Mint and apricots

37. Annihilated

Gabriel hesitated for a moment, as if he doubted it would be convenient for him to speak again. But he didn't last long.

"How the heck do you know his name?"

Castiel sighed and closed his eyelids for a brief moment.

"Because we are talking about my brother-in-law. My husband's brother. Sam Winchester."

Even if Gabriel was flabbergasted, Castiel didn't really realize. By then he was already too busy rubbing his eyes and his face with one hand, trying to recover and pull himself together for what was to come. His patient's choice of words, though, was what shook him and saved him from that self-imposed solitude.

"I would congratulate you on marrying a guy with great genes, but right now even you are starting to scare me."

Looking up, Castiel realized that joking had become a defensive barrier for Gabriel, so he hurried up to fix it.

"You must not to be afraid of me, that I can assure you. Trust me, please, and listen," he intervened, straightening his back and turning to Gabriel with an imitation of the serene smile that he had always been able to offer him, at each of their appointments in the studio. "I would like to understand what happened yesterday, from the moment you met Sam and Luc to the moment I came to pick up Sam outside your house."

"You?" Gabriel exclaimed, clinging to the armrests of the armchair in a rush of theatricality. "Wait a minute, so that amazing Chevrolet Impala was yours?"

Taken aback by his return to joviality, Castiel snorted in a laughter.

"It's Dean's," he corrected him, thinking about how much his husband would have got along with someone who proved to be so ready to praise his Baby in no uncertain terms. Then, taking advantage of the crooked smile on his patient's face, he pulled out of his sleeve their old agreement, the one that had allowed Castiel to understand Gabriel and the latter to let the first soothe his pain: "How about we do as we have always done? In exchange for your story, you will get mine. I'll explain everything to you. So, Gabriel, do you want to play?"

The man's half smile became a lightning-fast grin.

"Definitely yes."

And so it happened that, after Gabriel described his 27th December from top to bottom and confirmed all of his psychotherapist's assumptions regarding the meeting between Sam and Luc, Castiel made him aware of everything that had preceded that fatal event. He spared him nothing. Castiel had a gentle soul, but he was conscious of the needs that had come up with the current circumstances. Saving Gabriel from the most gruesome details of what Luc had done to Sam wasn't going to help anyone, not in the long run. Castiel had clear priorities: he had only one chance, one single plan, and he would not have allowed any scruples to doom him to failure.

The other side of the coin of this firmness, however, condemned him to pay the price: Gabriel was annihilated by the truth about his best friend from high school. He had never doubted that Luc was a normal person – troubled by what life had reserved for him during some of his most fragile phases, yes, but still normal – and being forced to confront his dark side destroyed his spirit. Fortunately for Castiel, Gabriel had always responded well to thrashings, in whatever form they presented themselves.