Chapter Text
Two days. That was all it took for Sam to track down and kill a Rugaru in Florida.
Two. Days.
And now he was back in Gulf Shores.
When he’d returned to his little rented house, his hosts had left him more sweets to snack on. Briefly, he wondered if they were pagan gods trying to fatten him up for sacrifice, but quickly dismissed the whackadoo theory. They were just kind.
Also, it was only his hosts leaving him treats, no one else, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t even allow himself to think anything past that because he knew where that road led: the town of false hope and disappointments.
Thinking back to when Dean had turned into a strawberry, Sam reapplied his sunscreen and tried to focus on the book he was reading as the warm, salty air clung to his skin. It was a fluffy mystery novel that didn’t require much brain power. Roughly an hour ago, he’d grabbed a folding chair and a massive umbrella and had honestly attempted to enjoy his time on the coast some as he read and watched the ocean. He had to pull himself out of the neverending funk he was in and just get over it. Get over everything and move on.
Easier said than done.
He rolled his eyes and turned the page, immediately forgetting what was on the one before it.
“Wow,” said a voice to his right. “I didn’t think someone could look like a Gloomy Gus on a beach as good as this one, but boy if you didn’t just prove me wrong.”
Sam’s heart stopped. At least for a couple of beats, he knew it, because he couldn’t feel it since time seemed to stop as well.
He was dreaming. No, he was drunk, utterly fucked-in-half smashed. Too afraid to move his body, he moved his eyes to look down to his left to see…. He’d finished two beers. In about two hours.
He was not drunk.
Letting his gaze return to the book, he focused on page number thirty-seven. That seemed a lot safer.
“Has little old me rendered you speechless – and also motionless? I had no idea I was this powerful, but hey, I guess anything’s possible,” his guest said.
This. Wasn’t. Happening. It couldn’t be. The cause of all of Sam’s heartache was dead. Very dead, and they couldn’t be sitting down beside him right now, because it was impossible.
Sam reminded himself to breathe.
“You aren’t real,” Sam said shakily as he closed his book and sat it off to the side, focusing on the waves in front of him.
“On the contrary, I think I’m incredibly real. Didn’t know how you’d take me just showing up out of the blue, so I decided to start easy. A little check-in here and there. Then, I thought you needed more pillows, that bed sucked. The only thing in the place behind me was health food, fixed that too, and the porch was just depressing, so I brought you sea shells.”
“You died.”
“So? I’ve died a lot, never stuck,” his visitor gloated.
“Alright then,” Sam said to the gulf, “if you’re real and not dead, why now? You could’ve come back a while ago, you know,” he said through a tight throat.
“Had to make sure it was safe for me, I have some enemies out there, at least one. Had to make sure the world was okay, and it seems you and Dean did a good job of righting all the worst of it. These days it seems you boys just get run-of-the-mill low level monsters.”
Sam thought back a few weeks, letting his mind go back to the bones he’d torched in Grove Hill, and then to his time at the outdoor cafe.
“Have you,” he began, his voice unsteady, “been here? For me? Maybe moving me out of the way of an angry ghost? Or going to breakfast with me?”
Okay so maybe it was fifty percent real. Sam would give it fifty percent.
“Yup,” Sam’s helper said. “If you’re gonna go out and hunt things alone, somebody’s gotta help your gigantic ass out. Good job on the Rugaru though, didn’t need any help with that one.
Sam laughed softly.
“So why didn’t you let me know you were here earlier? Why’d you stay invisible and leave me things?”
The sigh beside him floated along the sand. “Because I didn’t know if you still wanted me. I’m sorry I had to disappear, but I did have to get some things in order. Then, one night, I heard you say that you missed someone. Didn’t know if it was me, but I hoped it was.”
“Of course it was you, you idiot.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to sigh. He still hadn’t looked to his right at the figure beside him, because honestly, he was afraid. It couldn’t be real. Things this good didn’t happen to him. He’d lost so many people throughout his life, and none of them ever came back, not a single person. But if there was ever a person that could come back, then they’d most likely be the person a foot away from him.
“Prove to me it’s really you,” Sam said, eyes still glued at nothing, staring straight ahead as he still refused to turn around. “Tell me something that only we know, or do something, I don’t care, but I’m not even going to allow myself to fucking smile until I know, for certain, that it’s you.”
Even though he’d just said he wouldn’t have hope, his stupid heart betrayed him. It started to swell the moment he’d heard the voice, had started to brighten for the first time in a long time.
“Pffft,” the newcomer scoffed. “That’s easy. Here.”
The next thing Sam knew, there was a hand in front of his face holding a single feather. It was beautiful, radiating brilliantly in the sun. The colors were unmistakable, shades of gold, honey, and whiskey running through each strand. Sam would know that feather anywhere. He’d had some very intimate moments with the beautiful wings it came from.
He took the silky feather and held it gently in his hands, finally allowing himself to smile as he looked at it.
After a deep breath, he slid out of his beach chair onto the sand and faced the man whom he thought he’d never see again. Sam cupped his face tenderly in his hand and stared into eyes the same color as the feather. The man smiled too.
“Hey Gabriel.”