Twas written for a fic exchange over on LJ. I was a pitch hitter and had a lot of fun with this. More story notes at the end, and a bit spoilery.

Sam was wet, shocked. There was a hollow space under his ribs where hope used to live that was suddenly aching.

Gabriel only stared, water dripping down his nose and off and Sam doesn't know, to this day, what made him stop and consider it, give it more than the three seconds consideration that his brain required to process the words and laugh at the absurdity of them.

He only remembers the hissing as the flames went out. Watching the drops pool and glide over an oily ring scorched into a warehouse floor. Being sure that this was going to top the list of Sam's Greatest Fuck-Ups. The alien feeling of his lips moving without his realization.

"Yes."

"Sam, pass the-"

A pillow slams into Dean's face seconds after the growl vibrates from the passenger seat.

"Jeeze, princess," Dean snarks, brushing donut crumbs from his chest, "didn't know you and Gabriel stayed up so late you can't even copilot, you lazy ass."

"Fuck you," the bundle replies. "Gabriel was in East India, looking for something-whatever kind of chocolate. I was up all night trying not to gag from listening to a certain someone bang a bed against the wall."

Dean smirks.

It works.

Sort of.

They think.

Or, well, Gabriel's sticking around, at least. Sam wasn't sure this was a good thing.

His chest ached whenever the archangel was in the room, a gnawing, burning, yaw of emptiness that pressed against his insides, and rattled the hollows between his ribs.

Whenever he met Gabriel's laughing, devious eyes, the feeling doubled.

The motel is just like every other one they've ever stayed at. At first. They assume.

When they open the scuffed and peeling door, there's a Jacuzzi in peach-fuzz orange. A king-size bed has commandeered the center of the room and there's an archangel popping cherry cordials over a pile of comics sprawled there. Gabriel waggles sticky fingers at them and lobs a cordial at the frowning angel perched delicately on an eye-searing blue bowl chair giving dubious looks to the weird, fluid-form, orange light fixtures.

The room looks like Nickelodeon vomited inside it.

Sam tells Gabriel so.

Gabriel smashes the cordials all over Spiderman's face when he falls over cackling.

Gabriel didn't always show up when they- read: Sam- asked. Dean said it was just proof he's fucking them over on the side (and cut his eyes to which ever area of the room Sam was when he said it, as if he had a hope in the universe of being subtle).

Sam didn't say anything to this.

(He was afraid Dean was right and this was just one more gigantic, cosmic joke at his expense.)

Gabriel popping into the Impala is a regular event now. So regular, in fact, it's become rote and Dean doesn't even blink. Gabriel's taken to licking him or caramel-y wet willies to make an impression.

Dean doesn't stop swearing until Gabriel shares whatever confection he's arrived with.

Sam notices he always shows up with something.

Gabriel faced the Devil once.

Afterward, Sam could only stare at him, the singed, ash-smudged face flushed, chest heaving, hair disheveled and sticking up in at least five directions.

The ache in the center of his chest felt like it was preparing to consume him.

They didn't talk about it afterward.

Whenever Sam wakes in the middle of the night, pulse flying, eyes stinging, the smell of burnt flesh dissipating from his memory, Gabriel's there. Gabriel's there with a hand on his shoulder, baring him back to the mattress gently. His hands holding and coaxing and gradually, slowly, Sam lets sleep take him again, soothed by softly stroking hands.

Things got worse after their skirmish with Lucifer. (That's what Gabriel called it, a 'skirmish'. Dean had looked at him like he'd grown a second head until Gabriel snarked something that set Dean's teeth on edge and Sam's shoulders taut.)

Gabriel actively ignored them whenever he was with them. Dean went out of his way to degrade the archangel. Cas stayed out of everybody's way, straight business and a knowing look that apparently everybody but Sam got.

Sam?

Sam put up with it.

Until he didn't.

Gabriel likes games. Board games- occasionally. Card games, yes. (There was an interesting week spent playing cat's cradle every other hour in the car until the string, somehow, got wrapped around the gearshift, where upon Dean gave notice of lethal intent if string was ever introduced to the interior of his car ever again.) He's particularly fond of drunk strip poker, but can never convince anyone other than Castiel to play with him after The Saturday (but Castiel sort of refuses him anyway by studiously ignoring him).

Sam was particularly surprised to discover how fond of word games Gabriel is. Road-sign ABC's? Golden. 50-State license plate? Anytime. Contact? You bet. Round robin gets particularly lewd after a while, and Dean, in defense of burgers everywhere, bans it within 50 feet of any dinner in the world.

Gabriel gets his revenge by re-upholstering the Impala's seats with a vintage 1920s-esq crossword-printed leather.

Dean doesn't speak to him for a week.

Gabriel didn't show up for two weeks straight. Sam insisted that something was wrong. Dean's response was, paraphrased and with less bellowing, 'who gives a flying fuck?' Castiel let them get it out of their systems until both brothers were snarling into each other's faces, words slung like toxic venom and the first punch was thrown.

Surprisingly, Castiel was the one who started it all.

"This is not helping," the seraph growled. "We have limited time and need Gabriel's grace to do your insane plan, Dean, or have you forgotten? We don't have time for this."

He hauled the brother's upright with a fist in each of their jackets, shaking them once fiercely to get his point across.

"Reign in your pointless bickering and get back to work."

Like his appearing and disappearing from the Impala, Gabriel's wont for popping suddenly into beds that are not his becomes rote quickly enough.

Sam doesn't even stir from sleep anymore into that weird half state of being, half awake and completely lethal. Just mumbles something about balloon animals, sighs, and burrows his nose into golden curls.

The spell would've worked.

If they'd managed to find Gabriel.

In the end, Sam's laid up in the hospital for two weeks, a dislocated shoulder and three fractured ribs hardly coming close to Dean's nearly dismembered left hand.

Cas didn't take it very well.

"Stoppit," Sam mutters, swatting at Dean's hand trying to tear his hair out.

"Sit still, bitch, or it's gonna dry and we'll have to shave you," Dean smacks him on the back of the head, snapping his head forward before going back to the tub of Crisco.

"Sides, it's your own fault. What kinda moron pranks Gabriel?"

Sam scowls, then grimaces as Dean tugs on a particularly well-stuck piece of bubble gum.

Castiel waited until everything was ready. The ingredients were easy enough to obtain, as was the empty warehouse in the middle of a wide, barren field.

He laid the oil carefully, weaved sigils through the ring and out, drew out lines for power and grace and still and contained. He wove power and elegance into a spell full of aggression and intent.

Gabriel flew into the field.

He did not fly out.

"No, no, no!" Dean howls, laughing, under a hail of popcorn. "It's from Star Wars!"

"A little ballsy, don'tcha think?" Gabriel moved his eyes from studying the intricate layings before him to the trench-coated angel holding himself stiff and still. "Trying to cage an archangel."

Castiel stared at the older angel. Older and crueler and colder, but Castiel didn't waver.

"What'dyou want, a medal?" Gabriel queried sarcastically. He waved dismissively, "Fine, fine, good job, congrats, you've lived the attempt three times now. Go you. Now, let me out."

Castiel didn't move his gaze.

Neither angel moved for a long time, and then Castiel opened his mouth.

And began to speak.

"You can't pick 'candied apples'," Dean complains. "They're not really candy. They're fake candy. Like... fake." He waves a hand around, as if that will make it all universally understood. "You know, fake."

Gabriel nods solemnly in agreement.

"That's complete bullshit. Half the damn food is caramel, it so counts," Sam says. Gabriel rolls his eyes and begins to explain, in great detail, all the kinky things one can get up to with sixlets.

Castiel spoke. He told and informed and explained until Gabriel's mildly haughty look glazed into one of pain and repressed agony.

Castiel spoke and spoke until Gabriel sank to his knees, put his head to the floor and blocked out the world and words with hands and arms and grace.

Castiel paused only once.

Into the silence, Gabriel rasped, "I don't want to hear this."

Castiel started speaking again.

Gabriel pants, one eye squeezed shut, mouth fallen wide open and gives Sam a look.

"We aren't going to win this, are we?" Sam says solemnly.

Gabriel scowls at him, defiant and pissed off-

and jumps at the wet, popping splat of paint balls against the stump he'd been crouched behind.

Sam shoves his fist into his mouth in the next second as Gabriel spins around the tree trunk, bright fuchsia paint balls fired blindly, screaming, "YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, COPPERS!"

"Stop, just stop," Gabriel gasped out.

Castiel let his words fall silent and watched the archangel curled on the ground with thinly veiled contempt.

"Far be it from me to tell you how to run your interactions, Gabriel, but I thought you'd be the one to take full advantage of the bond between you two. After all, you've already got the mark- they'll be hunting you either way."

He kicked over the pail of water he'd set aside and watched for a beat as the water licked at the flames, hearing the hiss.

"Why not have your cheap screw before we're all damned?"

Weather from scorn or fear, Castiel flew to parts unknown, leaving a singed, guilt-ridden and wet brother behind.

"And that," Dean announces, waving a speared piece of apple pie in Cas' face, "is why you never wear shorts in the summer, in leather seats, with a girl who doesn't shave."

Castiel leans forward and closes his mouth around the end of Dean's fork, watching thoughtfully as he pulls back and Dean stares at his previously-full utensil. The hunter glances from the empty tines to the curious angel chewing away in concentration.

And again. A look of indignation crosses his face and then makes a return trip.

On Cas' side of the booth, Sam cracks a smile. Beside Dean, Gabriel sniggers and shakes his head.

Gabriel returned five days after Castiel left. He came with two simple touches, adverted eyes and a somberness that spoke to either a deep-seated pit of rage, or a gnawing, eating guilt.

Archangels didn't usually feel guilty.

But then, archangels don't usually offer to stay on your side and help you kill their brother for the price of one pesky lifetime.

Seems 'usually' didn't mean much for the Winchesters.

"Really, though," Sam starts again, tossing the shotgun and the tin of salt in the trunk without looking, "you've never seen the world's largest ball of twine?"

"Why would I want to? I can't eat it. It's not being an egotistically, self-righteous bastard, although I would love to see it try, because that sounds like it might be interesting, and I'm thinking things involving very large kittens-"

Sam smacks him on the back of the head.

"- and it's in the middle of Nowhere's Ville in Bumfuck, USA. Why would I go see the world's largest ball of twine?"

Sam sighs.

"Now, the world's largest chocolate fountain, that I've seen."

The months following were just as hard on everyone as the previous ones, if in a different way.

Gabriel, instead of being habitually absent, was constantly underfoot, weather he was needed or not and seemed to be under the impression that any ten-mile radius around the brothers was covered in gossamer-thin eggshells. He deferred to Castiel in everything where his opinion wasn't specifically asked for.

Dean took it- weirdly. He started it off by snarking at Gabriel, taunting him and degrading him just as much as he'd done earlier. As it became clear that Gabriel wasn't going to retaliate, Dean started flinging more and more at him until Sam, irritated and angry and guilty and morose yanked him aside and laid into him.

Castiel, conversely, didn't say anything about it. He never looked at Gabriel directly, and yet there was always the vague impression that if he had been, he would've been looking down his nose.

Sam.

Sam put up with it like he did everything else: until he didn't.

The explosion was quiet. And then louder. And then really loud before all noise cut suddenly from existence.

Gabriel appeared the next morning with a small smile and a softly cherished peace and carefully guarded hope warming his eyes.

Sam, when he managed to join the rest of the world at noon, was all loose limbs and lazy smiles.

There were still arguments and fights. Sometimes someone would doubt his place, but a well-thought out prank or a soft and caring 'it's not like anyone would put up with us' would draw them back. They did they're best. They weren't perfect (far from it), but they were self-admitted screw ups, and they would be the first to admit that their probably wasn't anyone who could understand them the way they were.

Not and have any hope of actually getting it.

Castiel leans against the hood of the Impala, one hand pressed against the warmth of the cooling hood. Against his arm, there's a nudge, and the hand attached presents him with a freshly-opened can of beer. The fingers that withdrawal brush against his own, and he graces Dean with a small smile. Dean smiles back and turns his head back to the dimming sky.

Behind them, Sam sprawls back fully on the hood with a sigh and starts threading his fingers through the golden hair that's suddenly spread across his stomach. The hummed tune Gabriel's had stuck in his head all day matches perfectly to the sound of his heels thumping against the tire. Sam sighed again and watches at the sky above him transforms into inky blue and then into that touchable weight of blackest night that's not really black at all.

Notes/Prompts: I tried to stick pretty close to 'forced bonding' but I screwed it a bit, as Sam's the only one really forced into it. I really slammed on the angst and (though I didn't make it as obvious) Gabriel's UST for Sam and the finally image was something that really stuck with me since I first started writing this. I went with 'forced bonding. Love it when two are forced into sexytimes/bonds when neither really wants it/ love angst with a happy ending/ I like the first times and getting together fics better than established relationships'

It turned out a lot more implying that I thought it would going in, but I really think this will be something that the writer can appreciate. (At least I hope so!) :) Had a great time with this, thank you!