This was the first time that Sam had ever had to worry about cooking for a large group of people. Sure, he'd participated in food prep for holiday meals and things like that in the past, but the whole cooking thing was on him now and that was something that Sam was both concerned about (his culinary skills were kinda, uh, limited), yet determined to see through. Why? Well. First, if he didn't do the cooking, his wife would, which meant that everyone who came over to eat would either die of food poisoning or would be far too distracted trying to find ways to dive out of the meal or toss their food away when Ruby wasn't looking. Secondly, if he didn't invite everyone over as soon as possible to check out their new place, Sam knew that Ruby would, which brought them right back to square one. She would insist on cooking and, honestly, Sam really did like having family and friends. Fact of the matter was, if they ate her food, they would die. And finally, Sam kind of wanted to invite everyone over anyway. It wasn't all that often that they found reason to get together like this and Sam was more than eager to snatch up the first opportunity he could get his hands on. Even if that meant he had to do the whole cooking thing. Because when large groups of people got invited into a household, food was generally a good thing to offer them when they got there.
It was when Sam had been loading up the groceries for dinner that night into Ruby's car that he spotted an oddly familiar figure walking a few rows down in the parking lot. Hair slicked back, hands buried in his pockets, eyes thoughtfully trained on a bickering couple lurking ahead, the Trickster seemed to be very much preoccupied. He had to be. Otherwise, how could he have possibly missed Sam standing right there? It wasn't like he was a hard guy to miss in regards to most people, least of all a friggin ' trickster. Brow furrowing, Sam shoved some of the bags aside in the car and began to rummage around for some of the weapons he knew Ruby kept stowed away under the backseat. Knife, knife, hexbag, another knife, some funny looking jar, a wooden amulet of some sort, another hexbag...
No wooden stake. Not like it'd be what he needed anyway, since there'd need to be blood soaked onto the end of it, but Sam had hoped that Ruby would have conveniently had what he needed. Rubbing a palm against his forehead, Sam ducked out of the car and moved around to the drivers side. Fine. The goddamn Trickster would get away again because he wasn't prepared to take him on. There was no way he was gonna risk his ass against a creature that he had no leverage against, least of all one that -
"Did you really think that I had no idea you were here?"
The giant could have been standing on the opposite side of the entire city and Gabriel would have known exactly where he was. The two of them meeting in this parking lot had sort of been a coincidence, but Sam Winchester must have been on some pretty good crack if he actually managed to make himself believe that Gabe hadn't been able to pick up his presence. Make that god's own personal stash of crack, since he had seemed to be under the crazy impression that he could actually accomplish slipping off unnoticed. "Maybe I'm losing my touch. Maybe I'm not screwing with you boys as much as I should be, huh? Is the intimidation factor gone? Am I not concerning anymore?" Gabe put a hand to his chin, index finger tapping at it thoughtfully. "Then again, you could be getting stupider." He shot Sam a devious smirk at that. "I hear drinking demon blood does that kinda thing to your brain. Makes it all gooey and deteriorates it. Really very tragic; though, come to think of it, it does explain a lot."