Chapter Text
“Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
When Sam woke up, his chest still felt like it was full of broken glass. It shattered and shifted under his ribcage as he slid out of bed and wiped a hand over his eyes. The sun was just starting to slant through the window. Barely dawn.
Instinctively, he reached for the phone, unable to bear the silence and the cold stretch of bed next to him. He found Dean’s number and stared down at it for a long, breaking second. Dean couldn’t even have reached home yet. Dean, who won’t fly and who hated Ruby. Dean who came anyway, driving across the country in his beloved car with Cas shoved in the passenger seat like a necessary piece of luggage. Dean, who had taken one look at Sam’s face and pulled him into a tight hug, all the ugliness of the last few years fallen away between them. He let Sam cling to him as he cried, made the funeral arrangements, set Cas on cleaning duty and made sure Sam didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. With all the care Dean claimed he didn’t have, he had held Sam’s world together.
Sam couldn’t call him. Dean had his own life, nestled in a cabin in the woods that Sam had never seen. Maybe he would get to now. In a few months when breathing didn’t feel like such a chore. Carefully, Sam set the phone back down. There was no one else he could call.
His bladder intruded on his thoughts. Obeying its demands, he went to the bathroom and tried to ignore the collection of eyeshadows and lipsticks lined neatly over the sink. Following his dry mouth, he went to the kitchen. He poured water into glasses she had chosen and stared out onto the lush backyard that had charmed them both. They had been happy when they bought this place. One side of a duplex on a pleasant street. Heaven in suburbia.
He set the glass very carefully back in the sink.
He had to get out of the house. The walls closed in around him, laden with her paintings and her colors. Everything in here was hers. Including him.
It was cold outside, the last bitter taste of winter clinging to the spring. He slumped further into his hoodie, bending a little to scoop up the newspaper. The headlines blurred meaninglessly under his eyes, but he tucked it under his arm anyway.
There was a cafe at the end of their street, pumping out the smell of sugar and coffee into the air. Sam had stopped there every morning on his way to work. It had been deliciously quiet as if all the patrons had universally agreed that the first cup of coffee a day should be taken in silence. He had never had time to sit among them.
He had all the time he needed now, two weeks of mandatory grief leave stretching before him. He ordered by rote, the girl behind the counter delivering up his latte with a perfunctory smile. When he turned to face the tables and chairs, he found them surprisingly crowded. There was only one free chair left, at an intimately small table with the other chair already occupied. The guy seated at it was reading a fat book and absently picked at a gargantuan chocolate muffin.
“Hey,” Sam ventured, gesturing at the open chair, “do you mind?”
The man looked up from his book, taking in Sam with a lazy unimpressed glance. He looked a little familiar, but Sam couldn’t place him. Something in the fall of his dirty blond hair and the ironic twist to his lips. With an expansive gesture at the free chair, the man returned to his book. Sam took the chair with a soft ‘thanks’, then unfolded the newspaper and tried to care about local politics.
Occasionally, his tablemate let out a muffled snort of laughter which earned him a few glares from other tables. Sam tried to figure out what he was reading that was so funny, but the cover rested flatly against the table. It looked like an academic book, leather bound and serious.
Sam stayed until his coffee had completely disappeared. Home couldn’t be put off any longer. He rose to leave and startled a little when his tablemate got up too. In fact, when Sam got to the door and turned right, so did the other man. It wasn’t until they got quite close to Sam’s house that he became nervous.
“Uh, you following me home, man?” He finally asked, tongue thick in his mouth.
The man snorted, reached into his pocket and dramatically took out a key out of his pocket. He walked up the sidewalk toward Sam’s house. All sorts of insane thing went through Sam’s head, fear coursing in a familiar bitter brew through his veins. Then, right before he would have entered Sam’s side of the house, the man turned and walked up the other set of stairs to the other door. Throwing a look of disgust at Sam, he slotted the key into the lock and went in.
The face clicked into place. The other side of the duplex had been empty until only six or seven months ago, but that was when things had gotten so ugly it blotted out everything else. Maybe he’d glimpsed his neighbor out of the corner of his eye and even said hello to him once or twice, but nothing else had actually been penetrating by then.
“I’m an idiot.” He told the air. Nothing contradicted him.
The inside of his house was still hideously full of her. He veered straight to his laptop, booting it up and selecting music from his college days. Something without the tinge of recent memory. Some considerate person ( probably Cas who was forever doing the right thing in the wrong way) had left a pile of pamphlets about grief next to the computer.
Idly, Sam picked them up and shuffled through them. They suggested group therapy (no way in hell), spending time with other loved ones (Sam’s pathetically short list had already been pointed out to him once today, thanks) and in one particularly touchy-feely one, journal writing.
He opened a blank document and typed,
Dear Journal,
The love of my life turned out to be a lying cheating wh
He stopped. Deleted it. Tried again.
I miss her.
The words stared back at him.
That was enough of that for one day. He very carefully closed the computer, headed to the couch and lost himself in Discovery channel reruns until despair took pity on him, sweeping him off to sleep.
Some of the pamphlets had suggested staying busy and finding a daily routine. So the next morning, Sam forced himself up and down the street to the cafe. It was busy again and with wrenching displeasure, he saw that once more the only open seat was with his neighbor. The old Sam, awkward and earnest, would have tried to apologize and been hushed by everyone in the place. The more recent Sam...probably wouldn’t’ve given a shit. Sam didn’t miss that guy, hated that he’d become him even for a minute.
After careful consideration, Sam added a chocolate croissant to his order. When he crossed the cafe, he set the plate down at his neighbor’s elbow. The man glanced up from his book, at the croissant, then up at Sam. Sam shrugged, waved vaguely at it then took the empty seat. His neighbor’s eyes narrowed, then he shrugged and bit into the croissant.
Olive branch extended and accepted, they returned to their various reading pursuits. Once more, when Sam got up to leave so did his neighbor. Maybe it was deliberate this time because when they reached the sidewalk and were out of range of the cafe, the man said with that same ironic twist to his mouth:
“So. I know your name is Sam. And her name is Ruby. Thrilling adventures with you guys screaming through the walls, but I think I missed the amazing conclusion while I was at work. I’ve got to know: did she finally leave you or did you grow a brain and dump her ass?”
Sam stopped walking, stopped breathing because until now everyone had known. He hadn’t had to tell anyone since that call to Dean in the dead of night under the buzzing fluorescents of the Emergency Room.
“She died.” He choked out.
“Shit.” His neighbor said finally, then looked up at Sam with an unreadable expression on his face.
“Yeah.” Sam agreed helplessly then started walking again.
Right when they reached their doors, his neighbor frowned down at the lock then said, like it was a perfectly normal thing to say to a grieving person:
“She was an epic bitch, you know.”
Sam stared at him, anger and despair roiling in his gut. He wanted to punch the guy. Wanted to pick up one of the quaint little paving stones that ringed their conjoined garden and throw it at him. Except...God. She really had been and no one, not even Dean who had hated her like poison, had said as much to Sam since she died.
“Yeah.” Sam finally responded, slotting his key into the lock, “But she was my bitch.”
They went into the house at the same time, the wall parting them and Sam had to sit down to rest a little after that.
The rest became a nap and he woke mid-afternoon to the ringing of his phone. He grappled awkwardly at it.
“Hello?”
“Sam, how are you?” A soothing voice poured through the phone.
“Mr. Scratch?” Sam heaved himself upward and ran a hand through his hair as if the senior partner could see him through the phone. “I’m fine, really.”
“No one is expecting you to be fine,” Mr. Scratch went on with perfect kindness, “terrible tragedy really. We’re all concerned about you here at the office and I just thought I’d check in. Let you know that our thoughts are with you.”
“Thanks.” Sam pressed his eye shut, heel of his hand on his forehead. “I…really appreciate that.”
“I also want to assure you that despite this tragedy, we all still think you have a lot of potential.” The last word comes out with a snap on the first ‘t’ and Sam flinched a little. He had been behaving so erratically, he had been half-sure that the mandatory grief leave was only a prelude to being fired. “When you come back, I want to talk to you about your future here at the firm.”
“Oh.” Sam looked down at his sweatpants. Had he left the house in sweatpants?
“You’re one of us.” Mr. Scratch sighed as though Sam was a wayward child. He felt a bit like one right now. “You may even be the best of us. Take your time off, get your head on straight and come back fighting. Ok?”
“Ok. Thanks, Mr. Scratch.”
“Really, Sam. You can call me Nick, I think.”
“Thanks, Nick.”
“You’re welcome, Sam. Be well.”
It was a strange conversation. Downright suspicious and Sam was so very tired of being suspicious. A tide of anxiety overtook him. His hands started to shake, so he set down the phone gingerly and then curled up tight into himself. The idea of stepping back into that building, walking into the office that he’d once been so proud of brought a flood of bile to the back of his throat. Jittery and disturbed he plucked up his laptop and stared at the blank page again.
I don’t remember who I am anymore.
Typing it didn’t remove the feeling. If anything it made it worse, buzzing and knocking under his skin. He minimized the document and called up YouTube. Stupid human tricks kept him distracted until late enough that he could justify going to bed. He crawled into his side of the bed, tucked his pillow under his chin and tried not to think of a hand settling on his hip, drawing absent designs on his skin with soft fingertips.
He didn’t sleep. He changed his order at the cafe the next morning, adding bitter shots of espresso. It didn’t surprise him to find that his neighbor sat at the only table with an open seat. Apparently there was assigned seating or something, everyone having long ago claimed their little tables like favored seats on a school bus. Sam didn’t even bother asking permission before sliding into his now usual seat. His neighbor favored him with only the most fleeting of glances. The same book was spread open on the table, the pages flipped a good chunk further forward. Sam had brought his own book today, a slim volume left over from a college philosophy class. It was comforting, the honest love Kirkegaard lavished on his topic.
For the first time, he got absorbed in what he was reading and almost missed his neighbor rising out of his chair. Sam closed his book without thinking about it and they went out together onto the street.
“You following me home, kid?” His neighbor raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, well.” Sam shrugged. “Hey. So. You know my name. What’s yours?”
“You care all of a sudden?”
Sam was suddenly aware of how much taller he was than the other man. Intellectually Sam knew he towered over a lot of people, but he had stopped noticing it a long time ago. The guy wasn’t particularly short. Sort of average really, but in that moment his neighbor seemed to shrink a little, disappearing into himself.
“I can’t keep calling you ‘neighbor’ in my head. It makes me feel like Mr. Rogers.” Sam offered.
“You’re a long way from sweater vests, grey hair and pleasant demeanor.” A hand stuck out in his direction. “Gabriel.”
“Nice to meet you.” Sam shook and found Gabriel’s hand a little sticky from the cinnamon bun he’d been consuming earlier.
“Considering what I said yesterday, I doubt that.”
“You weren’t wrong.” Sam shrugged. “You’re lucky that I’m too out of it to punch anyone.”
“I get the feeling you’re more of a gentle giant.” Gabriel stopped briefly at their two headed mailbox, reaching in to shuffle through flyers and advertisements. “You ever punch anyone in your life?”
Bitterly, Sam thought about his fist colliding with Dean’s stubborn jaw.
“Yeah.” Aware suddenly that he was just standing there awkwardly, Sam reached into his own box. At first it seemed like the same jumble of junk that Gabriel had in hand, but a letter emerged from between two flyers. The envelope was handwritten and the paper felt thick in his hand.
“An actual letter?” Gabriel looked over at the envelope. “I didn’t know they still made those.”
“It’s from brother’s partner. Old fashioned is sort of his middle name.” Sam ran his hand over the address in the top left corner. “He’s a photographer, probably some of his work.”
“Yeah?” Gabriel had clearly lost interest, already winding his way back up to his side of the house.
Sam watched him go then took the envelope back into the house. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened it carefully. There was no note inside, only a spill of photographs. At first it was only shots that he could tell Cas had taken. Arty, sun drenched scenery and odd angled portraits of Dean, clearly all taken on the sly. Then a ratty polaroid emerged from underneath, followed by other older pictures. Shots of Sam and Dean at a variety of ages: swimming, climbing rocks, pushing each other around and even one from Sam’s twenty-first birthday with both of them beyond drunk with the word ‘bitch’ scrawled over Sam’s cheek in black permanent marker.
At the bottom of the pile was a one that was a little bent as though it had been shoved in at the last moment and unsure of its welcome. It was a picture of Cas and Dean together, sitting on a low bench and a cherry blossom tree in full bloom behind them. Neither of them were smiling, but they looked happy anyway, their knees touching a little and their eyes on each other instead of the camera.
“Oh, Cas.” Sam touched each photo with a burn in the back of his throat. How had the man noticed the void on Sam’s wall and shelves? He must have at least guessed that Sam hadn’t willingly erased his past.
This time he didn’t hesitate to call though he chose Cas’ number instead of Dean’s. He didn’t have much of a relationship with man, but the gesture touched him deeply.
“Hello.” Cas answered the phone flatly and Sam could easily picture him at work, sleeves rolled up over his elbows and the acrid smell of chemicals in the air.
“Hi, Cas, it’s Sam. I got the photos.” He ran a finger over Dean’s young face. “Thank you, man. Really.”
“She told me she burnt them.” Cas sighed, the sound fluttering over the phone.
“What? When? You guys talked?” He couldn’t imagine a time when their paths would have intersected. Cas had crash landed into his and Dean’s life after Ruby was already on the scene. Cas had picked up on Dean’s distaste for her and studiously avoided her.
“I believe she had intended to reach Dean. She was rather inebriated at the time and attempting to put out the flames.”
Sam had to swallow back against the memory. They had both been high as kites that night. It had been the spiraling beginning of the end. They had fought about something at a party and she had stormed home, leaving him with no way back. By the time he had gotten a taxi, the damage was done. The pictures were ash spread find over the oven and her face a ruin of mascara and tears.
“I’m so sorry.” She’d flung herself at him the moment he saw the mess. “I was angry and I saw his face and I just lost it. You care about him so much, you would do anything for him and you wouldn’t for me and I know it’s ridiculous, sorry, so sorry, I love you,so sorry...”
She must have called Dean’s house only minutes before he’d walked in the door. He wondered why she’d bothered. Or maybe she’d been too high to have a reason.
“God, Cas, I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“Better me than Dean. I started collecting the pictures then, but I thought it might be prudent to wait until an easier time to send them.” There was a pause, Cas shifting in his chair. “I hope they haven’t disturbed you.”
“No, they’re great!” He wanted to study each frame, trace back the years until he could figure out where he’d gone wrong. When happiness had melted into aching anger and fear. “You couldn’t have sent me a better gift.”
“You’re welcome.” Cas said gravely. “Please try not to lose them again.”
“I won’t.” He promised with equal gravity, trying to press all his truth across the distance.
“Good. Have a pleasant day, Sam.”
“Yeah, you too.”
There were no frames in the house, Sam realized. Once his photos were gone, there had been no point in keeping them. Ruby had never bothered with pictures. Her family was long gone and her friends fleeting. There had been so many hints. It had taken a lot of willful blindness on Sam’s part to ignore them.
Target wasn’t too far away. It took him a few minutes to find his car keys and even longer to dredge up the will to leave the house twice in a day.
The store was surprisingly quiet. A few kids ran shrieking through the aisles, their mothers pushing carts and stopping to chat with each other. Sam took his time looking over his choices, wishing he’d thought to count the pictures before he left. There was money enough in the bank for frivolous purchases though. Sam had kept control of that at least, despite several bitter fights. He bought a stack of frames in varying sizes, then on a whim picked up a heavy looking lamp. It was solid and promising in his hand, the shade a practical beige. There had been no light in their front hall for months, the last lamp shattered against the wall.
The cashier didn’t so much as glance up at him as she ran his purchases through the line. He wondered if he was becoming invisible in his grief. A stupid thought, but it lingered as he moved through the parking lot. Minivans rolled in and out around him, the sun shone and live went on without him.
When he got home, he set his bags on the table. He could hang the pictures tomorrow, he thought. Or the day after. He started to drift from the room, but Dean’s face peered out at him from the corner of one picture.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Sam muttered, picking the picture up idly. It was from the zoo, both of them pointing stupidly to a distant lion, ice cream smeared on their faces. “...fine.”
It took him twice as long as it should have to remove the backings and slot pictures inside the frames. Then he had to stand in the living room for a stupidly long time, trying to figure out where to put them. Ruby had kept stacks of cheap paperbacks along the mantle, letting Sam have the built in bookshelves for his massive law tomes. He crossed to the paperbacks slowly, caressing the cover of one lurid book. She had loved terrible supernatural romances. The worse the prose, the more she had delighted in them. When he was in a bad mood, she would crack one open and read him experts until they were both laughing.
He couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.
“Damnit, baby.” He closed his eyes and set the book back down.
Then he went to get a box and piled every last one of the paperbacks into it. Putting the pictures in their place gave the whole room a different look.
Despite his intense dawdling over the project, it was still only three in the afternoon. He reached for his laptop. The document lingered on the start bar. He ignored it and set about pounding his brain into oblivion with World War II documentaries.
The next morning he took a shower and pulled on actual clothing. The jeans settled oddly over his hips and it took him a minute to realize he’d lost weight. Frowning, he cinched a belt around his waist. He was a little dizzy too.
“Could I have lemon poppy seed muffin with that?” He asked at the cafe.
Gabriel gave his muffin a bit of a look. Sam raised an eyebrow back at him in a silent ‘What?’. Gabriel huffed a sigh and turned back to his book. He must be nearly done with it now, only a handful of pages left. Sam had Kirkegaard again, paging through dense arguments and slowly demolishing his muffin down to crumbs.
They got up together as if by mutual agreement. When they got out to the sidewalk, Gabriel clucked his tongue at him.
“Protein, kid. If you’re suddenly interested in food again.”
“I always have coffee for breakfast.”
“Nope. Cheese danish on Wednesday mornings. If it was a bad night, you’d get a blondie.”
“That’s...creepy.” Sam frowned.
“You walked by my table every morning, hard not to notice. Bad nights, I heard through the walls. You kind of live out loud. Why blondies anyway? They’re the shameful cousins of brownies.”
“They were my Mom’s favorite, according to Dad.” Sam shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Man, your life is just layers of tragedy isn’t it?” There’s nothing sympathetic in Gabriel’s tone, but nothing mean either. More just a statement of fact.
“Not really.” Sam mumbled. “Hey. What are you reading, anyway?”
“Don Quixote.”
“I don’t remember that book being funny.”
“Well. You wouldn’t.” Gabriel shot him one of his now familiar wry looks. “You should lay off the Kierkegaard.”
“Why?” Sam clutched the book a little protectively.
“Kierkegaard claims to be all about love. He thinks Abraham was filled with love when he went out to slaughter his kid. Abraham listened to God about killing Isaac because Abraham was a zealot.” Gabriel kicked idly at a loose stone, it skittered out into the street. “An angel has to come and bitchslap the guy out of it. And you know what? Isaac never spoke to Abraham again in the text. I bet that kid got one good look at dear ole Dad with his knife over his head and ran for the hills.”
“But Isaac had faith too. I mean he had just as much faith as Abraham. He must have understood-”
“Picture it.” Gabriel stopped at the spot where they usually split off to their separate doors. “Your fifteen, your Dad takes you on a long trip. Doesn’t tell you why, but it’s your Dad, right? So you don’t question him. You climb a mountain with him, maybe you notice a few birds. Then this man, your father, the person you trust most in the world, he ties you down. He takes out a knife and holds it over your head. So what if you get saved at the last minute? You know for the rest of your life that your Dad values some distant voice over you. He loves God more than you.”
“Jesus.” Sam let out a shaky breath.
“Well. No. But also kind of yes.” Gabriel reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a Babe Ruth bar. He tossed it at Sam who fumbled with it. “Contains peanuts. Plenty of protein. It’s nearly health food.”
“You just carry these around with you?”
But Gabriel was already gone, disappearing into his side of the house, leaving Sam out on the sidewalk staring like an idiot after him. When he got back inside, he turned to his laptop and drew up the document.
I have a neighbor, he typed, and he’s a total dick.
The next morning, Sam pointedly ordered an omelet and ignored the speculative look Gabriel gave him as he forked the first bite into his mouth. It melted over Sam’s tongue and filled his empty stomach. Then, mostly because he wanted to make a point, but also because he’d been enjoying reading it, Sam drew the thin volume of Kierkegaard out.
“Seriously?” Gabriel hissed. Sam smiled at him. It hurt a little and it felt jagged, but it was a real honest to God smile.
“Seriously.” Sam licked his finger and turned a page dramatically. Then in the a barely there whisper, he read to him, “For my own part, I do not lack the courage to think a thought whole. No thought has frightened me so far.”
“Bullshit.” Gabriel whispered back, leaning across the table to prevent the ire of the other customers.
“Truth.” Sam pointed a finger at him. “You don’t know me just because you heard fights through the walls. There’s a lot of things that scare me. Ideas aren’t one of them.”
“Ideas can be a virus.”
“Inception, really?”
“Shh!” One old lady, grey hair teased to a stiff pile on her head gave them the evil eye.
Gabriel retreated back to his side of the table, but not without stealing a forkful of Sam’s omelette. Startled by the odd invasion. Sam didn’t protest and diligently turned back to his book.
Two minutes later a thick crumb from Gabriel’s habitual chocolate muffin pinged off Sam’s forehead. Luckily, Sam had been trained well by years of being a little brother and only plucked it from his hair to stick it in his mouth. The next crumb caught Sam’s bottom lip and he licked it off with a faint smile.
Twenty minutes they emerged out onto the sidewalk, little bits of muffin cascading off Sam as they walked. A cool breeze passed over them.
“I appreciate your concern.” Sam tucked his book back into his pocket.
“It’s not concern.” Gabriel bit out. “If you become a religious nut, I’ll have to deal with you tapping on my door every day with informative pamphlets.”
“I don’t even believe in God.” Sam looked up, a cloud passed idly overhead.
“No atheist is reading that book.”
“Well I am. I like the idea of faith, I guess. I want to believe that it’s all possible. I pray sometimes for the hell of it.”
“Sam Winchester, the praying atheist.” Gabriel’s lip curled in scorn.
“What about you then?”
“What about me?”
“God, yay or nay?”
At first it seemed that Gabriel wouldn’t answer, his body language going tight and then relaxing fraction by painful fraction.
“Nay. Definitely fucking nay. And I still don’t see the point in reading about faith if you don’t have any.”
“You can have faith in things beside God.” Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked about this. Not with Dean, who’s idea of religion was a grudging agnosticism or Ruby, who seemed to believe simply so she had someone else to rail against.
“Oh come on.”
“No, I mean it.” Sam waved his hand vaguely skyward. “There’s no big man upstairs watching over us. So what? I have faith in people. I have faith that the sun will rise, even though I wish it wouldn’t right now. I have faith that life goes on whether we want it to or not.”
“You believe in people.” Gabriel said dryly. “As a general concept? Or is it a case by case basis?”
Sam was about to protest that of course it was people in general. Sam liked people. He trusted them. Usually. Used to anyway. He frowned.
“Individual.”
“That’s not faith. That’s trust. And in your case, probably a big dollop of blind lust.”
“It wasn’t blind.” He wanted to feel angry. He could feel the place where fiery rage lived inside of him, but it was like Ruby’s death had doused it entirely. “I knew what she was, what she was like and I loved her anyway.”
“Love. Faith. You’ve got them all tangled up.”
They were lingering on the sidewalk down, the duplex looming over them like a third participant in the conversation.
“No. I don’t think I do. I loved Ruby. I didn’t have much faith in her by the end. But I still loved her. Love her right now even.” Sam straightened up a little. “And you know what? As horrible as it all was at the end? I’d do it again. I’ll try again someday. You can’t live without passion.”
“And that’s why you can’t find Don Quixote funny.” Gabriel drifted away, face turned towards his door and posture giving away nothing. “You know the giants are really windmills and you tilt at them anyway.”
“Infinite resignation.” Sam tightened his hand around the paperback, it’s spine protesting. “The last step before faith is to accept that what you want most is unattainable. You accept that, you get to that infinite resignation and then, you believe you can attain it anyway. Faith.”
“Who wants to spend their life resigned?” The door opened under Gabriel’s hand. “Sounds like a waste to me.”
The door shut with a click behind him. Despite having not gotten the last word, Sam didn’t feel like he’d completely lost this time. Though he wasn’t sure quite sure what they were arguing about exactly.
Bewildered, he went back into the house. He drifted up the stairs to the bedroom. The closet stood open, spilling all of Ruby’s beautiful clothes out onto the floor. Clothes she had danced in, seduced him in, worked in and slept in. Bending down he lifted up one lacy dress, held it to his nose. The scent of crushed flower petals and a trace of sweat met his nose. She had been so obscenely human. Filled the brim with energy and thirst for more.
He got a garbage bag from the kitchen and filled it with black, red, cream and gold. The colors she had liked best and gravitated to in every store. A second bag took her shoes and lingerie. Not giving himself time to think about it, he took it all out the car and drove to the nearest Goodwill box. Thrusting them wholesale into the bins where they would be irretrievable scratched the inside of his throat raw.
“You know, Don Quixote was a perfect candidate for Kierkegaard's knight of faith.” Sam told Gabriel the next morning as they walked back to the house. “I mean, he might have been delusional, but he believed fiercely in the impossible.”
“Did you stay up all night coming up with that one?” Gabriel sneezed into handkerchief. His nose was red and cheeks were a little flushed.
“Just something that occurred to me.” Sam lied. “You don’t look so hot.”
“No shit.” Gabriel blew his nose hard. “Observant too. Picked something up at school probably. Little germ bags.”
“You’re a teacher?”
“Kindergarten.” He rubbed the handkerchief over his nose. “Started out in the upper grades. Most people seem to think men should deal with older kids, but they’re all boring little drones already.”
“You talk to the kids the same way you talk to me?”
“Yes, Sir Goofus, I rip them new ones from literature every morning.” His look of disgust was lost in a sneeze. “Right after music, but before circle time.”
“Not really what I pictured.” Sam admitted.
“You know what they say about assumptions.” Rubbing irritably at his eyes, Gabriel bypassed the mailboxes. “I’d love to stand here and listen to whatever insane notions you’ve cooked up about me in your gargantuan head, but there’s a bottle of Nyquil calling my name.”
“You shouldn’t have come out.” Sam scolded. “I mean, the coffee isn’t that good.”
“Yes. Because it’s the coffee that dragged me out of bed. You’re kind of hopeless, you know?” Gabriel dragged himself up the steps. “I’m going to take full advantage of my sick day. Try not to drown in emo, ok?”
“Yeah, sure.”
An hour later, Sam was staring irritably at the freshly blanked document on his laptop. How many times could he write different permutations of ‘this really fucking sucks’? It was an exercise in masochism.
He cast his mind around wildly for projects. There were still the piles and piles of paperwork, the remnants of the madness that had driven him and Ruby for so long. Evidence and photos...faked, he knew now. Just a false trail of breadcrumbs to keep him in Ruby’s palm. No. That would have to wait for another day.
In the silence, he realized he could hear the soft muted babble of a distant television. It was the first trace of noise he’d heard through the wall of the duplex.
He reached for the phone.
“Sammy?” Dean answered immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He rushed to assure him. “I swear. Sorry to call so early.”
“Damn right you’re sorry. But I was up anyway. We’ve been going for runs in the morning because Cas thinks I’m ‘treating my body in disrespectful manner’. Heh. Left him in my dust third morning in a row. So. What’s up?”
“Do you remember the chicken soup you used to make?”
“Uh. What?”
“You know. When we were kids? The stuff you made when I was sick.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Dean must have been shifting the phone, a rustle of fabric. “Couldn’t ever be happy with a can like a normal kid, could you?”
“It tasted better when you made it.” The admission settled between them, probably the nicest thing Sam had said to Dean in too many years.
“Well. I am awesome.” Dean choked out after a long pause. “And anyway, you bitched that the canned stuff tasted like salt. You sucked at being sick. Whined like a girl.”
“Yeah, because you making me go find ice cream in the middle of December was such a great example of manly fortitude.”
“I had pneumonia!”
“Whatever.” Sam snorted. “Anyway. I wanted to know what you put in the soup. My neighbor is hacking up a lung. Figure I could make it for him.”
“Oh, man. I don’t know. Long time ago. Which neighbor? He come to the funeral?”
“No. The guy on the other side of the duplex. I really only met him a week ago.”
“You didn’t know the guy who lived in the other side of your house? Wait. He own that ugly green Volkswagen?”
Trust Dean to have gone to the car first.
“Yeah, I think so.” He got to his feet, looking for a pen and paper. “Look, can you just tell me what you remember? I can probably fake the rest.”
“There wasn’t really an exact recipe or anything. I’m not Betty Crocker, you know?”
“Dean.”
“Fine.” In one long breath, Dean rattled off a list of ingredients and directions so vague, Sam decided it was miracle that the stuff had ever tasted the same way twice. “That’s it.”
“That’s enough. Thanks.”
“Yeah. Well. Whatever. You’re welcome. What’s with this guy anyway? You playing happy homemaker after a week?”
“No. He’s just...someone I talk to and he looked miserable. Figured I’d get out of my own head a little. Do something for someone else.”
“Nice guy?” Dean asked like it didn’t matter to him one way or another, but Sam could practically feel the sharp edged worry.
“No. Not really. I’m not convinced he doesn’t hate me, actually.” Sam laughed without humor. “But it turns out that I’m a little low on friends these days.”
“So you’re going to make a guy who hates you soup? Dude. Why do you do these things to yourself?”
“Faith. I have to believe that it’s worth it to keep trying. So. Faith.” Sam said, surprising himself with the admission.
Dean was quiet and for a long heart stopping moment, Sam thought he had hung up. That used to be a frequent ending to their conversations, but usually it was after some serious yelling.
“Do you remember when we met Cas?” Dean broke the silence.
“Hard to forget.”
Cas had been all intensity then, flashing his badge and asking for Dean’s help like his brother was someone who could save the world. Sam and Dean lived in a crummy apartment filled with water stains and Sam’s textbooks. Standing in the doorway of that rented dump, cloaked in a trenchcoat and a storm raging outside, Cas had seemed otherworldly. It had been quite an entrance.
“He told me once that right from that moment he had faith in me.”
“Really? I mean you threatened to stab him with a steak knife.”
“I know, right? But he’s a weird motherfucker like that.” Dean snorted. “The thing is..after you and Ruby left town. I did some stupid shit. Doesn’t matter what and I almost lost that with him. Didn’t know how much I needed it until..... I just mean, you know. Faith is ok, Sam. If that’s all you got. Could be enough. Do me a favor though?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“Don’t fuck this guy. Once you stick your dick in something, it goes evil. You should get that checked out by a medical professional.”
“You are such an immense asshole.” This time Sam’s laughter was real and it almost hurt, shaking free from pain for that instant.
“STDs aren’t a laughing matter. I thought I taught you to always wear a raincoat.”
“I fucking hate you.” Sam doubled over and Dean laughed with him.
“Go make your soup, Samantha. I gotta go make sure Cas didn’t get lost on his way home again.”
“Again?”
“Don’t ask. He gets distracted by the light in the leaves or some shit. Talk to you soon.”
“Bye.”
The grocery store in the middle of the day was only marginally more busy than Target had been. He lingered in the produce department even after he’d gotten what he needed. There were strawberries, glistening red and unnaturally gigantic. He picked up one container, weighing it a little in his hand.
“Oh, get two.” An elderly lady with something suspiciously like a leer on her lips handed him a second container. “This late in the year they’re still sweet and growing locally.”
“Ok.” He accepted the container.
“Cut those up with some cream and your lady will eat them right out of your hand.”
“Good tip. Thanks.” He put the strawberries in his cart.
She kept smiling at him, so Sam edged slowly away and made a break for the cash register. Apparently his grief invisibility did not effect lusty old ladies. Because Sam’s luck was like that.
Making soup required a lot of cutting things up. Dean had always had an unholy affinity with knives. He kept all of them in their kitchen honed far more than the execution of a few vegetables required. Sam wondered idly if Dean ever cooked for Cas. There was an uneven domestic quality to their relationship, coming in and out of focus.
Handling a whole raw chicken was a new and interesting experience. Sam manhandled it into a pot and poured cans of broth over it, a little weirded out by the texture of it’s skin. The internet supplemented Dean’s direction of ‘cook it until it looks done’ with a suggestion of about two hours of simmering. That would carry him to about one o’clock. Normal lunch hour.
Only two weeks ago there had never been enough time. They lived every hour in a buzzing state of high alert. Work filled most of the day and their evenings had been spent in tense planning or fighting or partying or fucking. Life lived at maximum volume.
Now two hours put him at a loss. How the mighty had fallen.
The strawberries still sat on the counter, fragrant and plump. There were far too many of them for one person. Sam frowned at them, then turned to the internet. It made a few ludicrous suggestions, before finally giving up something that looked workable. He checked a few cabinets and they yielded up the goods. He had no idea when they had bought sugar or flour. Ruby didn’t even like to microwave her own dinner if she could get away with it. Had he picked them up in some vague idea of making cookies at some point?
He looked at the sugar. Remembered. Cake. For her birthday last year. He’d made a chocolate cake, but they’d wound up going out instead. Getting information, getting high, it all blurred together into one long streak of nothing. He’d eaten the cake himself over a series of late night snacks after she’d taken one forkful and pronounced it too sweet.
It didn’t matter. He had what he needed right now and that’s what he was going to concentrate on. The recipe was simple and he got to cut up strawberries with a level of viciousness that left the cutting board bleeding red juice onto the countertop. The catharsis was worth the stains. He licked the pulpy remains from his fingertips.
The heat pouring off the oven and the smell of the soup simmering gave the kitchen an alien feel. Sam didn’t have this life with home cooked meals and the smell of onions in the air. Rather than have some kind of breakdown over something a pathetically simple as baking, Sam retreated to the living room until the first timer went off.
It took a bit of juggling to organize a hot container of soup and still warm strawberry tart in such a way that he could ring Gabriel’s doorbell without burning himself or dropping anything. It took enough of his attention that he didn’t have time to worry about his neighbor’s reaction or if he was slowly losing his mind.
The door opened a crack and Gabriel looked out at him, face still mask of sniffling misery.
“Hi!” Sam said, too brightly “I made you some soup.”
“What?” Gabriel blinked at him, uncomprehendingly.
“Well, you looked really miserable and I have all this free time, so...soup. And a tart.”
“Are those strawberries?” Gabriel lifted the tart out of Sam’s hand, a smile starting at the edges of his lips.
“Yeah? This old woman at the supermarket sexually harassed me into buying them.”
A snort of laughter escaped from Gabriel and the door swung wider.
“You’re kind of pathetic, but you come baring food, so I’ll let it slide this once.” Gabriel walked off down the hall, leaving Sam to trail inside, closing the door with a self-conscious ‘click’.
The house was a mirror image of Sam’s side down to the front foyer with table and lamp. Except Gabriel’s table was piled up with mail and the lamp had probably never needed replacing after being thrown at someone’s head. The living room was a collection of deep couches and a recliner that Gabriel promptly collapsed in after setting the tart down on the coffee table.
There were books everywhere. It wasn’t quite at hoarder level as they were shoved into bookcases, but there was some serious cramming going on. The coffee table only held one or two, marked with post-it notes and crowded by empty mugs with tea bags dragging listlessly at the bottom.
“There are bowls and spoons in the cabinets.” Gabriel waved in the general direction of the kitchen, looking a little like a used teabag himself.
Following the unspoken command, Sam took his soup into the kitchen and began a hunt for the appropriate utensils. The cabinets were all stuffed full as the bookshelves with haphazard organization. The bowls turned out to be brightly colored plastic and the soup turned odd shades when poured into them.
“Here.” Sam handed a bowl over to Gabriel and took a tentative seat on the edge of the couch. It sunk welcomingly under him. “You have a staggering amount of candy bars.”
“Sweet tooth.” Taking a sip of soup, Gabriel made a soft sound of appreciation. “This is good.”
“My brother’s recipe. And that’s not a sweet tooth amount of candy. I think it might be a cry for help.”
“Says the man who’s too dumb to eat enough to keep his pants from falling off.”
Sam looked down at his cinched belt then reached for his own bowl. It was as good and filling as he remembered. He could practically feel Dean’s calloused fingers pressed to his forehead, the inaccurate desperate care of a teenage boy playing mother.
“So tell me,” Setting down his bowl and pulling a fluffy blanket more snugly around his shoulders, Gabriel eyed Sam, “how did a knight of faith wind up with a demon?”
“She wasn’t a demon.” Sam chewed his way through a piece of chicken, all too aware of Gabriel’s eyes on him. “And its a really long, complicated story.”
“It’s you or Judge Judy and frankly, there is only so much yelling at idiots one man can take in a day.” A strawberry chung teased out from the tart tumbled from Gabriel’s fingers to his mouth, the quick pink tip of his tongue licking away the residue. “Entertain me.”
“You won’t believe me.”
“Then it won’t matter what you tell me, would it? Stories I can’t believe would probably be more entertaining than petty lawsuits anyway.”
“God, who are you?” Sam stared at him. “Is this like...fun for you?”
“You’re the one that came over here.” Gabriel reminded him, another strawberry already in his fingers. “I figure you must be pretty desperate for company which means you have no friends to speak of, right? I saw you with her, heard some of your more rousing arguments thanks to poor soundproofing. She cut you off from everything else and you let her. So you have to talk to someone. Because people need to talk. You chose me, which I think is another show of terrible judgement on your part, but you might as well start yapping now or forever hold your piece.”
The silence stretched out like taffy. Sam set down his bowl and collapsed backwards onto the couch, eyes fixed to the ceiling.
“My mother died when I was a baby. The files all say accidental fire, but my Dad always said arson.” He closed his eyes against his words, unable to look at Gabriel’s reaction. “My brother and I grew up in the backseat of a car while my Dad zig zagged around the country trying to track down a man no one else believed existed.
“Right before the end of my senior year of high school, Dad went to check up on a lead and never came back. They found his body behind a bar, looked like he got the bad end of a fight. We looked for a while, but we were both so...so fucking tired, you know? Years of searching for this faceless guy, dragged halfway to hell and back. Dean was harder to convince, but I wanted to go to college and he wasn’t letting me go anywhere without him.”
“Big brothers are like that.” Gabriel said softly and Sam cracked open one eye to gauge his expression. Wrapped up like a mummy, Gabriel had the same neutral expression he wore while reading. “Overprotective.”
“I didn’t mind.” At the time he’d minded quite a bit, actually. In hindsight though, the memory of Dean’s insistence of traveling to Stanford warmed Sam. “It was good for both of us. I liked school and Dean finally had time to figure out who he wanted to be. Became an EMT, a good one.
“I met this girl,” and just the the thought of Jess was still enough to rattle the fragments of glass in his chest, “and we were taking it slow. I thought maybe... it doesn’t matter anymore. We had a date night at her place, every Friday. I was supposed to be over there, but Dean had a rough day, lost someone in the ambulance that looked like Dad. I got drunk at a bar with him instead. Didn’t know until the cops came by the next day that her building had burned to the ground. Killed a lot of people, including her.”
“God damn.” Gabriel whistled. “That’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“Right?” Sam snorted. “Cops didn’t seem to think so. Said it was a case of bad wiring. But us? We were right back on that trail. Ready to tear shit up. With no leads. No evidence. Just our Dad’s insane rambling journal. Then this guy shows up right at our door. An FBI agent, only we find out later not even a field agent. He’s an analyst usually buried deep behind a desk, but he found a pattern that everyone else was ignoring. Fires spaced two years apart all across the country.”
“So what? The three of you went vigilante? Roamed across the country again?”
“That would make a better story.” Sam sighed. “No. I stayed in school, Dean kept his job and Cas got enough proof between the three of us to get a task force on it. They found the son of a bitch by the time I graduated law school. Just this sad sack bastard with no life and a chemistry degree.”
“And then Ruby?”
“Oh yes.” Sam rubbed a hand across his eyes. “And then Ruby.”
“So...what? I assume you told me all that because it’s connected.”
“It is. Look, the thing is, I’ve spent about eighty percent of my life looking for revenge, right? Who killed my Mom, who killed Jess and never relaxed about it, not really, not for one minute. Dean too. We’re bloodhounds and all of a sudden, no more scent.” He made a broad gesture with his hands. “Dean started drinking and I started making a series of shitty choices, mostly in the form of women. Dean was chasing after me half the time and washing his hands of me the next.”
“Can’t imagine why.” The sarcastic drawl snapped through Sam, shaking him out of his reverie.
“Hey, you asked to hear it, least you could do is keep the color commentary in.”
“I thought I was behaving nicely.” Gabriel yawned.
“Am I boring you?”
“I’m sick and you filled me with food, try not to take some sleepiness personally, idiot.” Eyes were rolled and Sam felt chastened. “Go on, I promise I’m listening.”
“Well. Then there was Ruby.” She’d been so right for him just then, all curves and reassuring smiles. All secrets and hidden sharp edges. “We didn’t even date right away. I was working in a big firm and she was a clerk there. She came to me one night when I was working late.”
“Very cheap porno of her.”
“Not like that.” Though maybe a part of him had been hoping that at the time. “She had information. She filed all the paperwork for the firm and she claimed they’d hired me for a reason. That the arsonist hadn’t been working on his own, it was a cover up for crime syndicate. The firm itself was corrupt all the way through.”
“You sad fuck, you bought it didn’t you?”
“It took her months to convince me.” Which sounded weak even to him. “She had evidence, stacks of it and goddamn...I wanted to believe it. I needed to have something to hunt. Ruby handed me Lilith on a platter. Senior partner, in bed with a crime syndicate. Lilith was the one that hired me, even though my grades had been pretty bad the last year of law school. Ruby claimed they wanted to keep me close. That they had plans for me. When I was near convinced, I told Dean about it. Showed him the papers and everything.”
“Disaster.” Gabriel guessed.
“Yep. I think Dean was just...tired. Done.” He remembered the closing down of Dean’s face, the heavy bowing of his shoulders as if Sam were piling bricks on top of them. “He wouldn’t even read the stuff. ‘Let it go’, he said. The fight was epic.
“Maybe we could have patched it up, but Ruby said we had to move. Had to get closer to the source. Lilith was mostly based in the Boston office. It took some doing, but we both got transferred out here.” He had been such an idiot, willingly following Ruby across the country away from the only family he had left. “I was in love with her by then.”
“And we know love makes men fools.”
“I meant it when I said I didn’t regret that part of it.” Sam said firmly.
“When did you find out she was duping you?”
“The night she died.” The ceiling had a hairline crack, disappearing into their shared wall. He wondered if it crossed into his own living room, a tiny schism bridging their homes. “We were in the middle of a fight, an ugly one, and I finally thought, ‘I can’t live like this’ and I told her that either we moved in for the kill soon or I was going back to California.”
“You put her back to the wall.” Gabriel applauded. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Thanks.” Sam drawled. “That means so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
“She stormed out.” He went on, too full of steam to stop. “Called me later to tell me to come by the office late. That we’d break into the files she’d always claimed were too risky to touch. And I went early. Just early enough.
“They were talking, her and Lilith, in Lilith’s Corvette and they had the top down like they didn’t care who heard.” He could see their tender exchange of kisses between words that tore the wool from his eyes. “Didn’t even notice me pulling in a few spots away. They were laughing about me. Making plans to keep me on the hook. I stormed out of the car and they both saw me...and just for a second, Ruby looked... regretful.”
“Wow. Really?” ‘You’re a moron’ was implied heavily, but Sam ignored it.
“Really. She did. Lima Syndrome.”
“She turned into a disgusting bean?”
Sam frowned at him and Gabriel lifted one eyebrow.
“No. It’s...reverse Stockholm Syndrome.”
“You’re comparing your grand affair slash conspiracy theory to a hostage situation?”
“Do you have a better metaphor?”
Silence settled in, uneasy and tense.
“It just seems a bit...much.” Gabriel admitted.
“And you didn’t have to live it. I told you it was unbelievable.” Sam ran his hands through his hair. “You can turn on Judge Judy if you want.”
“How did she die?” The question was nearly kind.
“Please don’t make me-” He cut himself off because Gabriel wasn’t making him do anything. He was just watching with burnished dark eyes and not a trace of judgement in his face. “Lilith. She saw how angry I was. She peeled out of the parking lot and out into the road, laughing. And this truck. God. The guy had no way of seeing them.
“The coroner assured me they died on impact. And I know what it sounds like. I lived this cheap movie, ok?”
“Ok, Sam.” That tart was almost entirely gone and the tips of Gabriel’s fingers were stained red. “That’s your story.”
“No other one I can give.”
Gabriel nodded as if that’s what he’d expected. He reached for a tissue, blew his nose and then leaned back in his chair.
“I’m one of twelve kids.” He said.
“What?”
“Yeah, I know, right? Mom wasn’t big on the birth control. Wanted all the kids God chose to give her.” Gabriel ignored the puzzled that Sam shot at him. “Dad ran the family like an army. Good training because we’re a military family from way back. Everyone joins ups.”
“Except you?”
“Including me.” Gabriel snorted. “I was an obedient son. Then the war came and half of us shipped out. Left the younger ones at home with Mom and Dad, received our care packages in the mail and carried out our duty.”
“I can’t imagine you at war.” Sam winced as soon as the words came out. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I spent a lot of time fashioning myself a new life.” Gabriel gestured broadly at the house. “You come back different sometimes. I came back shaky. Every little sound put me on edge. Mike and Luc, both of them got a taste for it. Mike volunteered for another tour and Luc went to war with our Dad. No peace to be found in any room of the house”
“I used to fight like that with my father.”
“No.” Gabriel said harshly. “You didn’t. This was...blood was shed. One of my brothers got between them during one fight and Luc broke his jaw. Mike came home on leave and between the two of them, they almost burned down the house. The younger kids were terrorized.
“The day the guns came out, I called CPS. Stayed until I was sure all the little ones were safe and then I took the first flight out to Boston.” Idly, Gabriel picked at the crust of the tart. “Mike went back overseas. Dad and Luc both disappeared off the map. I went to school, got a job and pretended that I never had a family ever since. Or they’re pretending they never have me. Either works.”
“I’m so sor-”
“Don’t.” Gabriel nibbled on a piece of crust, crumbs dusting over his blanket. “Point is that weird shit happens. I get that more than most people might. Lives can sound like cheap movies. Yours may be more John Grisham to my Lifetime Special, but it adds up the same way.”
“What the hell Lifetime specials have you been watching?” Sam blurted.
“Why? You want to recommend a favorite?” The sliver of a smile told Sam that the quip was better than whatever else he could have said.
They didn’t talk about their pasts again. Instead they waste the afternoon comparing their terrible television tastes and come up with a mutual appreciation for Storage Wars. It was easy after that to find a few episodes on Gabriel’s Netflix account and watch them until it went dark.
“Get out of my house.” Commanded Gabriel when the shadows grew long. “I have to go be respectable tomorrow.”
Sam took his empty pie tin, tupperware and the copy of Don Quixote with him. Dishes went into the sink and the book with him up to bed. When he reached the part where the delusional knight struck out for the windmills, he laughed and the glass in his chest ceased to exist for a brief instant as the sound spilled into the dark.