to build a home

thought of you

"Back again, Dean?"

Gabriel grins widely as Dean nervously opens the front door.

"Have you been waiting for me to come in?" Dean asks. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough to know it took you an embarrassing amount of tries to get the guts to come in," Gabriel snorts. Dean glowers.

"Anyone ever tell you you're a dick?"

"All the time," Gabriel beams. "You coming in, or what?"

Dean glances worriedly, momentarily, at the doorframe, before stepping inside. Gabriel watches him with amusement lacing his gaze.

"The house doesn't bite, you know," He smirks. Dean rolls his eyes.

"It's not the house I'm worried about," He answers, which earns him a bark of laughter from Castiel's older brother.

"Yeah, I'd almost forgotten about that fight, yesterday."

"No you hadn't," Dean grates his teeth together and makes his way down the corridor, to the living room, where he suspects Cas will be.

"Yeah, maybe not," Gabriel admits with a brilliant smile. "But shiva is boring. Can you blame me for being entertained by it?" Dean shrugs in answer, and Gabriel continues. "Speaking of, d'you think you're gonna have another fight, today? 'Cause that'd be the perfect end to the perfect week."

This comment comes out sardonic and droll and Gabriel's voice cracks strangely in his throat. Dean glances at him as if to reconsider the man he has know some twenty-three years.

"It's been shitty, huh?" He asks. Perhaps his tone and expression are just the right amount of sympathetic and frank, because for the first time this week, Gabriel's shoulders slump earnestly, and his expression clears with sorrow and despondency and exhaustion.

"Shitty?" He repeats. "Yeah." A thick swallow, and then he continues. Dean glances quickly, subtly as he can about the room for sign of Castiel, but he isn't here. "Nobody gets—" He cuts himself off, looking down. "They're all like, hey, my dad died two years ago, but it wasn't unexpected for them. The had warning. And I know you can't prepare for it, of course you can't ever prepare for it—but after mom, you'd think—right? You'd think we'd get fair notice. Right?"

He looks up at Dean with the eyes of a pleading man. Dean's brow slopes with sympathy.

"Right," He agrees. Then, "You angry about it?"

"Pissed," Gabriel's lip curls minutely. "I don't know if Cas or Michael get that. But I'm pissed. This isn't fair. This isn't how things are supposed to happen."

"Yeah," Dean agrees. "It's shit."

Gabriel looks at Dean intently.

"But you get that, don't you, Dean?" Dean falters, unsure what it is Gabriel means, but he continues. "I mean—I know this is way out of line for me to say—but your dad died in an accident—so you get it, don't you? It's like, he's been ripped away from you. And there's no time for goodbyes, no time for—for anything. You're just left. Half a person, it feels like."

Dean reaches out to Gabriel without thinking, hand on his shoulder.

"Totally," He agrees. "And being pissed about it—that's fine. That's right. It's right, if it's how you feel. That's what Jimmy said to me when my dad died, and it was like, the only thing anyone said that comforted me. So now I'm saying it to you. Jimmy was pretty much the only person who comforted me, except—"

Speak of the devil.

Gabriel follows Dean's gaze to the doorway, where his younger brother now stands.