it’s nice of baby to split her soul in two so she can be in heaven and in sam’s garage at once. very thoughtful. good girl.

Night rider

(Being a 11x04 coda intended for Sabriel fluff Friday, since @aria-lerendeair isn’t fluffying today; only it’s not exactly fluffy, and is about as much Gabriel/Impala as Gabriel/Sam. But hey!)

Gabriel has a new friend.

Hey, he’s proud of it, okay? At his age more than one new friend per century ain’t bad. Not to mention that whole little detail where he’s, you know, a disembodied wisp of intent and irritation. (But a cute wisp. He knows his own worth.)

His new friend - well, she’s not new in the sense of young. ‘Course, she’s not a blip compared to him anyway, and even by human standards she isn’t that ancient; but for what she is, she’s a wise old bird.  And it’s not like they’ve never met before, neither. Hell, she protected him, housed him once already: unlocked her doors, invited him in, kept him safe and hidden when he needed it. Maybe that’s where the first faint thread of connection was forged: Gabriel, an hour before his bits were scattered across the dimensions by the point of his own sword, burrowing himself and the last vestiges of his crumbling cowardly carelessness into her fierce, mute protection.

And protective she is alright: that’s the heart and centre of her being. Conscious? Not so much; but she knows her folks, their blood and their pain and their spirit. And for reasons of her own she welcomed Gabriel, when he came creeping for sanctuary again just lately: after he locked on to Sam’s prayer at the hospital, after he trailed his lonely sorry heavy way in Sam’s wake and finally found somewhere his consciousness could take hold. And now she knows Gabriel too.

So, possessing a car.

Not the classiest move, but it’s been done before. Not by angels. Probably. Not archangels, anyway. And the fucking embarrassing part of it? She’s stronger than he is. All he can do is watch, and think.

They were in a bare room near the boiler. It was a funny sort of shape - small, with a chunk taken out of one side by the boiler machinery and a wooden counter running all around the walls - so they never really used it. But it was a few degrees higher than the rest of the bunker, which tended toward the chilly, so apparently today it got to be baby change-room central. Sam was meant to be sterilising the bottles and getting formula ready, but he was kind of distracted. So sue him - this was maybe the strangest thing he’d seen in years.

There was no ceiling light in this room, so Castiel had dragged in a floor lamp from one of the bedrooms. Dean and Castiel were a little huddle, bent together in the soft, warm triangle of light, all their focus (for once) not on each other’s eyes and the strange knot of tension that always hovered in the air between them. Just looking at this tiny dark-haired thing curled up against Castiel’s chest. All wondering touches and soft voices, like they were united, just for a while, in bemusement over this... thing.

“I thought their eyes couldn’t focus so young.” 

Dean’s finger reached out, traced across the baby’s cheek, earned a small noise.

“Guess nobody told her that. Wants to get you all figured out - don’t you, darlin’?”

There was a lazy ease to Dean’s voice when he spoke to her that brought out the drawl, the one he usually kept hidden under the sharpness of the job, of being a the tough guy with the world on his shoulders. It did strange, uneasy things to Sam’s gut - some not-quite-right feeling that he couldn’t place.

The pale curve that was all Sam could see of the baby’s face vanished, turned in against Castiel’s chest, and one arm twitched like she was trying to burrow in but could quite work out how to move.

“She’s - Dean, what is she doing? Does she need something?”

Castiel sounded halfway between mesmerised and alarmed, like he was on the verge of shoving the baby back into Dean’s arms, just in case he broke it.

“What’re you after, hmm?” Dean crooned - yes crooned, holy shit - then, after a few seconds of the baby squirming and Castiel murmuring something Sam couldn’t hear, Dean took her back and tucked her in against his chest, unwinding the towel deftly as he went.

“Sammy, we’re gonna need that bottle soon. Sorry about this, girl, but you really a new diaper.”

Unhappy baby noises and a smell that wasn’t actually all that much like poop followed Sam out of the room.