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It's a grey, rainy april day in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Winchesters are in town with their angels hunting a witch who's been making her victims literally choke on flowers as they grew in their lungs.
As Sam and Dean walk into the coroner's office at the police station, they're greeted by the young mortuary assistant at the front desk, her wavy red hair pulled back in a ponytail as she stands fiddling with her necklace.
“Agent Collins, this is Agent Speight.” Dean says, holding up his badge. “We're here to see the flower vics.”
“Of course. Right this way.” She replies, leading them into the morgue. “I’m Maggie, by the way. Maggie Duncan. Now, I've worked here for almost 10 years, and I have never seen anything like this. Well, there was an episode of Gotham that's similar, but those flowers burst out of the chest as whole plants. These were coughed and vomited up, and painfully.” She rambles, pulling away the sheet on the body of a young man somewhere in his thirties, face covered in petechial hemorrhages and grey dead eyes completely bloodshot from the force with which the poor guy had hacked and coughed trying to get the flowers out.
“Yikes. Dying from flowers, that's gotta be the worst way to go.” Dean sighs, cringing at the sight.
“Funnily enough, cause of death wasn't asphyxiation. It was a brain bleed. He literally burst a blood vessel in his brain from coughing so hard.” Maggie explains, handing them the autopsy report.
“Damn. I'm definitely gonna be thinking about that next time I catch cold.” Dean says, looking it over. “What is uhh…Dice enter…specter billies?”
“Bleeding Hearts.” Maggie and Sam responded in unison.
“It's a flower.” Maggie says awkwardly. “In floriography, it means unrequited and one sided love.”
“Heh. Imagine dying to bleeding heart and it's not from a stab wound, it's from a frickin flower.” Dean jokes, earning an eyeroll from Sam. “Sorry, uh...it's not funny.”
Just then, Sam's phone buzzes with a call from Gabriel.
“It's Gabe.” Sam says, stepping out of the room to answer the phone. “Hey, Gabe, you got anything?”
°
“Hey, Samshine, I got you on speaker, so don't go saying anything naughty, kiddo. Me and Cas are at the last vic’s apartment. No hex bags, but there's definitely something witchy going on, we can feel it.” Gabriel says, looking around the apartment with Castiel. The place is absolutely littered with bloody flowers, flowers Castiel said were called bleeding hearts.
Gabriel much preferred white lilies, if he's being honest…
“Feel it? Like weird energy?” Sam asks over the phone.
“More like the residue of an extremely powerful spell.” Castiel says.
“Yeah, whoever the witch is, she's got some serious skills. Could be better than Rowena for all we know.” Gabriel adds.
“Alright, you two finish up there, we'll meet you guys back at the motel for some dinner and a movie. How's pizza sound, Cas?” Dean asks.
“You know I don't eat, Dean.” Castiel replies with a little smile so fond it made Gabriel wanna gag.
“Okay, I'm hanging up now so you two don't start having phone sex on my phone!” Gabriel exclaims teasingly. “Talk to you later, Samshine.” Gabriel says, hearing a weird sparky noise before he hangs up. Probably morgue sounds…
Cas rolls his eyes at his older brother, looking every bit a petulant little brother. “You're unbearable.”
“And you're hopelessly sappy and romantic when it comes to that living ken doll you call Dean.” Gabriel replies.
“Jerk.”
“Sap.”
Just then, the angel brothers sense someone entering the apartment. A very powerful someone.
“It’s the witch.”
“I know it's the witch, you idiot. We gotta get out, Cas. What's she doing here?”
“I don't know. Wait, I can't fly out. I'm stuck.”
“Fuck. I can't either. What the fu—”
Just then, a red haired, fair skinned woman enters the room they're in, looking at them with a smug grin.
“Well, well, well. That enochian tattoo I got actually works.” She says in surprise, pulling her shirt down a bit to reveal enochian inked across her collar bones, a warding to shut down angelic powers in the ward’s presence. “I'll have to thank Rosie later. For now, I've got a bloody archangel in my web.”
“What do you want from us?” Castiel asks, glaring at her.
“What do I want?” She asks, seemingly surprised they didn't know. “I want to show you how little people actually love each other. How rare true, unconditional love is nowadays. You see, I've seen you earlier today, with your partners…Sam and Dean. The Winchesters. They can't possibly love you enough.” She laughs cruelly, placing a small bowl on the dresser and dropping in different flowers and herbs. “Sam treats you like his bestest platonic friend, Castiel. And as for you, Gabriel, Dean hates your freaking guts. He can barely look at you, poor lad. And yet your love, it poisons you. Chokes you. Steals your every bloody breath.”
“Okay, I think you're a little confused.” Gabriel laughs. “Dean isn't—”
“It must hurt. The denial, the desperation to believe you're loved.” She cuts him off, cutting her hand over the bowl. “I'll free you from it. I'll free you from this illusion, and you'll die happy knowing the truth. That that pair of bampots don't love you.”
“No!—”
“Tachdadh air do ghaol ann am blàthan!” She yells, slamming her hand into the bowl. A shockwave of pink magic bursts outward, knocking the brothers back into the window frame and crumbling them to floor.
Gabriel hauls himself back to his feet, grabbing for the pocket knife Sam gave him and swinging for her chest. The blade slices through the tattoo, and once the angels feel their wings again, they immediately fly out to the motel, landing on the floor in a messy, disheveled heap. Sam and Dean arrive a few minutes later, finding them still crumpled on the floor, looking like they'd just fought the devil himself.
The second Castiel lays eyes on Dean, his chest burns. It feels like his lungs are filled with something foreign, something that shouldn't be there. He doubles over coughing as part of whatever it is starts to come up his throat, Dean immediately rushing to his side and rubbing his back as he asks Gabriel what the fuck happened.
“The witch…she showed up. Some red head with a hospital badge...” Is all Gabriel can manage before he starts coughing too, Sam's presence at his side somehow making it worse. God, it hurts. He doesn't deserve him. He hurt him, he hurt him, he hurt—
And then Cas coughs up whatever it was in his throat, opening his shaky hand to reveal a flower.
A single anemone blossom, streaked with blood.
“Oh, fuck.” Dean whispers shakily, holding his angel tighter as the realization hits them all.
“She hit them with the spell.” Sam says in horror, watching as Gabriel hacks up a single purple hyacinth blossom.
Dean stands suddenly, grabbing his duffel bag and pulling out his gun and a case of witch killing bullets.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks.
“What does it look like, Sam? I'm gonna kill this fucking bitch!” Dean shouts, heading for the door. “Red head? Hospital badge? You saw that Maggie chick dip as soon as we got off the phone. She disappeared! So I'm gonna find her, and I'm gonna put a bullet in her skull!”
“Dean, no!” Cas rasps, standing up shakily only to immediately fall back into the bed. “She cast a spell on an archangel. This power is beyond us, Dean. It's beyond me. You'll do nothing but get yourself killed if you go after her, or worse.”
“Then how the hell are we supposed to save you, Cas?!” Dean snaps.
“We'll call Rowena. She'll know what to do.” Sam replies, helping Gabriel into the lumpy motel bed. “In the meantime, I'll do some research. Try and figure out what we're dealing with here.”
Dean sighs in defeat, shoving the gun and bullets back in the bag and sitting down on the bed angrily. Cas weakly lays in the bed beside him, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and the hunter sighs and turns to tuck him in properly, looking at him with raw, unfiltered terror behind his eyes.
Of course Dean was afraid. He's already lost Castiel so many times now. To Leviathans, to Purgatory, to Lucifer, to The Empty. He just got him back seven months ago, he can't…he can't say goodbye again. Not like this. Not with Jack and Claire waiting for them at the bunker with Charlie. Not when things were finally so good and happy and perfect.
Not when he's finally gotten a tiny slice of the life he's always wanted for them.
Dean doesn't even hear Sam talking to Rowena on the phone, barely listens to him reading words like hanahaki or love sickness off his laptop. He just watched Castiel curled beside him, so weak and pale, petichea forming on his cheeks from his coughing.
Gabriel seemed to be declining much slower, probably due to him being an Archangel, and surprisingly Dean felt bad for the guy. The bastard had killed him over a 100 times, and yet Dean cringed watching him hack up purple hyacinths.
A little while later, Rowena arrives, greeting Sam at the doorway with a hug.
“Oh, I got here as quick as I could. Bloody teleportation spells can be so difficult. When you said they were coughing up flowers, I knew immediately the only spell that could be.” Rowena says, setting her bag on the table.
“Okay, well…what is it?” Sam asks anxiously.
“Tachdadh air do ghaol ann am blàthan. Translated to English, it literally means suffocate on your love in blooms.” Rowena explains. “Typically, I've seen it cast by jealous lovers and jaded exes. I will admit, I…may have used it once, on…Fergus’ father, but you know what? The bastard had it coming.”
“Wait, so the witch is punishing people for being in love? Why would she—”
“No.” Cas rasps, weakly sitting up. “She said…she said she was going to prove to us that no one in this world truly loves each other.”
“She also thought I was dating Dean, and Cas was dating Sam. I don't know what the fuck made her think that.” Gabriel says with a laugh.
“What?” Dean asks, completely deadpan with disbelief. “She thought I was with you? That's ridiculous.”
“I know, right? I mean, you freaking hate me. And I wouldn't blame you, I mean I killed you like over a 100 times!” Gabriel agrees, before suddenly another coughing fit seizes him.
“Would killing the witch stop it?” Dean asks, itching to gank this evil fucking witch that did this to his angel.
“Possibly, but…with magic like this, it's also more than likely killing her would only makes things worse.” Rowena says. “There is one way to lift the spell. It can only be lifted by the object of the victim’s affections returning those feelings.”
“So you're telling me all I have to do is tell Cas I love him? I say that every day, I said it while we were waiting for you, it did nothing!” Dean snaps.
“Well, you've got to say it with your whole heart, you bampot!” Rowena snaps back, taking a deep breath to steady herself. “Winchesters. I swear, your emotional intelligence is in the bleeding gutter. The spell requires a full and honest declaration of love, straight from the core of your heart. So a wee little I love you isn't gonna cut it, is it boys?”
“Okay, so we have a way to fix it. Just…show love. Fully and honestly, from the heart. Using our words. That's gonna be easy, right Dean?” Sam says, and Dean immediately knew that no, it's not gonna be fucking easy.
Words? Dean's fucking terrible at words. Hell, the last time he was fully emotionally open was when Cas came back from the Empty, and that was partly because he was a fucking mess already.
“Dean…I'm gonna take Gabriel to my room to give you some space.” Sam says, suddenly standing near Dean's bed, Gabriel leaning against him unsteadily. “It'll be okay, Dean.”
“Goodnight, Sam.” Dean replies, still looking at his bag of weapons, still thinking of how great it would feel to kill that fucking witch right about now.
“Best of luck, boys. I'll see if I can get a location on your witch. Talk in the morning?” Rowena says, heading out the door as Sam politely holds it open for her.
Then the door shuts, and Dean is alone with his barely clinging to life angel, and he finds he can barely speak.
“Dean…” Cas rasps from behind him, breathing ragged. “It's okay. I know you feel like you're unable to fix this—”
“Yeah, cause I'm not, Cas!” Dean snaps, standing up suddenly and turning to look directly at him. “I…I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'm…if I'm capable of being as open and honest as this spell fucking wants me to be.”
“Dean…” Cas says softly, looking at the hunter with so much love and awe. “Tell…tell me again what you said the night I came back.”
“What?” Dean whispers shakily, confused.
“Just tell me.” Cas insists.
“Cas…” Dean sighs, doing his best to recall what he had said that night. “When I was a kid, my mom told me there were angels watching over me. But growing up the way I did, I stopped believing that. How could I, when everything went wrong for us? When our house burned down and my mom died and I had to raise Sammy while our dad went out hunting monsters and demons and I spent every night in those shitty motels wondering if he'd even come back, and worse yet, sometimes…sometimes hoping he wouldn't. But then I…I went to hell. I went to hell, and I was there for forty years, and then I was pulled out of it by…by an angel. A real life angel of the lord in the flesh, and that angel, he…he was awesome. He had messy black hair, and these big, dark blue eyes, and he was scary, and he was powerful, and he almost made me shit myself in that barn where we first met face to face. That angel became my best friend, and he made mistakes, and he screwed up, but he did it for the right reasons. He did it because he cared about me, because he…he loved me. He put himself in danger for me, he turned his back on his own kind, he lost his wings and his grace and his everything for me. He died for me. Twice. And now I've gotten him back twice. And when he said he loved me, I should have said it back, because I do. I love you, Cas. More than I've ever loved anything. And if you leave me again, I'm not gonna survive it. So please, Cas…please stay with me.”
Dean was knelt beside the bed now, practically laying on it at this point, clinging to Cas’ hand for dear life. Above him, Cas finally felt the strangling mass in his lungs subside, gasping in a full breath of air for the first time in hours. Dean jumped at the sound, startled and worried.
“It's gone.” Cas gasps, clutching his chest. “The spell, it's gone.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” Dean practically sobs, throwing himself into Cas' arms. “How did you know that would work?”
“Because that speech was the most emotional I've ever seen you.” Cas says softly, running a hand though Dean's hair. It had gotten a tad longer in the last few months, but he honestly quite liked it like this. "And because you're the most—"
"Most caring and selfless man on this planet, yeah." Dean chuckles softly “First thing tomorrow, we're ganking that crazy bitch,” he declares determinedly. “but first, I need my fucking four hours.”
“Could you please try for eight?” Cas asks hopefully.
“I'll give you six, final offer.” Dean grumbles.
“Fine.” Cas sighs, rolling his eyes with a exhausted chuckle as Dean snuggles in next to him, head on his chest and arms around his torso, holding on for dear life. “Goodnight, Dean.”
“Goodnight, Cas…”
-in Sam's room-
Sam had gotten Gabriel settled into the lumpy motel room bed, the archangel apparently too weak to transform the room into a five star hotel room like he usually did. After bidding Rowena farewell for the night, the hunter sighs and readies himself for some emotional honesty.
As soon as he steps close to the archangel, Gabriel starts coughing again, face becoming dotted in angry red splotches of petichea from it. Sam cringes and pulls him into his arms, rubbing his back soothingly.
“Gabriel…you know I love you, right?” Sam asks softly.
“Of course I do.” Gabriel rasps. “But I don't deserve it.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asks, confused.
“Mystery spot.” Gabriel replies, breathing raggedly. “I…I tortured you. I killed your brother over and over and over again, Sammy. How could you possibly forgive me?”
“Because I know you.” Sam says simply. “You're…you're not a monster, Gabriel. You were trying to teach me how to live without Dean, that losing him was inevitable. And yeah, it was wrong. It was fucked up. But Gabriel…if it weren't for Mystery Spot, or Crawford Hall, or TV land, or the Elysium Motel, or any other time we ran into you back then, I wouldn't even know you now. And after what Asmodeus did to you? After spending seven years in that hell with him? You don't deserve punishment, Gabriel. You deserve peace. We all do. I know what you went through, I know what it feels like to be…be hurt like that. So please believe when I say I forgive you, and I…I love you. I…I'll always love you.”
Finally, the archangel feels the mass in his lungs evaporate, gasping for air even though he doesn't need it, and collapsing into Sam's arms sobbing.
“I love you too, Samshine.” Gabriel whispers, exhausted even though he didn't technically need to sleep.
“Wait, is it?—”
“It's gone.” Gabriel sighs, clinging to Sam for dear life. “It's gone.”
Sam sags in relief, burying his face in Gabriel's hair and rubbing his back gently as thry sit here holding each other like they might disappear.
“You wanna try and get some sleep?” Sam asks, slowly pulling away from him.
“Not on this fuckass bed.” Gabriel says, weakly snapping his fingers. Instantly the room shifted into an almost exact copy of a room you'd see on Casa Erotica, right down to an extremely comfortable bed draped in red satin blankets and sheets.
“One of these days, you gotta either do this for Dean and Cas or teach Cas how to do it. I'm sure Dean would love having a nice room on a hunt for once.” Sam suggests as they settle back against the pillows.
“Ugh, fine. I'll teach Cas the trick. It can be Dean-o’s birthday present.” Gabriel concedes.
“You know, you too have a lot in common. You'd probably be pretty great friends if—”
“If I hadn't killed him like 100 times? Yeah.” Gabriel cuts in. “I’ve been trying, Sammy! I apologized to him and everything, the jerk just won't let it go!”
“What exactly did you say when you apologized?” Sam asks.
“I said, Sorry for mystery spot, Dean-o. I guess that was pretty uncool of me. My bad.” Gabriel replies, and Sam has to take a deep breath so he doesn't strangle him.
“That…you could have worded it a little better.” Sam says.
“Really?”
“Yeah, Gabe. Really.” Sam sighs, running a hand across his face. “You probably should have gone with, I want to apologize for what I did at Mystery Spot. I recognize that I cause you and your brother a lot of emotional damage, especially your brother, and I want to make up for it. Hopefully you recognize that I'm trying to be a better person, and I sincerely want to make things right with you and your family.”
“Pfft, that's so corny.” Gabriel chuckles.
“Gabriel!” Sam snaps, fully done with him.
“I'm kidding, Sammy. I…I'll do it.” Gabriel says softly, intertwining their fingers. “Just because I love you, and I wanna be a part of this family, and I…I wanna make things right with Dean. I screwed up so bad back then, Sammy. I should have…I should have never done all that to you, it wasn't right—”
Sam silences him with a gentle kiss to his lips, holding his face in his hand. “I already said I forgive you for that, shortstack.”
“Alright, samsquatch.” Gabriel chuckles softly, gazing into the mesmerizing hazel eyes before him. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Sam whispers fondly, running his fingers through Gabriel's soft sandy blonde hair as he starts to drift off.
We'll deal with the witch in the morning, Gabe thinks, feeling sleep start to take him too. For tonight, Me and Samshine need our beauty sleep…