#sandblasted in the face by this post - it's so funny

[fanfic-scribbles]

Tie a Yellow Ribbon For Me

Fandom: Supernatural

Summary: Roses are red, Violets are blue, Even death can’t keep him From finding his way back to you.

Quick facts: Romance – [established] Gabriel/Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Angst-ish with a happy ending, many flashbacks handle it, use of ‘sugar’ as a term of endearment for a gender-neutral reader

Prompt: Written for @gabriel-monthly-challenge​’s February prompt: Spin the Wheel. I landed on “A Dozen Red Roses”. Tagging @archangelgabriellives, @archangel-with-a-shotgun , @archangelsanonymous, @ttttrickster, @warlockwriter, and @revwinchester.

Words: 2459

Special Context Note: For people who might not know: “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” was a popular song in the seventies (I think?) performed by Dawn feat. Tony Orlando (I do recommend it; it’s a good song). It’s told from the perspective of a man writing to his lover after having been away for a few years. He tells her that if she wants him still, she can tie a yellow ribbon around a certain tree and he’ll come home, but if he doesn’t see it, he’ll assume she doesn’t want him back and he’ll keep going and never bother her again.

A/N: That summary is a little more sinister than I intended. Sorry, no dark!Gabriel here. Or “The Crow” AU. (Though hm, that’s a possible idea.) This is kind of an alt S5 post-“Hammer of the Gods” where Gabriel doesn’t go to Loki et al. This is sort of similar in premise to some other stuff I’ve written so I apologize to the people who follow me. Ironically, despite the title, this story was actually written to repeat listening of “11 Minutes” by Halsey and Yungblud feat Travis Barker ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Please enjoy! (PS: In case my formatting gets fucked up, flashbacks are encompassed by tildes (~).)

   You feel like you’ve gotten used to the silence.

Sure, you had periods of it before– spending 24/7 with a sometimes-manic archangel is a pre-requisite for madness– but those quiet moments without him had always felt like in-betweens. Small breaks, or minor reprieves, sometimes purposefully taken, and sometimes just waiting. Gabriel could have popped in at any moment.

Now he can’t.

You can say you’re mostly okay now. Mostly. You’ve lost before and you’ll lose again. It’s the nature of things, just being in the world as it is. Being a hunter in it means you’ll do it over and over and over again.

It doesn’t make it ache any less.

But you’re still going, because it’s what you’ve always done and it’s what you’ll always do. Right now you’re on your way to a small desert town that seems convinced it’s living out the movie “Tremors,” and going by the reports, you can see why. You feel a smile creep onto your lips. Gabriel would have found it funny.

~

“Have you been terrorizing a small city in Wisconsin in your spare time?” you ask and flick Gabriel with your big toe.

“Ooo, Wisconsin. Sounds like a party,” Gabriel says out loud, but the look he gives you asks, ‘Really?’ and he holds out a piece of whatever candy he’s focused on now. You trade him for the paper and take a bite while he skims the story.

He snorts and tosses it down. “Amateur. Credit for style though; there’s worse you could do than a Mel Brooks homage.”

You roll your eyes and finish swallowing. “I’m sure the three victims would agree with you, if they could.” You fold up the newspaper and set it aside from the massive stack of other regional papers that Gabriel had whined about, and yet gotten for you anyway. “I’ll head out tomorrow.”

“So you’re done working now?” Gabriel asks. He sits up and puts a piece of chocolate between his teeth, makes sure half of it is sticking out, and waggles his eyebrows.

You laugh and lean forward, bracing yourself with your hands as you stretch to meet his mouth with yours. Just as you’re about to gently bite on the chocolate, it vanishes, and Gabriel slips his tongue into your mouth instead.

Once you’ve had your fill of each other (for the moment) you can’t help how big you smile. “You’re so cheesy sometimes.”

He grins. “Sugar, you have no idea.”

~

You need a shower.

Badly.

You don’t feel the slime as much as you did when the constructs first exploded, but you don’t count that as a good thing, because it’s still there and you keep getting reminded of that whenever you shift. The day is dry and warm and a wind rushes across the desert landscape. When you step out of the car a strong gust blows past you and you shield your eyes until the air settles back to its steady pace. You get to your room and put your key in the lock when something catches your eye.

All down the sidewalk are cutouts in the concrete, just spaces of dirt that look like they’re supposed to be planters. Some of them have scattered cacti, but most are empty. Yours was empty, you're fairly certain, but now there’s a spindly long-stemmed something, being blown to the side and clinging to the dirt with nothing but tenacity. You kneel down to get a better look and–

it’s a rose.

Your breath catches in your throat. Not even a desert rose; a real, thorned rose, with petals that have obviously been sandblasted for a while and a thin stem that looks sickly.

But a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

~

There are flowers everywhere.

Gabriel really likes this place. He’s been here for a couple of months, and it shows; every day he’s seen you (almost every single day, as of late,) he’s given you flowers– a bouquet of twelve red roses. And, as you haven’t exactly had places to put them, he has graciously offered to ‘keep them somewhere safe.’

So of course there are dozens (of dozens) of roses scattered all around the room, still miraculously alive. Heavy emphasis on the miracle.

“You're the one who said I was cheesy,” Gabriel says and sits down, but puts his drink on the side table. Champagne, of course, and he’s even wearing a ridiculous red and black patterned robe. It’s a testament to how much you like him that you are not making fun of him right now.

But you can admit you do like the roses. The petals are soft and they smell nice. You look up from your bouquet to see Gabriel smiling at you. The softness of his expression throws you off and you hide the lower half of your face in the flowers. “Why always roses?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” His smile turns all trickster. “It’s just what they have at the grocery store.”

You hit him with the bouquet hard enough that he falls off the bed. Well, his mad laughter probably helped, but you’ll still take credit for it. Asshole.

~

Someday, sentiment is going to get you killed.

You pick the rose anyway.

The young couple currently having their first date is pretty cute. Now that you’re not annoyed by them blocking the door, you can appreciate the beginning a new relationship. And it’s going to be one; they’re both all soft smiles and longing glances and dumbstruck lovelorn expressions. One of them keeps fidgeting with their hands, and the other shifts an enormous bouquet from arm to arm. You note the roses, of course, but it’s made up of a lot of other flowers too. It’s very pretty– and must have cost a fortune. You smile. Explains the coffee date.

~

“You work too much.”

“You’re a needy guy, aren’t you?” you ask and glance up from the screen. “Five more minutes, Gabriel. Then I’m all yours.”

He huffs and flops onto the table, head in his arms and pouting and grumbling enough to draw attention. You roll your eyes and, while he’s distracted, kiss the crown of his head.

He stops grumbling. But the next time you take a sip of your drink it’s like shoving pure sugar down your throat and you choke.

His smile is almost as saccharine. “I just wanted to make it as sweet as you.”

You stare at him and calmly wipe your mouth. “Twenty minutes.”

He sputters in protest.

“I’ll knock it down to ten if you walk up to the counter, wait in line, and buy me a replacement. With money.”

He starts muttering again. But he gets up.

~

You look at your computer and think about actually trawling for hunts, but, well, your coffee cup is empty and who can be asked to work under such inhumane conditions? You hop off the stool and almost crunch a stray rose underfoot. It must have been dropped by the happy couple by the door. As you pick it up you wonder how you’re going to interject and give it back, but when you stand, they’re already gone.

You look back at the flower. It’s truly lovely; obviously well cared for (and not just shoved in a fridge at a grocery store, Gabriel). You smile at the thought of his indignance, and set the rose on the table. It would be a shame to let it get thrown out, so you’ll take care of it.

Even at the end of the world, there are still mundane monsters to kill. You’re leaving a very shaken family with one less poltergeist and a lifetime therapy to look forward to (at least they have a have a lifetime, now,) when the youngest daughter runs up to you and holds up a rose. “Here! This is for you.”

Though you thank her and take it, the mom echoes your concerns when she asks, “Honey where did you get that?”

“I found it,” the kid chirps, like that’s all you need to know.

It’s a real rose with almost no thorns and a yellow ribbon tied around the stem. That’s an odd thing to just find. But the house has settled and you figure you can burn this and stick around for a day or two, just in case. You thank the little girl again, bid goodbye to her sisters and parents, and as you go you start to tuck the flower away when you see a small embroidered symbol on the ribbon.

An Enochian symbol.

  As you speed away, you barely resist the urge to chuck that fucking flower out the window. You want to. But at the same time, you can’t bring yourself to do it.

Fucking asshole.

~

“I need to understand!”

Gabriel shoves you up against the wall. Not hard enough to hurt, but it does stun you– for a second. His grip is too light and his expression too conflicted for him to convince you what a ‘monster’ he is. “You’re not that kind of person,” you say and stare him down. “So why do you want me to think you are?”

Gabriel jerks, but you grab onto his jacket and yank him back in. “What are you so afraid of, Gabriel?” you whisper. “I’m the one thing in the universe you don’t have to fear.”

Gabriel leans in, close enough to kiss. Your eyes shut on instinct. Or maybe it’s Pavlovian.

“You're the one thing in the universe I have to fear the most.”

Air brushes past your lips, the pressure of his body releases, and you open your eyes to empty space.

~

He had come back within a day, as soon as you had asked, and said ‘I’m sorry’ in every conceivable way without ever saying it with his mouth. (Well, verbally, that is.) At the time, you figured it was fine.

And maybe it was. Now that you’ve had a few days to freak out, get your hopes up and down and all around, you feel a little calmer. You have the roses set aside and the ribbon spread out on the bed while you sit with your Enochian dictionary. Gabriel wouldn’t lead you along willy-nilly. You have faith (just a little) that this means something.

And if this does turn out to be some “Drink your Ovaltine” bullshit you are going to find out how to travel back in time so you can murder him with your own two hands.

It takes a while, but you find the word, and then use a few other dictionaries and translation sites to get it into English. You check it five times, in different ways, and then sit, chest swelling with hope that you’re not sure you can handle.

‘Healing.’

You want to believe, but a rough translation boiled down to its essential part can’t make you Mulder. You put the books away and lean back against the headboard, just trying to process, when something ‘thump!’s against your door. You grab your gun and stay alert as you check the outside area, but as far as you can see, there’s no one.

But there are three roses, piled neatly just in front of the door. You smile. Because really– you’re skeptical, but you’re not stupid. You pick them up and put the flowers to your face while you mind the thorns. You’re pretty good at that by now.

“Okay,” you say and nuzzle the petals. “I’ll wait.”

You find five more roses over the next couple of weeks in utterly random places. On your pillow. In a sewer. In your water glass after you turn away for a second. In the basket you grab at a grocery store. On your passenger seat. That last one makes you ache.

That night, when you open your book and find eight perfectly placed rose petals, you almost cry. Twelve roses. It’s always been a dozen, so that means he’s coming back, right? He doesn’t appear right away, but you go to bed hopeful.

Except he’s not there in the morning.

Or the afternoon.

Or the evening. Or…

It’s late on the third day of waiting and hope is fading fast. You hit your forehead on your steering wheel and whisper, “Where are you?” Did you misread things? Was this set up in advance? Did he mean for you to heal? Was someone messing with–

Your radio comes on without any prompting and you jolt up. You’re so busy trying to look for danger that you don’t recognize the song at first.

“–nt me, if you still want me Whoa tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree…”

You blink. You stop being afraid. And start being annoyed. “Are you fucking serious?”

But the song plays on, and the volume even gets jacked up. “A SIMPLE YELLOW RIBBON’S WHAT I NEED TO SET ME FREE–”

“Okay!” You turn the radio off and sit in silence for a few moments before you burst into tears and laughter both. “Fuck; you’re such an asshole,” you say, with wet eyes and a smile full of teeth.

You consider trying to track down a bonsai or some plastic palm tree, but you’ve waited long enough. Still, when you get back to your room you go through all the motions of getting ready to go to sleep. Once you’re actually sitting on the bed, you put the yellow ribbon to your wrist and manage to tie a messy bow.

You lie down, exhausted by days of constant, immense stress, and sigh. As you drift off to sleep you think, ‘I’m ready, Gabriel.

Come home.’

It happens without fanfare. You simply wake to an arm around your stomach, and a morning still dark.

“Hey,” you say, sleep-addled.

Gabriel chuckles. “Hey.”

You’ve never heard anything so beautiful, even as rough as his voice is. “You sound tired.”

“Yeah.” Gabriel presses closer to you. “Almost getting murdered by your own brother is pretty exhausting.”

“Hm.” That’s a conversation for later. Or never, depending on how stubborn Gabriel wants to be. Either way, not now. Not when you’ve got him back. You turn over and wrap yourself around him. “It’s okay,” you say. “Go to sleep. I’ve got you.”

He gives you a wry smile, but whatever snarky way you expect him to say ‘I don’t sleep’ doesn’t happen. He shuts his eyes, and you hold tight. “I’m glad you came back,” you say. “Even if I don’t have a hundred ribbons.”

He shifts with quiet laughter. “That’s all right.” He holds your wrist and places a kiss that straddles the ribbon and your skin. “I only need the one.”

[queerspeculativefiction]

P l e a s e post another random snippet your writing is SO GOOD

I am almost out of them! But sure, have another :)

The hangar was flooded with lights, the air filled with the sharp, acrid stench of spray paint. In the middle of the floor loomed a massive suit of armor, a decommissioned military model with the weaponry removed and replaced with non-lethal varieties. It still towered over the head of the two people eying their handiwork, facemasks pushed up now that the worst chemicals had dissipated.

"Looking good," the tall woman said, hair tightly tied down by a shawl to protect it from the paint.

"A work of art," Ortega agreed, pulling his gloves off.

The armor said nothing. Without a pilot to bring its cybernetic systems to life it was looped in standby mode, ready for action at a moment's notice. A small light started to blink on the helmet, reacting to the presence of said pilot.

"Uh oh," Ortega said, just a moment before Chen barged past, pushing them both aside so he could get a look at his baby.

"I can't believe you did this!" the former soldier complained, about to touch the armor before he realized that the paint was still wet. "How could you?"

"It wasn't easy. Luckily Ayesha rigged us up a sandblaster so we could get down to the plasteel." Ortega gestured to the tall woman and tried to continue to explain, because it had been a lot harder than he had anticipated. But Jake interrupted.

"That's not what I meant! My armor... it's blue."

"And gold," Ayesha supplied helpfully.

"We thought about white, but decided that would get dirty right away."

"You're wearing white," Ayesha pointed out.

"That is because I am smooth," Ortega preened. "And it's mostly blue."

"You are so full of yourself. You just want to stand out the most."

She laughed and hit Ortega on the arm, something which made him wince. Unlike the men, she did not owe her status on the team to technology, but to drugs. And in that particular lottery of death or debilitation, she had hit the jackpot. Stronger than a bull, faster than a striking snake and able to take a point blank shot and be able to complain about it afterwards.

"No, I swear, it's a theme," he defended himself, rubbing his arm. "Lightning is sort of bluish white, and I run on electricity so..."

"Excuses, excuses, you're such a narcissist Ricardo."

"You painted my armor?" Chen finally managed to get out, having completed a full circle around his suit. "Why for the love of God would you do such a thing?"

"Because we're not military," Ortega said, their old arguments coming back for another round, the military man and the thrill-seeker, united for a common cause. "We have to look the part. We can't walk in like paramilitary forces and expect to be treated like proper law enforcement."

"Hence the police blue," Ayesha supplied.

"The gold is pure flash though. We can't just be cops. We have to be more." Ortega had spent a lot of time thinking about this, thinking about what impression they had to make. He had talked about it at length with Marek, and as the filmmaker had said, they couldn't allow themselves to be goons. They had to be more. They had to be heroes.

"It was a perfectly sensible camouflage." Chen kept walking around his armor, the helmeted head shifting slowly in response to his actions, close enough for the sensory weave to pick up his distress.

"We are supposed to be seen, not hiding." Ayesha stripped off the coveralls that covered her own suit, a protective nanomesh weave of the kind that had been used as the basis of space suits before earth became too much of a problem to be able to afford such flights of fancy. It was boldly blue and red, as much of a statement as the woman herself.

"Face it Wei, you're not in the military anymore." Ortega couldn't help it; the look on Chen's face was just too funny. Of all the indignities his friend had expected to endure here in their improvised base, having to deal with a repainted armor was apparently not one of them

"And you are not the leader of this merry outfit," he snapped, poking a finger in Ortega's chest. "I can't believe Marshal Burke authorized this."

"Authorized it? He thought it was a brilliant idea. Even the code names."

"Codenames?"

"You're Sergeant Steel, Ayesha is Sentinel and I am Charge." Ortega wasn't too happy, he'd spent last night tossing names back and forth with Ayesha, but none had really seemed to fit. This would have to do for now, maybe he would grow into it.

"How come I'm just a Sergeant?" Chen asked, momentarily distracted from his armor. "That's lower than my actual rank."

"Ahah!" Ayesha said, sliding up next to the man, looking like a lioness leaning in for a bite. "I told you he'd come around to the idea. And it's not about rank. It's about alliteration. Unless you want to be named something else?"

"I... don't want to be named anything at all, we could have proper codenames."

"Nobody is going to ask Bravo-6 to get a kitten down from a tree." To his credit, Ortega managed to say that with a completely straight face,

"There are no kittens in trees here anymore," Chen argued. "The city is wrecked!"

"My point still stands."

"Fine. I suppose it will have to do."

Capitulation at last, and it was all that Ortega could do not to rub his hands. Marek had been right; the lure of being something grander than what they really were was a seductive one. Why be a peacekeeping force, or government watchdogs when they could be heroes? Why have utilitarian outfits like the military when they could be larger than life? They were after all, all of them changed into something more than human. Enhanced.

It wasn't narcissism, it was just common sense.