Mint and apricots

40. In someone else's bed

When Sam woke up, the soft winter light that had accompanied his waiting on the doorstep a few hours earlier wasn't filtering through the white curtains of the bedroom anymore. It was evening. It was dark and he had just woken up in Gabriel Hale's bed when Luc was nowhere near. If Sam hadn't felt like someone had replaced his head with a ten-pound bag of sand, he would have jumped up in surprise. But, too warm and occasionally shivering as he found himself to be, he just lifted his head slightly to look around through his half-closed eyelids in the dim light.

Someone – Gabriel, no doubt – had spread a grass-colored crochet blanket over his body and left another neatly folded one at the end of the bed, just in case. Going away, he had pulled the door without closing it. Noticing that gesture warmed Sam's heart, because it reminded him how his mother used to do the same when he and Dean were children, so that the noises outside their bedroom would not disturb them but her children would have still felt free to call or go look for her at any time.

With a tremendous effort, Sam sat up, placed his feet on the floor and stood there for a few seconds. Thank God he had put some clothes on before he collapsed, or facing Gabriel now would have been even more embarrassing than he already anticipated.

Sam got up cautiously and took a few steps to the window, just to check if he could trust his legs. Although those hours of sleep had been a godsend, he still felt sluggish, as if at the beginning of a flu.

Surely staying out for two hours in just a sweatshirt and covered in sweat in this cold did not do you much good, genius, his conscience scolded him.

And it could have been worse, Sam realized as he pulled back a curtain to take a look outside: it was snowing heavily. Roofs, gardens and streets were already covered in a soft white mantle that promised to increase over the night, to the delight of children and the misfortune of drivers. If nothing else, it was Friday, but Sam wondered how he would have got home. Only after formulating that thought did he realize that once again he was trying to distract himself from the most pressing problem.

What was he doing there? Why had he gone to Gabriel – damn it, why had he risked pneumonia to wait for him at the front door? The disconnected arguments that had haunted his morning run flooded his mind without resolving anything. Sam didn't know what he wanted. Or maybe he didn't know how to recognize it. What was clear to him was that he couldn't hang in that room forever, waiting for the situation he had created to resolve itself.

Grow a pair, sissy, Dean's voice urged inside his head.

And as much as his older brother annoyed him every time he sported that attitude, Sam took up his courage. He took a deep breath, walked to the bedroom door and tried to appear as stable as possible as he reached the lower floor one step at a time, suppressing the chills he felt consuming him to his bones.

He had gone halfway down the staircase, holding on to the handrail, when he finally heard the music. Serene notes accompanied his last steps towards the ground floor and Sam stopped at the edge of the modest open space that embraced the living room and the kitchen, observing.

Despite any information that came to him from his senses was muffled by his worsening state, the boy immediately registered Gabriel's presence behind the kitchen counter. He had the same simple but tidy look of that morning, with the hems of his dark shirt pulled off and falling down on his pants-covered hips and his light hair combed back. He had his back to Sam, busy around cutting boards and stoves under the warm light of the chandelier, and he had begun humming along with the melody that was being transmitted by the frequencies of the radio.

"Well, I was young and naive. Said, I appreciate you comin 'round. But I got a house made of brick here. Ain't no wind gonna bring it down."

Parting and licking his lips as he listened to him, Sam thought he had a beautiful voice. Low, warm and vibrant like the ones the boy remembered coming from some of his father's old vinyls, the ones no one knew what happened to after the old family home was emptied and given to people with less memories. One of those voices that should have been heard on summer nights, on the porch of a country house, accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a few bottles of beer. Sam found himself wondering if Gabe had ever done it, singing for a summer love while the sultry July air turned pleasantly warm and the fireflies rose from the meadows, creating the perfect frame for that voice and its mature, aware timbre. Maybe even too mature for a thirty-one year old man.