Warnings for M/M sexy times and a general theme of sticking it to society's expectations.

Heavily inspired by Mercy Celeste's M/M fiction, "The 51st Thursday." You can buy it as an ebook on Amazon and it will be the best $1.00 investment you ever make.

Sam was tracing water rings into the bar, one over the other, like a figure eights bleeding into the wood. Something vaguely familiar played on the jukebox, like his father's garage. Loud enough that a man didn't feel alone and yet still so quiet that all the words sort of blurred together like a very fun party where no one much needed to be heard to have fun. It was loud enough that Sam couldn't hear the sound of his empty glass on the bar and, really, that was all he asked.

The bartender wandered over with his arms crossed over his chest and waited. Sam thought for a moment.

"Can I try a mojito?"

"Only if you want me to spit in your drink."

Sam snapped out of his solitary little delirium real quick.

"Excuse me?" he asked.

He recognized the bartender, though he didn't know his name. It wasn't Sam's first time in here. He was smaller than Sam, though most people were, but much older, probably in his early forties to Sam's twenty-three. He had goldish little falcon eyes that were, at this moment, narrowed in mild annoyance. His longish honey brown hair was swept behind his ear, but small tendrils of it had started to fall forward towards his face as he stared expectantly at Sam across the bar.

"Are you allowed to say that to customers?"

The bartender made a show of looking around the desolated bar, before leaning into Sam as though confiding secret.

"Probably not. But I don't think anyone is going tattle to my big mean boss." He straightened up before reaching behind the counter and coming up with a bottle of whiskey. "You think I don't recognize you? You sit there at that bar, make us go through our paces to prepare your fruity little specialty drinks, but probably just end up throwing up all of our good work after you switch to whiskey about an hour and a half in. So, let's save me some dishes and general aggravation and put you straight on your whiskey."

The bartender placed a whiskey on the rocks on the bar and, as an afterthought, placed an orange and cherry to garnish before pushing the drink before Sam. Sam flicked the orange on the rim of the glass before he pulled the drink towards him in wordless acquiescence. He took a sip.

"Good boy." The bartender said before he moved away down the bar to where he was cutting lemons. Sam fully intended to let him work in silence, but the jukebox wasn't cutting it anymore.

"I don't, you know." Sam said into his drink but there wasn't anyone else around. "I don't throw up. I can hold my liquor."

The bartender glanced over at him through the fringe of his hair, a twinkle of amusement there.

"Well, as someone who has to clean up after people who can't, I can appreciate that."

They fell back into silence before Sam took another sip and looked around the bar like he hadn't really since he stepped in. Sam didn't drink alone often but when he did, it was with a sort of tunnel vision that rivaled that of, well, his Dad. John Winchester drank like a fish swam. He wanted the bartender to know it. He wasn't sure why.

"I get it from my old man." Sam said. The bartender didn't look up, but the lemon slicing slowed. "I don't think I have a memory of him that doesn't involve at least a beer in his hand. But I don't remember him drunk, you know? He was never sloppy. I don't know if he was just so good at acting sober or if, by the time I was remembering stuff, he could even get drunk anymore. He wasn't a bad parent just… one who always had a drink in his hand that couldn't be spilled"

"God bless the alcoholic fathers of this world." The bartender said as he dumped the sliced lemons into a container and started on limes. "Helping kids get over themselves and the silly little hero complexes people put on their parents. It's better, in the long run. No one's perfect. You learned it earlier than most and it's a blessing."

"I'll drink to that." Sam said and he hoped he saw a little grin on the corner of the bartender's mouth. "Is your Dad the same way?"

"I wouldn't know."

"He never let you see him drink?"

"No. He just never let me see him."

"Oh." Sam said stupidly, "Sorry."

"I was a long time ago and I've had my Big Boy pants on for a while now, so don't be sorry."

Sam fell into a slightly chastened quiet as he drank. The bartender was back in front of him before he even had a chance to put his glass down.

"Where is everyone, anyways?" Sam asked. "It's New Years and you guys sell booze. Shouldn't this place be packed?"

"There is that bar about a half block down? Hannigan's? They've got TVs to watch the ball drop and more than one pool table." The bartender gave a noncommittal shrug.

"Really?" Sam asked, "People really fall for that stuff?"

The bartender turned his full attention to Sam's face and Sam felt himself grow warm under it. Perhaps he should slow down with the whiskey after all.

"The owner is actually thinking about putting a couple of TV's in here. Play the game. Maybe get some new customers. Sports crowd types, you know?"

"That'd be horrible." Sam said, shaking his head, "TV's make everything so cheap, you know? You guys have a real jukebox, not that Internet music bullshit. No, man this place is perfect. Don't let him make it just like all the other ones."

When Sam looked back up the bartender was grinning. Sam's face got hot so he looked down at his fresh drink.

"That one's on me." the bartender said, rapping the counter with his knuckles before moving back down to where he had progressed on to restocking paper umbrellas. Sam listlessly stirred the thin plastic straw of his drink for a moment, listening to something fuzzy that sounded vaguely like the Eagles. Sam felt more alone than he usually did. He let himself watch the bartender out of the corner of his eye as the deft fingers, calloused from dishwater and mop handles, worked with mindless competence. Sam took a deep drink of courage before he got up and sat in the seat directly across from where the man was working. Golden eyes flashed on him for a moment before they fell back to their task.

"I'm Sam." He said.

"I know. Your name was on your card when you opened your tab."

"Oh, right." Said Sam, a bit wrong footed. He took another drink so the silence wouldn't seem so heavy.

"I'm Gabriel." the older man allowed, reaching over to get the bottle of whiskey again as Sam's drink disappeared without him noticing. "Not 'Gabe'."

"Gabriel not Gabe." Said Sam, smiling. "I think I can get that straight."

Sam placed his elbows on the counter and managed to close some of the space between them. Gabriel looked up at him with a new interest, taking a second to lean back and let his eyes roam over Sam without apology or disguise. He seemed to like what he saw or at least decide that Sam wasn't a threat.

"So," Sam said again, "You don't mind working the holiday?"

"Not really." Gabriel said, seeming a little bored in the topic.

"No one waiting at home for you, saving a New Year's kiss?"

"No. What about your girlfriend?" Gabriel asked, "She waiting for you at home?"

"How did you know…?"

"Because all of you have girlfriends." Gabriel said, shaking his head and smirking.

"What do you mean, 'all' of us?" Sam asked, shifting away from Gabriel as the older man had the most infuriating expression on his face. Like he was laughing at him.

"Oh, please. You think you're the first little Ivy League boy to wander in those doors?" Gabriel asked, bracing his arms on the bar top, "You. Are. All. The. Same. May I take a guess?

"Let me see, you go to Stanford, just because there isn't much else for someone to do in Palo Alto besides go to school or work for the school and you're far too young for the latter. You're probably a scholarship kid on account of your father. You met a girl maybe your sophomore year and she is pretty and friendly and smart. Probably gives bad head but," Gabriel lowered his voice and leaned forward, "most pretty girls do. You graduated and didn't know what to do with yourself, so you went back for a post grad degree. Back home you probably feel like a freak. Daddy may be proud of you be he doesn't understand you, hell, maybe he's a bit afraid of you for being the kind of man he had to drink to pretend he was. Your high school friends never left town and the ones that did never came back. But that doesn't matter. A boy like you is bound to have a bunch of good-looking, clever college friends. But," Gabriel opened his eyes wide and looked around the bar again, "I don't see any of them here. Or a blonde little girlfriend either. Because maybe you're different from the others just 'cause you had to work a little harder and you got Daddy issues but you're just like the rest of them because you got everything you ever wanted and still need to come to a bar and drink alone to feel tortured. How'd I do?" he asked, refilling Sam's whiskey.

"Fuck. You."

"Oh, I did pretty well, then." Gabriel said, sounding satisfied.

"Where do you get off saying shit like that?" Sam asked, "What makes you think that you're so much better than me? That you can judge me like that? Yeah, maybe I'm drinking alone. Maybe my old man and I haven't talked for a while but fuck you for thinking you know me."

"I never said I was better than you." Gabriel said lightly. After a second, he pulled a clean glass from behind him and poured himself a whiskey from the same bottle. He dropped seven cherries into it. "I just said that you aren't a special, melancholy little snowflake like your eighth grade teacher said you were when she read your sad little poems. There are two terrible things that can happen in a person's life. The first is that you never get anything you wanted. The second is getting everything.

"You should be happy, but you're not so you pretend you're all deep and complicated. 'Cause now you just come to an empty bar alone to feel something because you're just going through the motions of your perfect little life."

"Yeah, did you even finish the eight grade?" Sam snapped. It was a low blow, and a cheap one at that, but Sam hadn't been expecting the insults or their bone cutting effect still stinging though him, so he was a bit off his game. "And you think you're happier than me because you have some service job meant for twenty five year olds? You're, what, forty-five and pouring drinks for a living? You don't even own this empty bar. So, fuck you."

"You could always leave." Gabriel said calmly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing is keeping you here in this empty bar. You could storm off to your girlfriend and you perfect little apartment and your perfect little life. But, no, you're here, yelling at me."

"Yeah… well…" Sam stammered, at a loss.

"People like you." Gabriel said softly, a predatory smile breaking out over his thin lips. It was an ugly smile, curling over his teeth making him look like a rotted jack-o-lantern without the rounded cheeks. Sam wanted to bite that smile right off his lips. "You asked what I got from my job? I get boys like you who wander in with their soft hands and their big ideas, just waiting to be knocked over. You've never been fucked until you've been fucked by a twenty three year old who is trying to prove a point. You're not happy, kiddo. None of you are. And you all find your way into my bar, just looking to get mad or get fucked just to feel alive. When's the last time you felt anything at all?"

"I'm not going to let you fuck me."

"Well, then I'll just close out your tab and you can go back to your life and fool around with your girlfriend while you think about how hot and," Gabriel's eyes dropped to Sam's crotch, "hard you got while you were telling me how your fancy degree and your pretty girlfriend make you feel like something better. I'm alive, kid, every minute of everyday."

"Fuck you."

"That will do too." Gabriel purred, his eyes back on Sam's lap.

Sam glanced at the door as he heard Gabriel walk around the bar. The older man shut off the neon "OPEN" sign and the snick of the door lock would have echoed in the bar if Bob Seger's "Beautiful Loser" hadn't started playing.

Sam came up behind him. Gabriel seemed smaller now that Sam was standing so close. He put his hand against Gabriel's back and seemingly on instinct; the man rolled his hips against Sam's groin, making him groan as the stiff denim pressed against his cock. Sam's hands found Gabriel's chest and began an aimless but dominating process of mapping him out. His hands roamed over hard, pebbled nipples beneath the red button shirt and Sam snapped his hips against Gabriel's ass as he ducked down to bite at the older man's neck.

Gabriel threw his head back against Sam's chest, offering up more of his neck to be feasted on. Sam latched onto hot skin under his ear, suckling like it was the only way to survive.

Gabriel's knees were trembling by the time Sam had branded him, so he led them to the nearest table, shoving Gabriel face first into the chipped and rag stripped top as he started sliding his pants down.

"Ever been with a guy?" Gabriel asked, his voice muffled by the surface.

"I thought you already knew everything about me." Sam sneered. He clapped his hand against the round ass, gripping a handful of the soft flesh hard enough that Gabriel was lifted onto his toes. Gabriel cursed and thrusts his hips back desperately.

"Just," Gabriel said, annoyed and horny and voice still dripping with that superior attitude that Sam wanted to fuck right out of him, "In my pocket. Lube and a condom. Fuck me with fingers first. You look like a big boy and I don't want to get ripped bloody 'cause little hetero couldn't wait."

Sam slapped Gabriel's ass again and the man let out a sound that might have been a knowing little snicker and a whimper at once.

"You just carry this shit around in your pockets?" Sam asked him, sifting through the warm jeans on the floor nonetheless. "Get fucked by strangers often?"

"Only on the good days." Gabriel said, lifting his head and winking. Sam shoved his face back into the table, making Gabriel's hips twitch again.

"Fuck." Sam said, softly, looking at the older man, spread and expectant over the table. "Fuck, I'm about to cheat… and I've never…"

A chill ran between them and Gabriel turned his head back up to Sam, holding the tube of lube and condom standing dumbly. He and Jess had always been together in her bed, in candlelight. He came. She came. It was a good sex life. It was all that he could ask of her. But this…

Sam had never been so hard in his life.

Gabriel swallowed, "You already want to fuck me, so fuck me and worry about it tomorrow." He said, "You can just say you were drunk."

"You really don't give a shit about anybody else, do you?" Sam asked distastefully.

"I want you inside of me." Gabriel said plainly, "You want to be inside of me. Just do it and the rest will happen as it happens."

After a second, Sam placed his hand back against Gabriel's spine, forcing him even further into the table and making him arch his hips up. The lube was cold and tacky against his fingertip but he slid into Gabriel so easy it was like the man was only made to have his ass stuffed full. Another finger joined the first and Sam curled his digits around the uncharted territory inside of the newly, willingly conquered man. He moved up to a third when Gabriel gasped.

"I'm good, fuck me," he hissed into the table. "Shit, you're so fucking hot. Do me."

With his fingers still inside of him, Sam clapped Gabriel's ass again and he saw the older man's thighs tense as he curled his toes.

Condom clad, Sam finally forced his dick's way into him, winning a bona fide whine out of Gabriel. Gabriel slammed his fist on the table as his back muscles tensed and relaxed and tensed again through his shirt. Sam shoved the remaining clothing up Gabriel's spine, holding it bunched against his neck without much will to let Gabriel up long enough to take all the way it off.

"I'm not your porcelain girlfriend." Gabriel moaned, "Fuck me like you mean it."

The table creaked as Sam thrust his hips forward, into more impossible tightness. He started positioning in and out of Gabriel who was bucking up against him like it would never be enough, rocking together, fucking together like the worst kinds of animals, selfish and cruel.

Soon, Gabriel started clutching at the wood with his fists, one hand finally vanishing beneath him to finish himself off and he went lax with a sigh as he came onto the bar floor.

"Fuck, I'm gonna come," Sam pleaded, "Don't make me come in this condom, can I come on you?"

"Yeah, whatever." Gabriel said breathlessly, "Whatever, just come, fuck."

Gabriel hissed as Sam suddenly pulled out of him. He shucked the dirty condom onto the dirty floor and started jerking himself furiously as he looked down at Gabriel, spent and spread and so fully fucked that Sam could cry and fuck him all over again for eternity.

"Jesus," Sam sobbed, shooting his spend along Gabriel's back in hot stripes, finally collapsing on top of the sweat slicked, half naked back of the man beneath him. "Jesus, fuck."

"Yeah," said Gabriel, "get up for a minute, would you? I'm suffocating here."

"Oh, sorry." Sam said, scrambling.

"It's fine," Gabriel said, shaking out the arm that Sam had trapped beneath him. Sam ignored the reflex to apologize again, instead pulling his pants up and tucking himself away. Gabriel, however, simply sat up, reaching for the table's napkin dispenser and wiping his back off. He ran a hand through his hair and smirked as his hand came back wet, "Well, someone has trajectory."

Sam blushed, but Gabriel didn't seem to be in a hurry to get dressed, smiling lazy and content with his knees pointing in opposite directions.

"I'm… thank you." Sam said lamely.

"You did the fucking, sweetheart, I just bent over."

"No, I mean…" Sam gestured to himself. "You were right."

And now that his come was drying in a napkin wad on the floor and as Gabriel's long hair fell over the bite on his neck, Sam felt it all again. The way Gabriel moved beneath him, the sound of the metal table legs on the floor. It was the best fuck of Sam's life, the best night…

And there was a girl at home, waiting for him in clean sheets. She'd pout, tell him that everyone missed him and make him promise to come out next year. Then he'd go back to school and go home to her then school then home again. And it wouldn't mean anything, a lifetime of that would never feel as real as Gabriel's ass in his hand. Sam felt alive for the first time in his life and it was with… this guy.

"Hey." Gabriel said gently, "I get it."

"I don't think you do." Sam heard himself snap. The rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand. Did his clothes smell like sex? Would Jess be able to see it? "Fuck, I have to go back…"

"Hey." Gabriel said, catching Sam's chin in his hand, forcing Sam to look down at him "I get it. You're looking at a cum laude graduate of the class of 1991. You know, back when Stanford had standards." Gabriel gave a playful wink. "Got a job for a summer and felt like I was worth more on a minimum wage than I was making triple figures at some investment bank. So I stayed."

"You went to Stanford?" Sam looked around the bar again, "And now this?"

"And I've never looked back." Gabriel said, tilting his head sympathetically.

Gabriel smiled sadly at Sam's silence before gesturing to his pants on the floor of the bar. Sam handed them to him and Gabriel fished a pen out of the pocket scribbling his number on a fresh napkin.

Sam took it. Then Sam left.

The next day, Sam texted him. Gabriel texted back his address.

That night, Gabriel rode Sam's cock on the tacky, violently red pleather sofa in his studio apartment. The TV was playing something old and trite that kept getting edited down for commercials. Sam came looking up at Gabriel's naked chest, hair in his face and being lit sporadically by the lights from the TV. Sam jerked Gabriel's cock to completion, letting it pool hotly on his chest.

The next day, Sam broke up with Jess. She took it poorly, as he expected, and kicked him out of their apartment. Gabriel didn't ask questions when Sam showed up with a trash bag full of clothes.

There were a lot of things that Sam didn't like about Gabriel.

He ate in their bed, leaving crumbs and sticky, half eaten gummy bears in the sheets that made Sam's skin crawl when he unwittingly found one in the middle of the night. Gabriel got off work around four am, only two hours before Sam had to be up for school, and he wanted to fuck every single time. Then Gabriel would stomp too loudly for Sam to ignore and go back to sleep when he didn't get to have his way with him. Sometimes he took the toilet paper from the bathroom and hid it when Sam forgot something like their anniversary.

Gabriel wasn't nice to his friends and was only barely polite to his family. He openly didn't give a fuck about what Dean thought of him, which, weirdly, earned his brother's respect. John only liked him because he poured beer without any foam and brought cigars every time they visited.

But Gabriel also made brownies on the days he didn't work. Sometimes he put walnuts into the shape of smiley faces when Sam had a big test or needed to stay up late to study. Gabriel wasn't fazed by bodily functions and sat in bed with vomit-y diarrhea-y Sam the weekend he had the flu, getting up periodically to reheat soup or freshen hot tea, sitting wordless and undemanding as they watched Quentin Tarantino movies and Gabriel petted his hair until the fever broke.

They fought like wet cats sometimes.

Gabriel was the only one who could make Sam feel like the king of the world but he was also the only one that knew exactly what to say to make Sam feel like the scum between the scuffed wooden planks of Gabriel's bar floor.

Sam and Gabriel didn't make sense and they weren't planned and they never pretended to be perfect. They only strove to be happy.

And everyone that knew them envied them for that.

I put out with porn, now you need to cuddle me with reviews. Please? I have needs.