AN: Written for Sabriel Week's (you can find them on Tumblr) Day 1 Prompt: General AU. Nothing supernatural going on here. Unless you count Gabriel's flexibility...

Nothing More Dangerous

The club assaults Sam's every sense. A hundred alcohol-soaked, overheated bodies packed together beneath a multicolored shimmer of lights and spangles. Jacob—wearing a silver crown topped with pink penises and grinning like a man on the verge of matrimony—shouts something at Sam over the thump of the music. Sam shakes his head, unable to hear, and Jacob laughs, turns him around, and guides him to a table that's so close to the stage it may as well be on it.

So much for blending into the background.

Sam slides as unobtrusively as possible into the only empty chair (the others having been filled by Jacob's fiancé, Ian, and their groomsmen), which is right next to the stage. Jacob's grinning at him and Sam can't help but think the man planned this.

It's not that he hasn't been to strip clubs before. He has. Well…once. With his brother. But the outing with Dean had been a whole different experience, he thinks, eyes straying to curve of their server's package pressed against the tight black pants the club's staff wore. The man smiles at him, winks and Sam stutters out his order feeling, for a moment, like he's back in high school.

Okay? Jacob mouths from the across the table and Sam shoots him an I-Know-What-You're-Doing face but it just makes Jacob laugh and lean his head on Ian's shoulder, the two of them eyeing Sam with the same mischievous glint in their eyes. Jacob twirls his finger at the stage, just as the first brass horn strains of Christina Aguilera's "Candyman" swings out of the speakers. Pay attention, that finger says, you're here for a reason.

That reason being Andrew, Sam's first…well, his first in a lot of ways. It hadn't ended well and last week Sam had found himself in Jacob's apartment drowning his sorrows in a bottle of cheap whiskey after Jacob wrestled away Sam's phone and systematically deleted Andrew's number and all of his text messages.

The bachelor party, Jacob had assured him, was the perfect time to forget about Andrew. And maybe there's something to that because Andrew's name breaks apart and slips out of the forefront of his mind as Sam watches the small, sleek man bopping across the stage, his hips leading the way.

The man's not as heavily cut as the other dancers Sam caught a glimpse of when they came in. His muscles are sleek; his skin shimmers honey-gold beneath the stage lights. Popping the buttons on his shirt and slipping it off, he pirouettes, revealing the taught length of his spine, framed by the elegant slope of tattooed wings. And as he launches himself at the pole rising from the stage—wrapping his body around it like a long lost lover—Sam's suddenly wondering what it might be like to run his tongue between those wings.

Then he's distracted by the gymnastic feats, the flex and ripple of the man's muscles as he spins, wraps his thighs around sleek metal, arches his back, baring belly, chest, throat. On this stage, gravity seems a mere suggestion.

So focused on the man's movements, Sam doesn't notice the song heading to its finish until the man's kneeling in front of him—picking up the money that Jacob had shoved into Sam's hand, instructed him to put on the stage—and their eyes meet and Sam's lost in a swirl of amber. The man winks at him, vanishes behind the curtain.

When Sam turns to his drink, Jacob catches his eye, expression clearly asking Well?

~ # ~

Several more dancers—none nearly as acrobatic as the first—and several more drinks and Sam is muzzy enough to not think much about it when Jacob leads him down a hall, pushes him unceremoniously into a small room and leaves him there. It's not until the door clicks open behind him and someone lets out a slow, appreciative whistle that Sam's brain catches up.

"I've always liked the big ones. More fun to climb." It's the man from the first dance and he's looking up at Sam with a grin that might be frightening if they were anywhere other than a regulated, legal establishment.

"I—um," Sam says, and wonders how over twenty years of experience speaking the English language can just suddenly vanish.

"Gabriel," the man says, fingertips pressed to his chest, and then, "Don't be nervous, sweetheart." Gabriel's hands are on Sam's shoulders, pushing him back and onto the plush, armless chair. "Had a little chat with your friends."

Sam's going to kill Jacob. And Ian. He can make it look like a lover's suicide pact.

Gabriel leans in close. He smells like sunshine and mint; his breath is warm against Sam's ear and his voice is just loud enough to be heard over the music that's now pooling into the room. "I'll take good care of you."

Sam's had a lap dance before. Dean, again. His brother considers them a rite of passage. But this is an entirely different experience. (Sam's having a lot of those tonight.) In part because he's really….turned on. In a way he hadn't been with a pretty, busty woman swaying above him. (And maybe he needs to rebalance the "bi" portion of his orientation….)

Gabriel knows how to move, all slow, sinuous grace to the beat of drums, the whistle of oboes. And he talks while he dances, asks Sam questions (that Sam thankfully remembers how to answer), tells a few behind-the-curtains anecdotes.

And as the first song rolls into the second, Sam finds himself talking—albeit in short, stilted sentences—about Dean. Gabriel mentions his own brothers, talks about his future plans. This—and Gabriel spread his arms wide—is just temporary and what Gabriel really wants is to dance, professionally.

"I'm a regular Alex Owens," he smiles and turns away from Sam, drags his hips lightly over Sam's lap and thighs; the wings on his back shift and curl, ink glistening under the light sheen of sweat. They're beautiful. Sam doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until Gabriel says:

"Touch them."

"I'm…the rules—"

"I want you to touch them."

When Sam still doesn't move, Gabriel makes another sweep against his thighs, grabs Sam's hands, drags them over his hips to the taught curve of his waist, plays Sam's fingers over the tips of the wings. And then Sam's hands are moving on their own, tracing the sweep of remiges, the frail inking of bone.

When the music stops, Sam pulls his hands back like he's been burned.

Gabriel sighs, rests his weight on Sam's legs and leans back, cuddling in close, head nudging under Sam's jaw. "You are kind of adorable, kiddo" he says, like he's found evidence to support a questionable hypothesis.

He presses something into Sam's fingers and is out the door before Sam can speak.

Sam unfolds the paper in his hand, finds a phone number scrawled in barely legible writing.

~ # ~

Sam puts the phone number on his desk, stares at it when he comes home from class, from work.

A week after the club visit, he dials half of it, shuts his phone off before he can dial the rest.

~ # ~

Two weeks later, outside the ballroom, waiting for the wedding rehearsal to get underway, Sam's trying to keep Jacob—who's only half dressed and running from one end of the hotel to the other—calm and apprised of any new developments (yes, Ian is still stuck in traffic; no, the caterer hasn't canceled), when someone stops at his elbow.

"You never called."

Gabriel, dressed in a flattering black suit—not unlike Sam's own, with the exception that his blue tie is covered with illustrations of lollipops—tilts his head, amber eyes staring hard at Sam.

"I—what?" One of these days, Sam's going to be able to complete an eloquent and coherent sentence in front of Gabriel.

"What's the problem? Couldn't read the handwriting?" Gabriel rolls his eyes, snatches Sam's phone out of his hands, spends a moment typing, then hands it back. "There. Now you don't have an excuse."

Sam's newest contact is listed under "Kitten, Sex." Sam sighs, blinks, focuses. "How and why are you here?"

Gabriel's grin grows wider. "You're the best man. I'm the man of honor. Looks like we'll be walking down the aisle together, sweetheart." He takes Sam's arm, looks up at him with raised brows. "Wanna call this a trial run?"

End