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Dean hadn’t seen a kitchen like this in years, okay. Cooking wasn’t exactly the priority for many hunters, and that was reflected in most safehouses they came across. There were usually the essentials – if not an oven, then a microwave, or at the very least some portable gas cooker – but nothing like the collection of utensils and appliances that greeted them when he entered the house, a slightly disgruntled but willing-enough archangel on his tail.
“Mother of God,” Dean mumbled. “It’s like we’re on a Top Chef episode.”
Behind him, Gabriel snorted. When he looked back the angel just raised a brow.
Rolling his eyes, Dean slung his bag off his shoulder, straight onto the cream couch. Sam had gone to find a map and intel on the ghoul they were hunting; leaving Dean on angel-sitting duty, because apparently that was his job now –
A whistle brought his thoughts back home. Gabriel was flipping through the pages of a cooking magazine that lay strewn on the glass ( glass, for Christ’s sake) coffee table.
“Whatever hunter lived here was one fancy schmuck. Even I haven’t heard of some of these recipes.”
Curiosity piqued, Dean inched closer, peering over Gabriel’s shoulder – which wasn’t hard. Seriously, if Dean was an angel, he’d pick a vessel at least as tall as Sam. What was the point otherwise?
Gabriel wasn’t lying, though. Words like bain-marie and chiffonade stared up at him, along with finely-cut rice towers and steaks whose singe marks were so calculated they looked like a goddamn painting. The paper was barely rumpled, which showed how unpopular the literature was compared to your usual Playboy -riddled safehouses. Dean doubted they had seen much use over the years.
He left Gabriel's side to wander inside the glimmering shrine to fancy food that seemed to taunt his hands, still-greasy from his last dive under the Impala's hood. Instinctively, he wiped them on his jeans. There was a set of magnets on the wall, each harbouring a kitchen knife, each disposed in descending height order (some traces of wear-and-tear on those – clearly the knives were a bit more interesting for a hunter). White-and-yellow tiles paved the walls, and a variety of electrical appliances (was that a freaking rice cooker?) lined the counter. Maybe the guy who owned the place doubled it as a bed-and-breakfast.
He flicked his fingers across the countertop. They came back slightly dusty, but not altogether unclean. Next to him, the fridge hummed happily.
“Got yourselves the luxury suite, didn’t ya?”
Dean did not jump – it was pretty hard to lose track of the archangel in the room – but he did jerk his head back towards Gabriel, who had stepped closer to the kitchen. The cooking magazine was still nestled under his arm.
He shrugged. They had gotten the safehouse tip from Bobby; and like most tips from Bobby, it had been short and to the point. No mention of the presence of the Queen’s kitchen right behind the front door. Did it belong to some weirdly rich hunter, or was it simply suburban leftover from a pre-monstrous life?
His eyes wouldn’t stop trailing back to the rice cooker.
After a while, he felt Gabriel's gaze on him, sharp and curious and investigative. He cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “Weird.”
Gabriel frowned a little before plastering on his usual smirk. “What’s gotten into you, Deano? Never seen a well-furnished kitchen before? Remind me to take you out more often.” He hoisted himself up on the countertop, perching precariously over the edge.
Dean sent him a flat stare. “This coming from the guy whose apartment could barely fit a bed and a night lamp? Please.”
Gabriel almost honest-to-God pouted. “It was a good apartment.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Not really, it wasn’t.”
“It was mine.” Gabriel's voice suddenly went a tinge darker, picking up a strange echo as it landed on the tiles. He said mine the same way Dean might say Impala - like someone would say home . Shadows seemed to flash over his face for a second, then gone, like storm clouds passing through the moonlight.
A challenge to dig deeper, almost.
Dean raised his hands. “Okay, okay. I’m just saying, you’ve got as little experience with all this – ” he swept a hand through the air, encompassing the kitchen space – “as I do.”
There was a pause, as if Gabriel was assessing the new ground they walked on. Then his smile came back as quickly as it had flickered out, and he raised the magazine cover to his chest. PERFECT RECIPES FOR A PERFECT FAMILY MEAL , promised the headline. “So what do you say we try it out?” said Gabriel, waving it in front of him like a ring girl.
Dean narrowed his eyes at the change of pace. “Seriously, man? Cooking?”
"Would be a shame not to make the most of it, right?" It was Gabriel’s turn to raise his brows. Another challenge – or perhaps a continuation of the previous one.
Either way, it was working, and Dean hated it. His eyes slid one last time towards the rice cooker. What kind of hunter had a rice cooker?
“Fine. But uh, we’ll probably need supplies first.” He had spotted a grocery store down the road – he hoped they didn’t need anything they couldn’t find there.
Gabriel lit up like a Christmas tree, springing up to his feet. “Better get going then, Deano! Dinner's not gonna cook itself.”
Dean shook his head as he buttoned up his jacket again. The damned angel’s mood swings were giving him whiplash. Maybe he’d make the most of the grocery trip and buy some painkillers along the way.
Whatever this was, he just hoped the house would still be standing when it was over.
***
Grocery stores were more Sam’s thing, anyway. As a kid, Sammy had always gawked at the fresh veggies, the colourful fruit, the bloody raw meat that used to make Dean shamefully uncomfortable. One time his brother had gotten lost wandering among the shelves, and Dad had nearly popped a vein with how tightly he’d clung to the cart looking for him. Dean had been sent to course through the aisles while John went to place an announcement. He didn’t think he’d seen his father as furious as when Sam had reappeared, mouth stained purple with the remains of the blueberries he’d found. Dean still remembered the sermon he’d gotten - from then on, he’d never let go of Sam’s hand the whole time they went shopping.
Dean had always been content following John’s footsteps through the overly-lit paths, picking the produce his father pointed at (always the cheapest - his eyes were often trained towards the bottom shelf) and occasionally riding the cart like a motorbike.
The overhead speaker announced a promotion he barely heard as he led Gabriel towards the next ingredient in their list. The wheels of the cart squeaked against the tiles. Behind the right aisle, he could hear a child crying.
“Ooo, thirty percent off the Nutella jars, Dean!”
Speaking of children.
Upon entry, Dean had sort of shoved the cart in Gabriel’s arms while he assumed the leading position. The angel had just gazed at him with the same knowing expression he’d sent him at the apartment, then wrapped his fingers around the handlebar in a nonchalant grip that Dean could tell was tighter than it looked.
The reasonable side of his brain - the one he’d named the Sammy voice - was aware of the sheer absurdity of leading an archangel among the organised shelves. There was nothing Dean could bring to an experience which even regular humans like him found stale and unpleasant, was there?
Yet Gabriel seemed pretty content following Dean with the cart, eyes zipping back and forth, left and right, reacting to stimuli with impressive speed, yet keeping that inscrutable smile at all times. Once, he had pushed the cart stronger than usual, and used the momentum to propel himself up on it and glide down the aisle, riding it like a motorcycle. Dean had averted his eyes, cheeks suddenly warm at the reminder of his childhood.
Coconut milk , said the cooking magazine. Dean couldn’t bring himself to tear up the page, so he’d just brought the whole thing; it hung awkwardly in his still-slightly-greasy hand. They had gone for the most simple-looking recipe they could find - which didn’t stop the list from filling up half a page. How many types of spices did you even need for a curry anyway?
“Hey, Gabriel.”
The angel’s head tilted, and he rolled the cart to a stop next to him. His hands crossed against the handle as he leaned lazily against it. “Hmm?”
Dean waved the magazine at him. “Any idea where to find some goddamn coconut in here, by chance? Swear, these places are like a maze.”
Gabriel frowned, then he looked around, as if Dean hadn’t done the very same five seconds before. “Just follow my lead, Watson,” he said with a resolute expression, and started marching towards the exotic products.
Dean blinked. He watched him move away, then shrugged, sighed, and grabbed the cart to follow the archangel Gabriel’s footsteps through the overly-lit paths.
***
“What the hell is a kumquat?” Dean squinted at the ant script of the label proudly displaying Kumquat-and-orange marmalade - new recipe! in fancy loop letters. The aisle smelt of flowers and rainy weather - very different from the processed air of the ones he usually frequented (canned goods and booze, for the most part). A lady reached past Dean to grab the mango chutney, and he gave her an awkward kind of smile before moving back to Gabriel’s side. The latter was inspecting the shelf, razor-sharp in his precision.
“Type of fruit,” Gabriel said. “Tastes sort of citrusy?” He scrunched up his nose in recollection. “Orange meets grapefruit, maybe.”
Dean sent him a look. “You mean you’ve tasted all of these?” He gestured to the wide array of improbably-shaped fruit and spice mixes. A man within the scope of his sweep raised a curious eyebrow.
Gabriel shrugged. “You spend centuries alone on Earth, you get to taste a fair bit of the local cuisines. Personally, I think the forbidden fruit’s got nothing against gulab jamun.”
“Uh,” Dean said. “Gesundheit.”
Gabriel lifted his gaze from the produce, only to lock them on Dean. “You have got to get out more, Deano. I need to take you to India one of these days.”
Dean snorted. “What, to meet up with your goddess-of-war one night stand? Think I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Okay, first off: Kali was very much a several-night-stand. Second, you saw her at a bad time - you just have to meet her in her own domain. The Kali Puja festival? Now that was a fun night.” This said with a smirk that showed a little bit of teeth.
“Gross, man.”
In response, Gabriel tossed him a can of coconut milk, which Dean caught just in time to not embarrass himself in front of the store employee that just passed by. He diligently plopped it in the cart.
“Where to next, cap’n?” He said, leaning on the handlebar like Gabriel had done.
Gabriel’s face lit up. “Fish!” And he was off again, waving him towards the back of the store.
“Don’t expect to find much seabass,” he called after him. “We’re at the general store, not the fisherman’s market.”
Gabriel turned around. “O ye of little faith,” he smirked.
Following Gabriel didn’t feel like a duty. It felt like a choice. Not a blessing, not a curse - just a regular, boring choice, falling into place without a sound of protest.
It felt like letting go.
***
They paid the regular way - well, through Dean’s stolen credit card, but still. No angel mojo involved. It seemed Gabriel understood his desire for human routine, for the physical touch of a credit card against his fingers over the snap of an easy miracle. Did Gabriel have a bank account? Did he have a wallet, a coin at hand for the shopping carts, a pocket full of receipts he forgot to throw away each time he put his clothes in the laundry?
The card reader chimed an appreciative note, and they started to pack up their articles. Not a bad haul, all in all. They had found the elusive spices, the herbs that sounded like a Frenchman sneezed on them - they’d even found some fresh lime to squeeze over the plates like Dean had seen on the cooking shows he used to watch when Dad dozed off in front of the TV. The only hitch in their plans was the fish. In the absence of seabass ( told you so , he shrugged to a pouting Gabriel), they had settled for plain old-fashioned cod. It didn’t make much difference to Dean; it had been years since he’d had anything sea-related aside from the occasional fish and chips.
They pushed the cart back to the car, and started the tedious transfer to the trunk. Gabriel was silent - a rare occurrence - handling the produce with a carefulness that, had it been anyone else, Dean would have called religious.
He coughed. “You, uh. You’re not bad,” he said. “At all this.”
Gabriel paused; watched him intensely, searching for a joke. “Thank you,” he answered finally, and there wasn’t a trace of irony in his voice. “Neither are you.”
His first instinct was to shrug, like he usually did with compliments, or weird comments by celestial beings regarding his general ability to perform tasks.
“I’ve had practice,” he said instead, placing the last can of peas in the trunk.
“So have I,” Gabriel responded - not a competition, just… Curiosity. A hint of admiration, maybe. Fellowship.
He shook his head. It was hard to imagine the guy in front of him (flannel over a tank top, slightly baggy jeans, a freaking watch on his wrist he probably didn’t need) being anything other than an only-slightly-unhinged human being. It had taken a while to get used to all the masks Gabriel wore on the daily. Back in the day, he had had to constantly remind himself that the power hidden beneath the wolfish smiles and quickfire wit could blow up a sun.
This was how they worked - by samples. Occasionally, one of them would leak a little of themselves through the cracks they both shared, and a puzzle piece would come through. Occasionally, the other would grab it, tug at it until it came loose (he remembered doing that, when they'd first properly met, through the heat of holy flames). Most times, though, they were content to let it float. Sometimes a puzzle was better left unsolved.
He shifted, eager to dissipate the weirdly sappy moment in the middle of a grocery store parking lot. “Next time I know who to call if I need a professional shopping cart driver.”
Gabriel chuckled. “I’ll make sure to stay close by.”
Dean nodded, that weird feeling still gripping his chest, and rolled the cart back to its shelter. The wheels clacked against the cement, wobbly and jagged.
When he got back to the Impala, Gabriel spoke again. “Does this mean I get to drive your car?”
Dean just stared from the other side. “Buddy, I didn’t let Sam on Baby until I got dragged down to Hell. You’re gonna have to try harder than that.”
Gabriel gave a deep sigh, an easy smirk gracing his features. “Aren’t you a hard fish to catch, Mister Winchester.”
He clicked his mouth, opening the door to the driver’s seat. “Baby, I’m the whole damn piranha tank.”
Gabriel snickered, and closed the door to the trunk.
***
Sam was lounging on the couch by the time they came back. With his one free hand, Gabriel had opened the door for Dean, and their shoulders had brushed when they had shuffled inside. As soon as Dean crossed the threshold, vision swamped by the pile of groceries that balanced precariously in his arms tower-of-Pisa-style, he was faced with his brother’s unashamedly amused face.
“Oh, shut it.”
Sam’s eyes were so cartoonishly wide they threatened to swallow his face. “Dean,” he exclaimed in all his exaggerated, bitchy glory, “is that a vegetable I see in your arms?”
He moved to point a finger at him, but the food tower leaned threateningly to the right, and he was reduced to narrowed eyes and a cautionary tilt of the head his way. “I swear to God, Sam.”
Sam, little shit that he was, ignored him. “What’s your secret, Gabriel? I’ve been trying to get him to eat something other than a burger for years.”
Gabriel just grinned again, and dropped the grocery bag on the pure white counter. “What can I say? Que viva el buen comer . They say persuasion’s my best quality.” Traitor.
“Persuasion, huh?” Sam sent a raised eyebrow to Dean.
“Alright, that’s it. Out.”
***
Okay, maybe he did feel bad shoving Sam outside like that. Dean couldn’t blame him for being surprised. He himself wasn’t even sure what had prompted him to take up Gabriel's challenge - there was his pride, of course, but something else as well. A desire, near constant when the angel was around, to poke at his facade until it finally fit the puzzle he'd made inside his mind. Why a grocery store was the first thing that had occurred to him for this, he didn’t know either. Perhaps something about the mundanity of it; maybe he’d expected Gabriel to stand out from the scenery, somehow. A sparkling Ferrari in a yard full of Hondas and Fords. The fact that he had blended in perfectly - better than Dean had, in fact - didn’t help with his perplexity.
They had found a balance, in their endless push-and-pull. Dean had been scared Sam’s teasing would break that balance and send the scales careening towards Gabriel’s side of the board. So he’d sent him on one of his nature walks until they finished cooking.
Simple as that.
Gabriel didn’t seem phased in the slightest.
He was already on his knees, searching the cupboards for pots and pans. His shoulders rose and fell - he was breathing, Dean realised with a start.
Back when Cas had been so close to human that breaths had started to stutter in unallowed, his lungs unable to function on angel grace alone, he’d told Dean it felt like burning. Like a knife, a foreign object entering a body you weren’t completely aware of until then. He’d said it felt like the opposite of what an angel was. Or perhaps the same , he’d added, head tilted to the right and gaze far, far away.
Gabriel’s breaths were flawless, like a chamber choir. Slightly rehearsed, perhaps, but in perfect synchronisation with the rest of his body. He breathed with his whole chest, the air rippling underneath his ribs like it belonged there.
Dean couldn’t remember if he’d stopped breathing when he was in Hell.
Gabriel came back from his dive brandishing his newfound trophy over his head - a deep, two-handle metal pan that gleamed like the Holy Grail in the sunbeams that raced through the windows. “Bang,” he exclaimed. “Who needs miracles?”
That managed to pry a smirk out of his darker thoughts. “Cool it, Rafiki. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
He reached past Gabriel to grab the chopping board. The angel’s breath flicked over his arm for a millisecond, then disappeared as he got back up again.
When Dean got to his feet in turn, it was to find a knife held towards his chest. His body tensed on instinct, until his brain processed the fact that the wooden handle was turned his side. Behind it, Gabriel’s eyes locked on him, that persistent gleam still frustratingly present.
“Thanks.” The knife didn’t shake as it transferred from angelic to human hands.
“Don’t sweat it,” Gabriel said. “I just don’t want the onion tears to ruin my makeup.”
“Can’t you like, magic your way into invulnerable eyes?”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “But Dean, you’re so pretty when you cry.”
Dean frowned at this, at the bombshells that Gabriel sometimes threw out as quips that somehow managed to nestle warmly under his skin.
Gabriel tossed an onion his way. “Besides, I thought we were doing this the human way? Highs and lows, my friend.”
The onion landed in Dean’s right hand in a perfect basket catch. “Alright, fine,” he grumbled, knowing he sounded more like a moody teenager by the minute. “But you’re on fish duty. I am not gonna smell like the ocean on top of the garlic breath.”
“Deal.”
***
The sun was starting to set out the window, and its golden rays settled behind Gabriel’s head as he carefully slid the knife under the fish’s skin. Even while handling dead things, Gabriel kept a grace that went far beyond the angelic kind. His movements were janky for sure, but so were Dean’s as he wrestled with the minced garlic that had somehow escaped the chopping board and gone sprawling over the counter.
“Goddamnit,” he muttered as a chunk fell on the kitchen floor. With a flick of the left foot, he pushed it towards the trash can as he tried his best to salvage the rest.
“Need help?” Gabriel stuck his head out, moving from his golden halo to get closer to Dean.
“I’m fine ,” he replied. He finished with the garlic, and slid his knife across the board to make room for the onion.
Gabriel shrugged, went back to his light, and they fell into silence. A car passed behind the window, harmonising with the humming of the fridge and the rumbling of a lawnmower. A human symphony of inconsequential instruments.
The balance was tipping again, Dean thought. He wished he knew whose side it was on right now.
Gabriel peeled the skin off the fish until it barely looked like it had ever been a living thing. Then he looked at Dean, and with an unsettling, wolfish grin he pierced the silence: “I was a fish for a year, you know.”
Dean nearly cut himself. The garlic once again fell off the edge of the chopping board.
“What the hell, man?”
Gabriel held out a chunk of cod, examining it in recollection. “During my Loki days. Had to get out of Odin’s hair for a while after turning his favourite raven into a chicken. That man has no sense of humour.”
Dean narrowed his eyes. “So your first instinct was to go Finding Nemo on the guy?”
Gabriel shrugged, gaze travelling sideways to the sunshine behind him. “Always been good at running away.”
There was a pause then - another challenge to accept, or another crack to prod at?
Dean licked his lips. “Were you caught?”
“Who do you think I am, an amateur?”
Gabriel gave a sharp flick of the wrist with his fish-slick fingers, and Dean wrinkled his nose. “Did you, though?” He asked, doing his best to wipe the smell off his sleeve before it settled in.
The angel rolled his eyes. “Fine, I did. Nearly made it out, if I hadn’t been snatched up by Thor when I made a frankly awesome leap over the waterfall. You should’ve seen me, Dean,” he added with a dreamy look. “Soaring like a bird on the breeze.”
“Uh-huh,” was Dean’s answer as he poured some oil into the pan. A gentle crackle joined the harmonising sounds of the safehouse. “What uh, what fish was that, Captain Hilts?”
Gabriel gave him a deadpan look. “Salmon.”
Dean stared, trying to imagine the great Messenger of God floundering somewhere on a Northern shore, mouth gulping up and down as he tried to escape a pagan deity’s grasp.
A snort escaped his mouth. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch, man,” he said, shaking his head.
“Hey, don’t diss the salmon,” Gabriel warned, threateningly waving his piece of cod around.
The onion slipped smoothly into the pan, and soon the room was pregnant with the smell of homemade meals and the sound of easy laughs.
***
A rice cooker, Dean concluded after a fifteen-minute battle of wills, was in fact a goddamn effective torture device. You could make a great sales pitch to Hell - he was thinking striped blue shirts and red ties, winks to the audience and badly edited glitter effects on the screen. Buy the Aroma SR-350 cooker and never break a single sweat on your tortured souls again! They’ll tire themselves out and beg for the sweet release of death before you can say ‘who needs a whip anymore, am I right?’
Sam would tell him he was exaggerating.
Sam was not there. Still on his stroll, probably kissing a tree or something.
“Remind me why we’re doing this?” he grumbled, more to himself than to the angel standing a few feet away with his hands covered in yellow spice.
“We’re expanding your palate, Dean!” said angel replied as he vigorously shook the turmeric container over an already dangerously orange curry dish. “Sampling the vibrant diversity of humanity’s ingenuity through communal sustenance.”
“Or you just wanted to see me suffer.”
Gabriel stirred in the ginger, immediately flooding the room with its enticing smell. “You can’t fool me, Winchester. I saw the way you were looking at that rice cooker. You were practically yearning to make out with it in the school locker room.”
He paused from his machine-oriented rage. “First of all: what the hell. Second of all, I’m gonna be honest with you there - this-” he gestured to the cooker, to the kitchen, to the house - “is way outta my league, man. I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing any more than you do - hell, even less, really,” he added with a breathless huff, ignoring the heat in his cheeks.
Gabriel looked at him, and the scales tilted his way again. “Didn’t you cook for your brother when you were a child?”
Dean shrugged. “Sure.” He remembered nights spent with growling stomachs, staying up late to wait for Dad. Last minute pasta for Sam, or grocery runs full of frozen food to last them the week if they rationed. He’d even bought a cooking magazine once, after finishing the fifth chicken nugget meal in a row and suddenly remembering the existence of vegetables. But the recipes had quickly frustrated him with ingredients that were either too expensive or too perishable - so he had improvised. Pickles to replace the vinegar, canned peas to replace the fresh broccoli. The result wasn’t stellar, but it did the job. “Was never great at following these, though,” he muttered, and nodded down towards the magazine that lay between them.
“Eh,” Gabriel answered after a beat. “Instructions are for losers. Free will, am I right? We’re making it up as we go along.”
And the magazine went flying down to the floor, landing in a rumpled mess like any old Playboy .
It was Dean’s turn to observe him. The angel was smiling pleasantly, but there was a gleam in his eyes that spoke of sincerity and perhaps a touch of admiration. With almost solemn consideration, he tried to imagine Gabriel in his early days of running - had he tried to blend in with humanity like this? Had he cooked meals with ancient tribes, gone to pick up fish at local markets, struggled with using a knife and fork? Had he even known what it was to eat before?
After all, what better ways to learn to be human than by sharing their food?
He hadn’t known why Gabriel had thrown this challenge at him, specifically. Maybe he had recognised kinship in Dean’s rituals, despite the frankly abysmal chasm that separated their experiences of food-making. Perhaps he had understood that, like him, Dean bonded through his hands, through action, through the act of making something out of the world around and receiving in return.
“Cheers to that,” he said finally. And gave him a small smile.
Beaming back, Gabriel lifted up the garam masala container to mimic a lifted wine glass, then proceeded to dump almost five tablespoons of it inside the pan.
“Careful,” Dean said. “Sammy can’t handle spice too well.”
“Ten bucks he’ll be chugging the water after thirty seconds, then.”
“Oh, you are on .”
Gabriel breathed, and slowly moved behind him, closer and closer until his chest was pressed behind Dean’s back. He could feel his breath run down his neck, warm and familiar and human. He slowly placed a hand on his shoulder, and Dean could swear the touch almost burned through the cotton shirt into his skin. Then, the angel extended the other hand to the rice cooker and pressed a couple buttons. At long last, the machine turned on with a pleasant greeting chime.
Dean felt his face split with a victorious grin.
***
It was, in fact, not Sam who ended up suffering for the most suicidally liberal use of chilli pepper the world had ever seen. Dean had not gone through half of his meal when he had to admit defeat, under uproarious laughter from Sam and an awkward but sincere apology from Gabriel in the form of a hand gently placed on Dean’s knee.
The fish was slightly burnt, and the presentation wasn’t nearly as clean as the magazine pictures. Drops of yellow sauce splattered across the glass dining table, and they finished the night with beers instead of a fine bottle of demi-sec white wine, as the recipe had suggested.
The rice was finely cooked, though, so Dean considered it a win.