Searching Together {A Sabriel Fanfic}

1

"This is my voice mail. Ma-"

Sam hit the end call button for what felt like the thousandth time, so much so that his thumb naturally hovered over its location. He tossed his phone onto the library table and buried his head in his hands, shaking it, before running his fingers through so his locks brushed back for a moment before falling back into place, leaning his head back over the chair, staring up at the ceiling with closed eyes. He had searched the city for a week after Dean's disappearance and found nothing, so he returned to the bunker with nowhere else to go. Every sound in the bunker that now seemed to big and empty made him alert, wondering if someone had gotten in or if Dean had somehow made his way back.

For the first time in a long time, he was alone. He felt like a kid again, when Dean would sneak out before dad came home to screw around or buy groceries or something like that. He felt vulnerable.

Sam shook his head again and he closed his laptop slowly, which had a multitude of tabs open, searching for any vampire activity in or around Ohio, but nothing seemed to stand out, or perhaps it was just the words of endless articles from endless news sites and e-mails of other hunters blurring together. No leads or anything. Why was it some days he could stumble across a random case without even looking but now when it really mattered, he came up with nothing?

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a knock on the bunker door. Sam's head snapped up to the door, and felt around to his back where a pistol sat snugly at the crook of his lower back. He kept his hand there as he climbed up the stairs slowly, the knocks growing louder and more impatient. His hand hovered over the door for a moment before unlocking it and swinging it open, immediately whipping out his pistol and aiming it at the forehead of the culprit behind the knocks, only to discover that it was a visitor he knew well, but he hadn't seen in way too long.

Gabriel stood there, glancing upwards at the gun pointed at his head. "Sheesh, calm down. You're like a baby moose," He brought his hand up and smacked the gun away to the ground. Then, as though he had lived there all his life, pushed past Sam and sauntered down the stairs, looking around the spacious map room, leaving a speechless Sam following him. Gabriel noticed this, turning around, his golden locks shifting slightly, the bright bunker lights making them shine. "What, cat got your tongue Sam?"

"Y-You're supposed to be-"

"Dead? Oh, yeah, right. Playing dead got boring, so I decided to drop buy. Especially after not feeling Castiel's energy, even after I left the pornstar party," For a moment, his pupils turned a light blue before fading, as though he were double or even triple checking for the presence of his fellow angel, but felt nothing, evident by the disappointment which made his jaw slack.

"How did you survive? Lucifer stabbed you, we saw your wings on the ground," Sam was almost choked by the memory and he didn't know why. Seeing Gabriel's lifeless body, spread so gracefully across the ground, his wings spread outwards like a bird falling from the sky. Though his murder was violent, his death looked peaceful.

"Sammy, really? Do you think I think Lucifer was that dumb, to fall for one fake? I had two, and he stabbed a fake." Sam was almost infuriated about how nonchalant Gabriel was being. Without warning, Sam grabbed Gabriel's wrist and squeezed it so hard that it forced his palm open. The archangel looked taken aback, and watched silently as Sam pulled out a knife made of silver and cut into his palm, watching to see if it would burn. To his relief, it didn't. Gabriel opened his mouth to say something but shut it as holy water splashed his face. Sam could never be too careful. "Done now?" Gabriel asked in exasperation, brushing his hands down the front of his clothes to dry the holy water.

"Yeah. I just...wanted to be certain it was you," Sam screwed the canteen of holy water shut and slipped it back into his back pocket, "What were you saying before? You couldn't feel Cas's energy?"

Gabriel nodded, "I'll some times checked to see what angels are still around, see if they died or lost grace or something. I always feel Castiel's, but not this time," Concern was evident in the archangel's voice, which did not at all make Sam feel better that a being far more powerful than him was worried as well.

"Dean's missing too," Sam said, which made Gabriel cock and eyebrow.

"Really? Huh, maybe they're just fucking each other somewhere," It was always like the archangel to try and insert his dry humor somewhere, and while Sam did find it funny, he wasn't in a laughing mood. Gabriel seemed to notice this and crossed his arms. "How'd he go missing? You two are always together like those weird oblong magnets all the 2000s kids have and make that annoying ass sound."

"We were hunting vampires, and while I was fighting one he got overpowered by a couple. The next thing I knew...he was just gone," Chills crept up Sam's back as he remembered that night, which was only two weeks ago. It felt like months.

"When'd this happen?"

"Like, two weeks ago?"

"That's when I noticed Cas was missing."

The two looked into each other's green eyes for a long, silent moment. It was obvious the two were connected somehow. How could they not be? An angel and his brother who have known each other for years disappearing like crystallized breath into the air. But how? Cas was nowhere near them that night, at least not that Sam knew of.

Gabriel moved over to Sam's laptop, snapping his fingers to flip it open and power it up. "Well, let's see what ya got sasquatch," he went to sit down in the chair Sam had been researching in, but Sam pulled the chair away before he could.

"There is no way I'm trusting you with my laptop," Sam forced Gabriel into the chair next to him as he took control of the laptop, sorting through tabs upon tabs of articles set in Ohio. Gabriel scooched his chair over close to Sam's, watching with furrowed brows. To get a closer look at a few articles, he leaned in slightly, his arm just touching Sam's, but the simplest nudge from him made Sam's chest feel tight, for a reason eh could not explain. He ignored it and continued, when Gabriel stopped him.

"Your problem is you're looking for Twilight blood-suckers, not Dean. Did you even try searching his credit card? He eats a burger like every twenty minutes, it would be easy to track him."

Sam nodded, realizing Gabriel was right. He pulled up a tracker, plugged in Dean's credit card number, and got absolutely nothing. Why was he not surprised?

"Maybe his cellphone?" Sam posed, looking to where he would find such information. 'No Location Found.' The error message made Sam want to throw his laptop in Gabriel's face.

"Welp, I'm all out of ideas," Gabriel stretched and yawned over-dramatically, "And I'm tired. Got any place for me to sleep bigfoot?"

Sam glanced at the clock on his monitor, and realized that it was almost 2 in the morning and he hadn't even noticed it. Upon his body becoming aware of the time, the exhaustion hit him all at once, yawning along with Gabriel. "Yeah, You can have like a sleep bag in my room or whatever," He knew they had two perfectly usable beds, but it seemed wrong for Gabriel to sleep in either Dean's or Cas' bed when they were missing.

"Uh-uh, not happening. This vessel has back problems," He patted his back, "I'll just sleep in your bed if you don't take up all the room."

Sam's chest constricted once again at the suggestion, but reluctantly, he agreed. He led the archangel to his room, which still looked like an abandoned project from when they had first moved in. He was simply waiting for the day that this home would be taken from them too. Sam climbed into one side of his king sized bed, not bothering to change, while Gabriel did the same. It didn't take long for Gabriel to begin snoring, which is when Sam realized one crucial point - angels didn't need to sleep. So why was Gabriel? No, on the list of questions he had, that was the least important. Curiosity struck him at random, and caused Sam to roll over silently to look at Gabriel's sleeping figure. His face was half buried in the pillow, and some rogue golden locks fell over his face. Without thinking, Sam took the stray hair and pushed them back, and then becoming aware of what he just did, rolled back over and closed his eyes, though it was hard to sleep with his heart thumping so loudly.