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Gabriel is complicated. The Winchesters relationship with Gabriel is complicated.
Dean never knows if they're going to be thrown into some sort of fucked up nightmare fight for their lives, so they can learn an important lesson, or left some sort of delicious cookies. Or if they'll just get really, really drunk and make out.
But that was one time.
One time.
It's like they hit their demon hunter college years, and everyone forgot to tell him. Life is now all monsters from the abyss, drunk angels and hazing. Dean's learnt, through some pretty messy trial and error, that not making any sudden moves is as good a way as any of dealing with Gabriel though. Which is why he doesn't move from the bed, when someone smelling like ozone and maple syrup flops down beside him.
There's an irritated huff, and a soft click, and then there's a hand turning his head sideways.
"Personal bubble," Dean complains, more than a little irritated, but then he has an earbud shoved in his ear, and he's about to protest that he doesn't want to listen to Gabriel's freakin' Archangel mixtape - but the sound makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
It's like - it's not like music at all. Or maybe it is, maybe it's concentrated music. But he can't describe it with words. Not words that make sense. It's cold, and bright, and fragile. Diamond hard. It's fucking haunting - and that's where all his words run out, dragged out of him one by one, and cast aside.
"What is that?" Dean asks, in as flat a voice as he can manage. Even talking over it feels wrong somehow. His voice sounds like sandpaper over glass.
Gabriel sighs, close enough that it's a rush over the noise. "Take out all the transdimensional harmonies, non-linear vibrations, and the pitches that would go through your brain like a diamond drill. Turn the volume down a little. Kind of defeats the purpose though."
Gabriel shrugs, Dean can feel the movement on the bed beside him. He already knows, he's already figured it out. His brain was just catching up. It's angels. Dean's listening to angels singing.
He realises his chest hurts, and it's because he's holding his breath. He breathes out, then breathes in, and the oddness of it makes him shudder. The rhythm of the music is impossible to follow while he's breathing. It feels like he's inside it. It feels like something he isn't meant to understand.
"We're not all bureaucracy, and destiny, and bullshit," Gabriel says, it's stiff and annoyed, but it's old pain, no longer as sharp. "We didn't always used to be. We meant something once, we were everywhere. We used to be -" Gabriel sighs and tugs the thing out of Dean's ear. Everything just cuts off, gone in an instant.
The sound of the room is flat, cold, in a way his ears don't know what to do with for a second. Dean kind of wants to shove a finger in there, and jiggle it, because the absence of angel chorus is worse than an itch.
Gabriel's fiddling with something on the iPod, like technology is nothing to him. Just another of man's weird little inventions.
"It doesn't sound like that any more. Not a lot of harmony to be found right now."
"Why do you even have it on an iPod?" Dean's surprised his voice still works, but he tries for something that sounds like himself, doesn't know how close he gets.
"It's not for me." Gabriel tosses the thing over, and Dean feels it hit him, the leads a messy tangle on his chest.
When he looks up again, Gabriel's gone.
He'd thought it was a chorus he'd been listening to, a thousand voices. But Dean's pretty sure that it was just one angel singing.