefree Dean, the Trickster he's created and molded, just by casting off his anchors and letting him float free. Gabriel feels some pride for that, looking at Dean, seeing him be everything he used to be and everything he can be, without the whole world to weigh down his shoulders.
No, he doesn't want to go, but if he looks at Dean now, sees a god just being born, he can almost live with dying.
The clock slides forward toward midnight, and Gabriel's tense now, feeling alone and dismayed. These are his last few minutes on this earth, and Dean's not even looking at him. It stings like a betrayal, and Gabriel, who's never feared anything, feels almost like praying.
"Well, it's been fun, guys," Dean says, slapping Walt and Roy on the back, "but we'd better finish up. Truth is, I've got an ulterior motive for tracking you two down."
At this point, the hunters are too drunk to be able to tense up, but they sure as hell look scared. Roy puts his hand over his mouth like he's gonna puke.
"Time to bring in the cavalry," Dean drawls. "Yo, Gabriel, come on up here."
Gabriel gets up and proceeds unsteadily from his table in the back to the bar. Dean slings an arm around him. "Roy, Walt... this is my friend, colleague and butt-buddy, Gabriel. Gabriel, Walt and Roy."
"Nice to... hey. Butt-buddy?"
Dean shrugs. "I'd get down on one knee and declare my love, but that'd just be embarrassing." He's talking like he's drunk, which Gabriel doubts he is. Tricksters don't get buzzed after a scant half-dozen beers. "So the thing about Gabriel is," Dean says, "he can read your mind. Gabriel, would you tell these gentlemen what they did wrong?"
Gabriel stares at Dean like he's grown a fourth head. "I think you've had enough, Barney," he says.
"Just humor me." Dean's face goes sober for just a single moment, but it's enough.
"Well," Gabriel says, his voice unsure. "They killed you. And your brother."
"At least for a little while, yep," Dean says. "And what, in your expert opinion, do they deserve for doing that?"
"Dean, I'm really starting to worry--"
"It's a simple question. What's their just deserts?"
Gabriel looks completely out of his depth. "Uh, death. I guess."
Walt lunges for the nearest barstool and grabs it up. Gabriel shouts; Roy cowers, shielding his face. Dean whirls on a dime and catches the stool as it careens through the air, stopping Walt before he can land a blow. Walt lets it go and throws a punch. Dean dodges, tosses the stool aside, and clenches his fist. An invisible hand pushes Walt to the far wall, raises him up, then lets him go, sending him gasping to his hands and knees. Roy's hands are up as he crosses to see about his friend.
"You deserved it!" Walt shouts through a throat that still constricts, forcing coughs out of him. "You brought the end of the freakin' world!"
"I also stopped it," roars Dean, whose face has gone stony serious. "If I'd stayed dead, you think anyone would have been able to keep those angels from throwing down? I'll admit Sam and I were played like pawns on a chessboard. But at least we cleaned up our mess. That's more than I can say for you!"
He kicks at the overturned barstool, and it skids across the floor. He stares at it, huffing angrily, for a moment.
"But hey," he says, "never mind all that. Truth is, I have a decision to make, and that's why I'm here."
He turns to Gabriel. "I trick someone," he says, "and I kill them. And then I become a full-fledged Trickster. A god. Live forever, amazing powers, the works. And all I gotta do is kill these two. Right?"
Gabriel nods.
Walt and Roy gulp in unison. But Dean's face softens.
"Problem is," he says, "I never wanted any of that."
Gabriel steps forward, takes a breath as though to speak, and then stops. Confusion and hurt are swimming in his eyes.
Dean grins at him, a simple, knowing expression. "You gave me a chance to get out, stretch my legs for a bit," he says to Gabriel. "It's good. To know I can still go where I want, be who I want to be. If I wanted to be anyone but this guy right here, the hunter. The pain in the ass you couldn't leave alone."
Now there are tears, and Gabriel's forgotten to make the effort to hide him. His face is slowly crumpling into misery.
"So, sorry," Dean says, reaching out to wipe one tear from the hollow beneath Gabriel's eye. "I know you were betting on me. But after all this, there's only one thing I want."
Gabriel shuts his eyes tight. His fists clench. Dean takes a deep breath.
"To kill these sons of bitches."
Gabriel's eyes fly open in time to see Dean fabricate a shotgun out of thin air. One shot, then two, and the hunters who once killed him are dead on the floor. Their blood seeps dark and red into the wooden slats, melting into the foundation. Dean lifts the shotgun to his lips and blows. "God, that felt good," he says, letting out a brash laugh.
The sound lifts from Gabriel's lungs to his chest to his mouth and comes out almost as a wail. "What?"
Dean looks at him and shrugs. The movement stirs him to more. "What the hell was that? That's what you wanted to do with your last day? Just kill a couple of guys with a shotgun? That's your final trick?"
"Nope," Dean says. "My final trick was on you."
He nods at the clock on the back wall. Gabriel turns and stares.
It's one minute past midnight.
Gabriel looks down at himself. "How in the --"
Dean laughs. "Wait for it..."
"I'm still alive." Gabriel stares down at his hands. Turns them purple, makes them disappear, and then regrows them. "I'm still totally alive."
"What's more," Dean says, "you never died."
He grabs Gabriel by the waist and zaps them both back in time.
They're standing in the back of the hotel ballroom where gods had congregated. Lucifer stands, tall and angry, and Gabriel sees himself standing up, declaring his loyalty to people, wielding his archangel's knife with purpose. And a moment later, he sees himself get stabbed. And fall down. And pretend to die.
He remembers it now, remembers falling dead, stopping his human's heart, purposefully painting charcoal-gray wings on the floor around him. Once upon a time, it didn't happen that way-- but now, here, it did.
"It wasn't the real sword," he says. "You switched out the swords."
"No," Dean says, "you did." He nods to the side as Lucifer stares down at his brother's body; outside the windows, another Gabriel cracks a smile and flies off into the yonder.
Gabriel remembers that too, abruptly; something happened to change his mind, some suggestion or other, but he can't recall what. "I don't get it. What did you do?"
"Exactly what you told me to," Dean says. "I killed 'em. And because I killed 'em, I became a real Trickster. And I got all those real Trickster powers you told me about. Like bending time. Like changing up reality. And that's what I did."
"But..." Gabriel covers his forehead with his hand, shakes his head as though trying to jostle cobwebs loose. "But why?"
"You don't get it?" Dean snaps his fingers. The ballroom winks out, and they're alone on a dark, dusty road, woods rushing around them and pinprick headlights appearing and disappearing in the distance. Dean hauls Gabriel close. "It's a Trickster's job to give everyone their just deserts, right? But you're the only one who never got his. That sucks, and it's wrong. And you deserve better."
He leans his forehead against Gabriel's briefly, and his voice drops to a whisper. "So how's this for poetic justice? You saved our collective ass. So now you're the one who gets saved."
Gabriel gives a soft gasp. He hovers there, unmoving, for a moment, then leans back to gaze into Dean's eyes. And slowly as dawn, slowly as a bloom opens to the sun, he smiles.
"Good trick," he says.
Dean pulls his face in with both hands and kisses him. Something shakes apart inside Gabriel as the kiss goes on; he whimpers and gives in to the urge to wrap himself as tightly around Dean as he can, leg hiking up to climb against Dean's shins, body weight leaning on him as though Dean were the only solid thing in the universe. They stay wrapped around each other for a long time after their lips part, just being close.
When Gabriel's hands slide across Dean's back to let go of him, at long last, Dean feels power draining from him, like a strand of light pulled from his spine and let go into the night. When they face each other again, Dean's utterly human.
"So, now what?" Gabriel asks, his grin the wide, quirky thing Dean feels like he hasn't seen in days. "Back to the daily grind?"
"More or less." Dean nods. "You go back to pulling tricks, I go back to chasing ghosts, and we all live happily ever after. Except," he adds, "for the part when you come over, every so often, for cheap laughs and great sex."
"I'm so relieved to hear you mention the sex," Gabriel says.
"Everyone is." Dean's grin is so wide it's downright obnoxious.
"So what are you going to tell Sam?" Gabriel nods at the hill; he recognizes the house there now as Bobby Singer's, and with his Trickster's sight, Dean knows, he can see the Impala parked out back.
Dean shrugs. "I'm gonna tell him the truth. Whole story. I'm not keeping anything from that kid anymore."
"What's he gonna think when he sees me alive?"
"Want to find out?" Dean holds out a hand. Mischief twinkles in his eyes.
"Unh-unh." Gabriel crosses his arms. "You see, now I'm the Trickster in this relationship. And I'm not going anywhere until you, how did you put it? Get down on your knees and declare your love."
Dean turns boiling-lobster-red.
"I'm not as easily embarrassed," Gabriel says.
Sighing resolutely, Dean drops to his knees. His hands come forward to slide along Gabriel's thighs; Gabriel gives a soft, desirous sound, and his own knees wobble. "You gotta come down here to get your declaration," Dean murmurs.
"Well." Gabriel melts down into Dean's embrace. "Maybe we can wait a little while longer for the grand reunion."
Dean whispers something in his ear. Gabriel smiles and buries his head in Dean's shoulder. The night moves unfettered above them, and the world inches forward, confident, toward daylight.
Chapter: Four (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!
* Special thanks to
cassiopeia7 for saving me from further true and real embarrassment...They stumble in late to the house, which Dean has started thinking of as his despite the awful prints and suburban stink of it. They're still laughing. Gabriel keeps changing shapes. Dean, too, since he just got that ability. They're Obama and Biden for the first five steps, Nicole and Paris for the next. When they tumble into the shower, they're Bugs and Daffy. Gabriel looks particularly funny with a beak.
Dean morphs back into himself as he lets the water run over his face. "You're way too good at that," he comments when Gabriel pouts at him through Britney Spears' lips.
"I could stay this way," Gabriel says. "Let you screw a girl for the first time in a long time."
"Nah, I'll just ogle." Dean picks up the soap and promptly drops it. "Oops, I did it again."
Gabriel rolls Britney's eyes. "So behind the times." But he rolls her bottom in a slow circle as she leans over to pick up the soap, and Dean grabs her hips, rolls his hardening cock against the firm flesh of her rear.
"I'm good with being behind the times," Dean says. "What have they got these days, anyway? Lady Goo Goo? Baby Bieber?"
"You're so judgmental." Britney's eyelashes are dark and thick, unrunnable eyeliner. It looks like she's stepped, fully naked, out from a Playboy magazine shoot. Not a hair out of place. Dean can't help but rake his eyes over her again and again. He's still learning from Gabriel. His Jessica Simpson, earlier in the evening, had started out picture-perfect but had gained 20 pounds and 5 years with a half-hour. Gabriel had said he liked Jessica better that way, but Dean had been pissed his concentration had lapsed. But Gabriel's Britney stays barely legal and perfect no matter how much shower water sprays into her face.
"I really should stay like this," Gabriel says. "You're undressing me with your eyes, and I'm already naked."
"No." Dean takes the soap from Britney's outstretched hand and then pulls her close. By the time Gabriel's flush against him, he's a he again. "It's all just smoke and mirrors anyway. I like the truth."
Gabriel settles back against him for a split second, a moment of vulnerability. It threatens to be a whole second, which is way too long.
"Get washing my hair, pupil," he demands, and stands up after a devastating teasing push of his ass against Dean.
Dean chuckles and goes for the shampoo. When they're done, they stumble through the hall, dripping water and grabbing each other in various places before falling into bed. Dean gets one glimpse of a hanging calendar in the bedroom before he buries his head in Gabriel's shoulder. Today was day twenty-seven.
They don't talk about it any longer. There's only two ways it all could go. Either Dean accepts, and Gabriel dies, or Dean says no thanks, in which case Gabriel dies. Either way, they have no more than three days together. And they'll be damned if they let one second go to waste.
They walk a lot down memory lane. In immortals' lives, death becomes a footnote, the butt of a joke, and Dean can't seem to muster up anything more than amusement at their clashes of the past. They argue over whether the piano or the choking on the Pig in a Poke was funnier, and the whole concept of Dean laughing gregariously at his own death is so absurd and borderline insulting that it just makes them laugh harder.
"You're allergic to talking," Dean says. "everything's got to be some kind of absurdist object lesson with you."
"It doesn't have to be. It's just more fun that way."
They're drinking beer on the back porch, looking into a yard that's not theirs, the deck table between them clattering whenever they set down their bottles. "But you got better," Dean said. "Hell, the TV thing was almost fun."
"You're just saying that cause you didn't get it in the nuts."
"I got shot."
"True."
"Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, you were coming around."
"Coming around? Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Pfft. I was on the damn team by the time I bit it. Give me some credit." He sets down his beer bottle and ponders. "Gotta give you some credit, too, though. If you hadn't chewed me out I might not have come around."
"You'd still be alive if you hadn't, though," Dean says darkly. His heart clenches painfully in his chest, and he looks away.
"That's the way of the world," Gabriel says quietly. His fingers brush over the tabletop, skirt Dean's and retreat. "Tricksters notwithstanding, life's not fair."
The guy literally killed a man for his iPod. Not to fence, not because he needed money or because there was sensitive information on it somewhere, but just because he wanted the damn thing. It's an ugly situation, and now the guy's just sitting on a park bench, playing Words With Friends with someone stupid enough to still consider him a friend, and Dean's more or less outraged.
"You could kill this one," Gabriel says softly. It's day twenty-eight.
"Could," says Dean, and readies the slingshot. "Won't."
The slingshot snaps. The man is hit in the face by the first of many extremely angry birds.
"You know, I've been thinking," Dean says abruptly in the dark of night. Gabriel's warm, huddled into him, and their bodies are cooling from sweaty heights.
"Never a good sign."
Dean squeezes him briefly, making him give a soft oof. The sound huffs into the pillow and is gone.
"So I can fly now. And I can time travel, and make stuff appear, and change my face. That's a lot of power."
"Mmm." Gabriel rolls over to face him. "So it is."
"So how am I not a real Trickster yet? What am I missing?"
Gabriel smirks. His eyebrows lift briefly, and he reaches out one hand to slowly walk up Dean's bare chest.
"The final ingredient." he says. "The one that gives you the power to bend time, to fracture worlds. To make Tuesday come 180 days in a row. To make sure you have to deal with the worst possible Sam, and he deals with the worst possible Dean, and yet you both had the same experiences. That's not power you've got right now."
Dean puckers his lips thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess not. That makes sense."
"And the only way you can get it is if you prove you've got the chops. So--"
"Kill somebody, yeah, right, I know." Dean rolls his eyes.
"So what's it gonna take?" Gabriel presses his palms flat against Dean's chest, looks up at him with round eyes in the dimness. "You've got me hanging by a thread here, Dean. The least you could do is cut me off."
Dean is very, very still for a long moment. Then he shakes his head. "Sorry," he says. "I gotta make this decision, and I gotta do it right."
"You only have two more d--"
Dean cuts him off with a long kiss, pressing him into the bed. His hand cups Gabriel's jaw, and when the kiss ends, his index finger slides across Gabriel's cheek to his lips, holding them closed.
"It's my choice," he says. "My timeline, and my choice. You just have to trust me."
Gabriel looks as though he's not going to let that lie. But the moonlight illuminates Dean's face, and whatever Gabriel sees there, it quiets him. He settles back into Dean's arms, and quietly they pass the night.
Day twenty-nine and a preacher is declaring the end times are near, and all good Christians should sell their worldly possessions and give to the Church of Megalomaniacal Ego. Gabriel suggests they rapture the stupid son of a bitch. Dean instead appears to him in a vision, calls himself the archangel Gabriel, and convinces him to give away his considerable fortunes away to the poor. Luckily enough, the three million he gave to the soup kitchen comes in handy when he ends up having to go there to get his next meal. Meanwhile, the several hundred followers he's scraped together each are blessed with a run of good luck that will recoup their losses over the next several months. One'll win a decent amount in the lottery; the next will have a car insurance claim settled considerably in his favor; one will get paid hush money by a celebrity they had a one-night stand with ten years ago. Et cetera, ad nauseam.
Gabriel sighs. "There's still time."
"Wonder what Sam's up to," Dean says absently. "It'll be good to see him."
"Wait, wait, wait." Gabriel stops him. "So you're saying no?"
Dean gazes at him levelly. "Did I say that I'm saying no?"
"Dean." Gabriel presses his lips together, swallows, and stares at Dean with real panic in his eyes. "Why are you putting me through this?"
To his great surprise, Dean smiles, brushes a thumb over his cheek, and leans over to drift a kiss across his lips. "Like you said. There's still time."
Dean wakes up feeling as though he's floating on water. A coolness surrounds him, and he's not sure if it's the air or the soft rush of waves or just gentle sheets rippling against his skin. He heart thuds low in his chest, and he feels almost numb, like he can't move.
The warmth beneath him, around him, makes him want to cry when he remembers what it is. Gabriel, corporeal and real, giving Dean everything before he takes it all away. Dean turns, let the mist of morning lift from his eyes so he can look at the gentle face on the pillow next to his. Amber eyes are open. They turn toward him.
"Hey," Gabriel says, simple, fresh, without intention.
Dean feels his heart lurch through his chest as though on its way to leap for freedom. He frames Gabriel's face in his hands, leans down, and kisses him - a good-morning kiss that begins sweet and quickly deepens into needing, searching. Possessing. Or at least wishing to possess.
Gabriel slides over him like water, mounting him and looking down at him as the sunlight touches his scruff and golden hair. He leans forward to kiss Dean, to trail lips against his shoulders. Dean grunts and clasps him close, whispering things in his ear that he'll never remember afterward, but that he means desperately.
Gabriel's body accepts him as naturally as the ocean accepts water, and Dean slides into him with a groan, immediately lost in him. It's more like making love than anything they've done before this. And it's sadder, truer, and more desperate than even the first time, the first frenzy to touch and be touched.
It's day thirty. One way or another, Gabriel dies today.
Dean knows who he wants to go after today. Gabriel's surprised; Dean is usually up for anything, Gabriel's suggestions or a whisper of someone's secret while reading random minds, but he’s had this idea for a long while, and he can’t think of a better target for his final trial.
"You're going to do it this time, right?" he says. "Damn it, Dean, I don't want to leave this job to some rank amateur. You've got to take up the mantle of the Bat."
"You don't have a say," Dean says. "Shut up and strap in. I know what I'm doing."
They roll up to a bar in southwestern Iowa, an outpost of sin in a land of straight-shooting corn stalks and preachers, and Dean smiles, soft and sure.
"What's here?"
"Payback."
Dean walks into the bar and almost immediately two guys stand up and try to make a run for it. They're skinny, jittery types, one has a face that twitches like a bunny, and they both look like they're about to vomit or drop dead from shock. But Dean smiles at them, wide, magnanimous, and he spreads his arms like he's going to engulf them both in a hug. "Walt. Roy. Come here, you adorable sons of bitches, share the love."
The bar's plank flooring goes to syrup beneath them, and the stunned hunters can only try in vain to pull their shoes out of the muck as Dean goes up to each of them in turn and wraps them in a huge, decidedly un-Dean-like embrace. They stare at each other, laugh nervously, and return Dean's greetings timidly. "Yeah, uh, Dean, how are you? Uh... nice to see that you're..."
"Alive?" Dean holds Walt by the shoulders, stares into his face smiling like he's the hero in a chick flick about to go in for the rotoscoping kiss. "I told you I'd be back. You should have a little faith, man!" He lets Walt go, wanders over to Roy and grins in his face. "But come on, man, no hard feelings. If I were you, I'd have done the same thing. I should probably thank you. Hell, I got sent to heaven thanks to you. And you know what else?" He winks. "I remember it."
Walt and Roy keep looking at each other like they're going to find the answer to Dean's bizarre behavior somewhere between the two of them. "R-really?" Roy says. "Uh, so, what was that like, then?"
Dean grins wickedly. "Want to find out?"
Roy freezes up and promptly wets his pants.
"I'm just kidding!" Dean guffaws and slaps Roy on the back. Liquid trickles out from the poor guy's pants leg. "Come on, guys. Drinks on me."
Five or six beers later, Gabriel's a little sick of just watching. Dean's been shooting the shit with these guys for an hour and change, and all they seem to be doing is getting sloshed and happy. A quick check of their memories reveals the reason Dean's intent on tricking them, and Gabriel sympathizes - these bastards came after him and Sam in cold blood, thinking that they could stop the Apocalypse or at least get even with the Winchesters for starting it through some good old-fashioned bullet therapy. Neither of them had any idea just how deep the roots of Armageddon ran, of course, and they've got no idea how deep they're in right now.
But when's the trick? When does Dean pull the final punch? It's dragging on too long, and Gabriel knows that any moment he could end up tossed right back into oblivion. He's hoping that Dean will at least telegraph something to him, let Gabriel at least nod goodbye at him before it's all over.
Who is he kidding? Gabriel doesn't want to go. He doesn't want Dean to pull that trigger at all. He doesn't want midnight to ever come. He wants to hold the hands of time back and hold on to every moment with this new, confident, carefree Dean, the Trickster he's created and molded, just by casting off his anchors and letting him float free. Gabriel feels some pride for that, looking at Dean, seeing him be everything he used to be and everything he can be, without the whole world to weigh down his shoulders.
No, he doesn't want to go, but if he looks at Dean now, sees a god just being born, he can almost live with dying.
The clock slides forward toward midnight, and Gabriel's tense now, feeling alone and dismayed. These are his last few minutes on this earth, and Dean's not even looking at him. It stings like a betrayal, and Gabriel, who's never feared anything, feels almost like praying.
"Well, it's been fun, guys," Dean says, slapping Walt and Roy on the back, "but we'd better finish up. Truth is, I've got an ulterior motive for tracking you two down."
At this point, the hunters are too drunk to be able to tense up, but they sure as hell look scared. Roy puts his hand over his mouth like he's gonna puke.
"Time to bring in the cavalry," Dean drawls. "Yo, Gabriel, come on up here."
Gabriel gets up and proceeds unsteadily from his table in the back to the bar. Dean slings an arm around him. "Roy, Walt... this is my friend, colleague and butt-buddy, Gabriel. Gabriel, Walt and Roy."
"Nice to... hey. Butt-buddy?"
Dean shrugs. "I'd get down on one knee and declare my love, but that'd just be embarrassing." He's talking like he's drunk, which Gabriel doubts he is. Tricksters don't get buzzed after a scant half-dozen beers. "So the thing about Gabriel is," Dean says, "he can read your mind. Gabriel, would you tell these gentlemen what they did wrong?"
Gabriel stares at Dean like he's grown a fourth head. "I think you've had enough, Barney," he says.
"Just humor me." Dean's face goes sober for just a single moment, but it's enough.
"Well," Gabriel says, his voice unsure. "They killed you. And your brother."
"At least for a little while, yep," Dean says. "And what, in your expert opinion, do they deserve for doing that?"
"Dean, I'm really starting to worry--"
"It's a simple question. What's their just deserts?"
Gabriel looks completely out of his depth. "Uh, death. I guess."
Walt lunges for the nearest barstool and grabs it up. Gabriel shouts; Roy cowers, shielding his face. Dean whirls on a dime and catches the stool as it careens through the air, stopping Walt before he can land a blow. Walt lets it go and throws a punch. Dean dodges, tosses the stool aside, and clenches his fist. An invisible hand pushes Walt to the far wall, raises him up, then lets him go, sending him gasping to his hands and knees. Roy's hands are up as he crosses to see about his friend.
"You deserved it!" Walt shouts through a throat that still constricts, forcing coughs out of him. "You brought the end of the freakin' world!"
"I also stopped it," roars Dean, whose face has gone stony serious. "If I'd stayed dead, you think anyone would have been able to keep those angels from throwing down? I'll admit Sam and I were played like pawns on a chessboard. But at least we cleaned up our mess. That's more than I can say for you!"
He kicks at the overturned barstool, and it skids across the floor. He stares at it, huffing angrily, for a moment.
"But hey," he says, "never mind all that. Truth is, I have a decision to make, and that's why I'm here."
He turns to Gabriel. "I trick someone," he says, "and I kill them. And then I become a full-fledged Trickster. A god. Live forever, amazing powers, the works. And all I gotta do is kill these two. Right?"
Gabriel nods.
Walt and Roy gulp in unison. But Dean's face softens.
"Problem is," he says, "I never wanted any of that."
Gabriel steps forward, takes a breath as though to speak, and then stops. Confusion and hurt are swimming in his eyes.
Dean grins at him, a simple, knowing expression. "You gave me a chance to get out, stretch my legs for a bit," he says to Gabriel. "It's good. To know I can still go where I want, be who I want to be. If I wanted to be anyone but this guy right here, the hunter. The pain in the ass you couldn't leave alone."
Now there are tears, and Gabriel's forgotten to make the effort to hide him. His face is slowly crumpling into misery.
"So, sorry," Dean says, reaching out to wipe one tear from the hollow beneath Gabriel's eye. "I know you were betting on me. But after all this, there's only one thing I want."
Gabriel shuts his eyes tight. His fists clench. Dean takes a deep breath.
"To kill these sons of bitches."
Gabriel's eyes fly open in time to see Dean fabricate a shotgun out of thin air. One shot, then two, and the hunters who once killed him are dead on the floor. Their blood seeps dark and red into the wooden slats, melting into the foundation. Dean lifts the shotgun to his lips and blows. "God, that felt good," he says, letting out a brash laugh.
The sound lifts from Gabriel's lungs to his chest to his mouth and comes out almost as a wail. "What?"
Dean looks at him and shrugs. The movement stirs him to more. "What the hell was that? That's what you wanted to do with your last day? Just kill a couple of guys with a shotgun? That's your final trick?"
"Nope," Dean says. "My final trick was on you."
He nods at the clock on the back wall. Gabriel turns and stares.
It's one minute past midnight.
Gabriel looks down at himself. "How in the --"
Dean laughs. "Wait for it..."
"I'm still alive." Gabriel stares down at his hands. Turns them purple, makes them disappear, and then regrows them. "I'm still totally alive."
"What's more," Dean says, "you never died."
He grabs Gabriel by the waist and zaps them both back in time.
They're standing in the back of the hotel ballroom where gods had congregated. Lucifer stands, tall and angry, and Gabriel sees himself standing up, declaring his loyalty to people, wielding his archangel's knife with purpose. And a moment later, he sees himself get stabbed. And fall down. And pretend to die.
He remembers it now, remembers falling dead, stopping his human's heart, purposefully painting charcoal-gray wings on the floor around him. Once upon a time, it didn't happen that way-- but now, here, it did.
"It wasn't the real sword," he says. "You switched out the swords."
"No," Dean says, "you did." He nods to the side as Lucifer stares down at his brother's body; outside the windows, another Gabriel cracks a smile and flies off into the yonder.
Gabriel remembers that too, abruptly; something happened to change his mind, some suggestion or other, but he can't recall what. "I don't get it. What did you do?"
"Exactly what you told me to," Dean says. "I killed 'em. And because I killed 'em, I became a real Trickster. And I got all those real Trickster powers you told me about. Like bending time. Like changing up reality. And that's what I did."
"But..." Gabriel covers his forehead with his hand, shakes his head as though trying to jostle cobwebs loose. "But why?"
"You don't get it?" Dean snaps his fingers. The ballroom winks out, and they're alone on a dark, dusty road, woods rushing around them and pinprick headlights appearing and disappearing in the distance. Dean hauls Gabriel close. "It's a Trickster's job to give everyone their just deserts, right? But you're the only one who never got his. That sucks, and it's wrong. And you deserve better."
He leans his forehead against Gabriel's briefly, and his voice drops to a whisper. "So how's this for poetic justice? You saved our collective ass. So now you're the one who gets saved."
Gabriel gives a soft gasp. He hovers there, unmoving, for a moment, then leans back to gaze into Dean's eyes. And slowly as dawn, slowly as a bloom opens to the sun, he smiles.
"Good trick," he says.
Dean pulls his face in with both hands and kisses him. Something shakes apart inside Gabriel as the kiss goes on; he whimpers and gives in to the urge to wrap himself as tightly around Dean as he can, leg hiking up to climb against Dean's shins, body weight leaning on him as though Dean were the only solid thing in the universe. They stay wrapped around each other for a long time after their lips part, just being close.
When Gabriel's hands slide across Dean's back to let go of him, at long last, Dean feels power draining from him, like a strand of light pulled from his spine and let go into the night. When they face each other again, Dean's utterly human.
"So, now what?" Gabriel asks, his grin the wide, quirky thing Dean feels like he hasn't seen in days. "Back to the daily grind?"
"More or less." Dean nods. "You go back to pulling tricks, I go back to chasing ghosts, and we all live happily ever after. Except," he adds, "for the part when you come over, every so often, for cheap laughs and great sex."
"I'm so relieved to hear you mention the sex," Gabriel says.
"Everyone is." Dean's grin is so wide it's downright obnoxious.
"So what are you going to tell Sam?" Gabriel nods at the hill; he recognizes the house there now as Bobby Singer's, and with his Trickster's sight, Dean knows, he can see the Impala parked out back.
Dean shrugs. "I'm gonna tell him the truth. Whole story. I'm not keeping anything from that kid anymore."
"What's he gonna think when he sees me alive?"
"Want to find out?" Dean holds out a hand. Mischief twinkles in his eyes.
"Unh-unh." Gabriel crosses his arms. "You see, now I'm the Trickster in this relationship. And I'm not going anywhere until you, how did you put it? Get down on your knees and declare your love."
Dean turns boiling-lobster-red.
"I'm not as easily embarrassed," Gabriel says.
Sighing resolutely, Dean drops to his knees. His hands come forward to slide along Gabriel's thighs; Gabriel gives a soft, desirous sound, and his own knees wobble. "You gotta come down here to get your declaration," Dean murmurs.
"Well." Gabriel melts down into Dean's embrace. "Maybe we can wait a little while longer for the grand reunion."
Dean whispers something in his ear. Gabriel smiles and buries his head in Dean's shoulder. The night moves unfettered above them, and the world inches forward, confident, toward daylight.