Chapter Text
Gabriel Novak prided himself on being the kind of guy who never backed down from a bet.
Honestly, he didn't like to think back on all of the crazy things he'd done in the name of a bet. Some of them he couldn't remember anyway, which was probably a good thing. Most of them had been in college, before he'd failed out shortly after starting his third year. The only things they all had in common was that every single one of them involved alcohol - and every single one of them led to a reward.
He'd definitely used sex as a reward before. A hot person gives him a challenge and says they'll sleep with him if he completes it? Gabriel's so down for that. And services, too. If someone offers to do his laundry for a week in return for making a fool out of himself, well, Gabriel makes a fool out of himself on a daily basis anyway, and he absolutely hates doing laundry, so that's a win win. Money is the traditional one, and possibly not Gabriel's favorite, but he needs to buy things just as much as anyone else does, so he'll happily wager twenty dollars on something.
But this... this was a whole other level.
Here Balthazar was, sitting opposite him at a table in a crowded bar, the girls hanging onto his arm having long since disappeared to find a table of younger and more attractive people... and Balthazar was offering him a thousand dollars.
"A thousand dollars? You don't even have a thousand dollars, you dickface."
"Neither do you, but I bet you'd like to," Balthazar slurred, definitely too drunk to be offering something like this, definitely going to regret this in the morning.
"Well, of course I fucking would. But how are you going to give it to me?"
"I'll figure it out. I'll start saving now. See, this isn't a quick challenge, this isn't like - take your pants off and dance on a table to Call Me Maybe kind of challenge. By the time you're done with this one? I'll have had plenty of time to make money."
That got Gabriel's attention. Balthazar, and most of their other friends, were usually all about the quick wins, the bets that they could see completed within a night, done and dusted before they could even chug another drink, so that they could laugh at Gabriel and then move on with their lives. But here, Balthazar was offering him something long term. This had to be good if it was quite that important to him.
"Alright, hit me with it. I'm not saying yes, mind, but I'm interested to hear what you've got."
Balthazar leaned across the table, his eyes glittering, getting right into Gabriel's personal space. "Okay. Okay, here goes. I happen to know through a friend of a friend of a friend of a very casual acquaintance of a dude I once slept with in high school... that the White House is looking for more staff."
"I don't want to know anything more about your friends," Gabriel said with an eyeroll (he rarely did), "And I'm not pranking anybody in the White House. What do you wanna have me do, deface peoples' applications? Squirt whipped cream on them as they arrive for their interviews?"
"Better," Balthazar grinned wickedly, and now Gabriel was concerned more than he was intrigued. "I want you to get a job there."
"A what?"
"A job. In the White House. Come on, wouldn't that be hilarious? Bet you can't do it. Bet there's absolutely no way you can actually convince them to hire you."
Gabriel considered it. He was just in the right spot of drunkenness that he had enough brainpower left to consider such things, but was deprived of enough common sense that he wouldn't just dismiss the idea outright. "And, what, I only get the money if I get the job?"
"'Sright."
It was all starting to make sense now. Balthazar was offering him a ridiculous sum of money, because he thought it was completely impossible that Gabriel could actually make this happen. He thought that Gabe would get laughed at and turned away on sight and that he, Balthazar, would get a free laugh out of the whole thing.
And Gabriel, a little sick of being the butt of everyone's jokes, very, very badly didn't want that to happen. But he also had a reputation to uphold. And his reputation was that he always accepted bets.
"You're playing in dangerous waters here," he said, sounding more confident than he really was. "I am a trained actor, you know. I can make anyone believe anything."
Balthazar waved a hand around. "Psh. You failed out of school. You got a D in Fundamentals of Acting."
"That was because I had an evil professor and you know it!" Gabriel countered, sick of Bal bringing that story up.
"So. You'll do it? You take the bet?"
Gabriel shook his head and then banged it on the table for good measure. Even he knew he had to be absolutely crazy.
"Fuck it all. I don't know why the hell I do these things for you, but yeah, I'll take the damn bet."
Balthazar cheered and waved his hand to a waiter, ordering a pair of shots for them. That was how they always sealed a bet - both of them with a shot of something brightly colored in their hands, clink, drink, and the bet's a binding contract.
...That said, this bet was a little different from most others. Balthazar woke up the next morning with the worst case of bed hair Gabriel had ever seen, moping into the kitchen looking like he'd been dragged through a farm on the back of a tractor during the night, clutching his own stomach. "I'm too old for this shit," he groaned as Gabriel poured him a bowl of dry cornflakes and pushed them over to his stupid roommate. Gabriel was pretty sure Bal didn't even remember making the bet at all. The night was a little blurry even for him, and Balthazar had been so much more drunk than Gabriel had. And since Bal didn't bring it up all through their morning spent together marathoning Star Wars on the couch, if was a fair guess that it had completely slipped his mind.
And yet. That day, Gabriel went into the city to run some errands. He posted a couple of letters and he grabbed some necessary groceries (Jolly Ranchers, Twizzlers, Dum Dums, Hershey's Kisses and a strawberry milkshake), bought a new phone case because his really couldn't stand to get any more cracked - and then he went to the bank. Got some cash out. Checked his bank account balance. Nearly fainted on the spot.
That couldn't possibly be right.
Sure, it was a little after Christmas and he had gone a bit crazy on the sale shopping this year, buying himself some pretty great new outfits, and yeah, he'd had a few more nights out with Balthazar than usual recently - but he was really, really shocked that things had managed to get quite this bad. At this rate, he wouldn't even be able to afford next month's rent and heating. He'd have to put in some extra hours at work, that was, if he was even allowed, because he knew Balthazar wouldn't be able to cover him, and he really didn't want to have to ask Luke for help, because he knew how much his brother would judge him for running out of money.
That was when the memory of Balthazar's thousand dollar offer floated back into his mind.
A thousand dollars would really help him right now. That was two whole months' rent, straight up. He could remind Balthazar about the bet, and hopefully the guy would have the same opinion about it that he did last night - that Gabriel would never be able to actually succeed with it - and let him give it a chance. And then Gabriel would apply for a job. At the White House.
Really, what was the worst that could happen? He could get turned away, but then all he'd lose would be the time spent on the application and maybe the interview. It wasn't like they were going to be filmed on national TV. Yes, Balthazar would laugh at him, but that was already a daily occurrence. And in the rare, unthinkable possibility that he succeeded? Well, he'd have a thousand dollars, as well as the chance of a job that was much better paid than the one he had right now.
It wasn't a half bad situation.
He laughed on the way back at the irony that Balthazar had struggled to convince him to do it at first, and now he was going to be the one who struggled to convince Balthazar. But he'd manage it, somehow. Even if getting Bal drunk again was what it took. He could do this.
As far as plans for his future went, it wasn't conventional, it wasn't even really that plausible. But then, he'd grown up wanting to be an actor. Unlikely future plans were kind of his thing.
The day Gabriel got the letter was a fairly boring Tuesday morning, several months later.
"I hate Tuesdays," he was complaining, leaning against the side in the kitchen wearing his ice cream parlor uniform. "Feels like every day is Tuesday. Tuesdays are just a neverending blur. They're the worst day of the week. Everyone always complains about Mondays, but they're really not so bad, you know? You're still riding the high of the weekend, and you can slack off a bit because nobody expects you to get on top of your work right away. Tuesdays are the difficult ones. Let's just cancel Tuesdays, yeah?"
Balthazar was sorting through the mail, completely ignoring his roommate's rant. "Three for you," he finally said, handing over the letters.
The first one was from Gabriel's oldest brother Michael, away on a business trip in England, sending a very stilted, formal postcard that looked as though it had been copied word for word and sent to every single person he knew. He threw it out. The second one was a catalogue from a clothing company he bought from sometimes, but right now, he knew he definitely couldn't afford any new clothes. He threw that one out too.
The third one was a fancy, embossed envelope, but it didn't give anything else away on the surface.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington, DC
20500
Dear Mr Novak,
Thankyou for your recent interview for a position as a White House Tour Guide. We very much appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to talk to us. After performing the necessary background checks and reviewing your application several times, we have come to the conclusion that you would be a credit to our team of staff. We would like to invite you to begin a two week trial period working at the White House following receipt of signed copies of the enclosed forms agreeing that you will not disclose anything you may overhear while on the property, whether or not your employment continues after this initial period. A witness to the signature will also be required (cannot be a family member.)
If you accept this position, you understand that you will be an official employee of the President of the United States of America, and that this employment comes with certain conditions regarding how you conduct your personal life both in and out of the White House.
The letter continued from there, and Gabriel's eyes glazed over a bit as he scanned the rest of it, looking for the bottom bit where he would surely unfold the last flap of paper only to read the words "April Fools! Love, Balthazar." None came. But of course, Balthazar would never be that obvious. He'd want to make Gabe wait for a little bit longer before revealing that he was the butt of a joke.
Balthazar wasn't even paying attention. He was struggling with some kind of word puzzle in the newspaper.
"Hey, Bal," Gabriel said casually, holding out the letter. As he did so, it caught the light and he saw an official looking watermark on the paper. He refused to let himself hope.
Bal frowned at Gabriel and took the letter, his eyes scanning down it, looking more and more horrified as he reached the end.
"Holy fucking shit. Did you fake this?"
"Of course not. Did you?"
They both stared at each other for a minute or two, a complete Mexican standoff during which neither of them let themselves believe that the other hadn't completely fabricated what they were holding together in their hands, even as they both knew that they themselves had had nothing to do with the letter.
Finally, Balthazar broke, tugging the letter out of Gabriel's grip and slamming it down on the table. "Nothing to do with me, I swear, with a hand across my heart, on my entire shot glass collection."
"I swear, too," Gabriel replied, barely hearing his own voice, his head swimming.
"Swear on all your stuffed animals?"
"Swear on all my stuffed animals." Gabriel was too out of it to even get annoyed that Balthazar knew about them after he'd tried so hard to hide his collection. What the fuck was happening to him? They were the only two who'd known about the bet. The letter was addressed directly to him and no fewer than three White House employees had signed it. It seemed completely genuine in every way. And Gabriel knew that his interview had gone well, that he'd been polite and charming, and he knew that there was nothing actually on his criminal record, despite everything he'd done in the past.
But it was one thing going to an interview and not fucking it up. It was a whole different matter to actually get offered a job. And out of all the Georgetown-educated, rich family trust fund pretty much born into politics kids that existed in this city - Gabriel didn't completely understand why he should be the one who beat out all the competition and actually get offered this ridiculous position.
"So, are you going to take it?" came Balthazar's voice from a very long way away.
"I don't... know," Gabriel murmured, because he had no clue what the hell he should do. He claimed to hate his job at the ice cream parlor (they never let him design any new sundaes despite all his great ideas), but then again, didn't everyone hate their job? You weren't supposed to like your job, that was what he'd always thought. If you liked your job you were weird and people probably hated you for it. And yes, the White House would pay better, but it actually wasn't significantly more. And he would have to wear a suit to work every single day and he wouldn't be able to mess around with his hair and dye it cotton candy pink like he'd been thinking about recently and there would just be so many rules and it wouldn't be worth it.
"You don't get the money if you don't take it," Balthazar smirked, and Gabriel wondered why he was so invested in the whole idea anyway. Fame by association, maybe?
Gabriel scowled. "That's not fair. I got the job. Did what I had to do. That money's mine and you know it."
"Yes, but it's my bet, my rules. Deal with it."
But a thousand dollars wasn't really worth shaking up his whole life for, was it?
"Look. Gabriel. I know we don't have serious conversations all that often-"
"Balthazar, I've known you for almost ten years and we have never once had a serious conversation. I don't think you know how."
"-but I'm just going to be straight with you here-"
"I've also never known you to be straight, you piece of gay trash."
"-and tell you that this is a really fucking great opportunity, yeah? And the letter says there's a trial period. And maybe it would be worth trying it out and just seeing what happens. Because recently you've been constantly complaining about the fact that once you turn thirty your chances of making it as an actor are basically zero, and honestly I'm getting really fucking tired of listening to that, so maybe trying out some other career path would be good for you. And if you don't like it? Then quit, it's that simple. Look, if you're not going to do it for any other reason, then at least do it for the story?"
"I'll do you for the story," Gabriel muttered darkly, grabbing his bag from beside the table and stalking out of the apartment without another word on the matter.
But of course, the White House job and what it could potentially mean for him was the only thing on his mind all day. He didn't even judge the woman who asked to swap marshmallows for raspberries in her sundae like he usually would have done (who the hell would choose extra fruit when they could be eating marshmallows?) Gabriel wasn't exactly the kind of guy to really expect a lot from himself. Balthazar's 'Do it for the story' motto had been pretty much the only thing running through Gabriel's head at every single stage of the application process, and he'd managed to completely convince himself that he didn't have a chance in hell of actually getting this damn job. Because why would he? He'd been turned away by the 7-11 when he was sixteen years old, so why the fuck would the White House accept him? It didn't make sense.
And yet here he was, going about his everyday life, and what nobody around him knew was that he'd been offered a job by the White House.
It made him feel strangely warm inside. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he'd actually achieved something, that he'd been successful. And he wasn't used to that, but it felt good. And he knew that would still be the case even if he turned down the job - that the achievement would still be his own all the same - but maybe if he took the job, the feeling would continue. Maybe he'd do well and he'd actually get to feel good about himself for once.
Probably not, though. But, as Balthazar said - it would be a great story.
--
"That suit's too big on you."
"Everything is too big on me. Have you seen me? I'm, like, shorter than the average five year old," Gabriel muttered.
Balthazar rolled his eyes, as if to say, 'see what I have to put up with here?' He adjusted the knot in Gabriel's tie (which was some kind of fancy thing the two of them had read about online, rather than the normal kind of knot Gabriel had done once or twice before) and messed around with the jacket so that it hung slightly better.
Gabriel looked in the mirror. He'd never seen himself wear so much black. Even with the light purple tie, he still felt like he was going to a damn funeral. A funeral for his social life, maybe?
Balthazar snapped a picture of Gabe's displeased expression with his phone camera.
"That one's going on Facebook. I'm going to caption it, 'Baby's first day at school.'"
"Don't you fucking dare." Gabriel tried to snatch the phone from Bal's grip.
Balthazar just laughed. "Language. What did I tell you about the F-word not being allowed in the White House? Am I going to have to start a swear jar for you?"
"You know what? I changed my mind about wanting some moral support on the subway. You have a really sucky day, and I'll see you when I get back." Gabriel dragged a comb through his hair one final time and then stormed out into the hall. He really didn't need this crap from Balthazar, today of all days. He couldn't ever remember being this nervous in his life, not even when he auditioned for the recurring role in Community that he didn't even end up getting. And Balthazar clearly didn't understand that, or else he did, and he was an even bigger dick than Gabriel had given him credit for in the past.
He tried to focus on the rhythm of the subway as it carried him underneath the city. If he thought about the subway, then he didn't have to think about the destination, and if he thought about the destination, then he would be in very serious danger of spontaneously combusting in a ball of bright pink flames, something he'd been scared about ever since he'd had a very specific nightmare when he was in middle school. And even if that wasn't necessarily a realistic thing to be scared about, right now there were other things that were. For example, completely messing up on his first day. Having to take tea to the President and dropping it everywhere. Having to speak to the President and accidentally calling him by the wrong name. Having to speak to literally anybody in the White House and revealing himself to be an idiot who knew fuck all about politics. These were all very, very valid concerns that Gabriel didn't want to think about just yet.
So he didn't. He counted the jolts of the subway car and recited Taylor Swift lyrics to himself under his breath and then, once he left the train, he concentrated very hard on the little piece of paper guiding him towards the staff entrance of the White House.
The staff entrance. He was going through a staff door, for staff.
He had never felt like more of a faker in his life.
He walked into the training room he was directed inside and sat down in a wooden chair that looked like it was polished more often than Gabriel flushed his toilet. Every moment he sat there, he kept expecting someone to poke their head in and tell him that there had been a fuck up (not that they'd use the term fuck up) and that he wasn't supposed to be here and should just go home before he embarrassed himself and everyone within a ten foot radius of him.
Gabriel wasn't the only new recruit, although he still felt out of place, considering the other four seemed to be identical, with the exact same slicked-down side-parted brown hair, thin glasses and pinstriped suits. Gabriel, with his bright eyes and fluffy, too-long honey blond hair was already feeling like an outsider to some kind of club the way he never had when he'd worked at the ice cream parlor, where he easily made conversation with pretty much anyone. So he didn't speak to anybody else around the table as he waited for his new boss to show up - he just sat in frozen silence, his phone out, one thumb moving up and down the screen, scrolling through pictures of baby red pandas to calm himself down. He tried his best not to listen in on the polite conversation the others were making. He didn't give a shit where they'd all gone to college.
Gabriel's new boss, when she appeared, was a tall blonde woman in a skinny pinstriped pantsuit, carrying more binders than Gabriel thought should be necessary for a job that mostly involved walking and talking.
"Welcome to the White House. My name is Jessica, I'm the head tour guide here and I'll be looking after you new recruits throughout your training process. Today will be mostly an orientation, where I'll talk you through all your training steps and get you acquainted with what it's like to work here, but you could find yourself shadowing a tour as early as tomorrow..."
After a few hours of information being hurled at him from all sides, Gabriel was given a lunch break and directed to a break room, but he didn't feel comfortable sitting at the same table as any of the other staff members. Instead, he dragged a chair over to the side of the room beneath the window, curled up crosslegged on top of it and pulled a fudge sandwich and a cherry soda from his bag.
The only other thing in the bag besides his wallet and keys was the binder he'd been given that morning - almost three hundred pages full of information about the White House and its function and history, all of which he had to memorize for an exam, to be sure he could answer any questions visitors threw at him.
He opened the information guide to the first page, and began to read.
Gabriel had never exactly found reading easy - it wasn't that he didn't enjoy it, it was just that his attention span was so short and there were so many interesting distractions in the world and he generally found it difficult to focus on his reading for more than a few lines at a time. And it's not like this had stopped being the case. It was just that he was so goddamn stubborn that over the next few weeks he just kept powering through, even when his eyes blurred and his head ached, even when Balthazar yelled at him through his bedroom door.
"Hey you! Short-arse! Put on one of those tight shirts, we're going to a bar!"
"You're three inches taller than me, and I'm not going to any bars! I take the exam on Monday!" Gabriel shouted back, turning the page, starting to read about the dentist's office in the basement. He didn't have to take the test so soon, of course, they were offering him plenty more time to finish his training. But he wanted to do this as fast as possible - he felt like as soon as his momentum slipped, everything would get messed up.
"My grandmother would be a better roommate than you!" Balthazar called, though he didn't dare actually go in the room. "At least she knows how to cook something other than Pop-Tarts!"
"Fight me, Balthazar!" was the only response Gabriel could come up with, and a few minutes later he heard the front door slam, indicating that Balthazar had clearly gone out on his own.
And the interesting thing was that the more Gabriel learned, the more he wanted to learn. He didn't care so much about the history of the place; the exact architecture of the banister of the second staircase in the West Wing bored him almost to tears. But all the current events were kind of fascinating. And Gabriel had never even bothered to vote in an election before, because all the presidential candidates had to be over thirty-five which made them automatically old and boring so what was even the point, but President Sam Winchester actually seemed... dare Gabriel say it... cool. Gabriel found himself nodding along and agreeing with a lot of the guy's policies, giving his binder a thumbs up as he read about what the man had already achieved since he'd been elected into office. He was still far too sensible for Gabriel's tastes, but for a politician, he seemed surprisingly badass.
All of which meant that Gabriel found the modern stuff easy to remember, and he walked into the testing room on Monday far more confident in his knowledge than he ever expected to be.
Jessica told him to take a seat at a polished wooden table far too large for him on his own, did a cursory check to make sure he didn't have a phone or a secret set of notes, then handed him a test paper and informed him she'd be back in two hours. She winked at him as she left the room.
"Good luck, Mr Novak," she smiled. "I'm sure you won't need it."
She left, and Gabriel turned over the paper.
Tour Guide Training Exam
Instructions: Answer every question to the best of your ability. Questions worth one point require just a word or a phrase. Questions worth two points require more explanation and should be answered in full sentences. The test is scored out of 200 points and a minimum score of 185 is required to pass. Time Allotted: 2 hours.
1. Who was the fifth President of the United States? (1 pt.)
Gabriel read the question three or four times over, his heartrate increasing with each reread, trying to make sense of it. His brain suddenly felt... slow, like he had honey running through it instead of thoughts. He didn't like it. His breathing sped up to compensate, and he couldn't focus, he could hardly remember where he was.
It had been years since he'd even taken an exam. In college he'd had to write papers, but apart from that one basic math class everyone had to take, he'd never really been in any classes that had a final. Which meant it had been high school since he'd last seriously done this, and even then, he hadn't always shown up to tests.
He stared at the page, the words blurring together as he gripped the table, and he absolutely couldn't do this, he didn't know how. He knew that this morning he'd known exactly who the fifth President of the United States was, and he could have listed their dates, notable achievements and favorite color, but now? Everything was gone, his mind was blank, and he was just a stupid kid who made bad decisions when he'd had too much alcohol.
He couldn't say anything, and he couldn't sit there and face Jessica's disappointment when she came back, not when she clearly expected him to do well. Gabriel ducked out of the closest door, scowling because it was easier to hold back the tears that way, and he threw himself down the corridor and out of sight. He didn't really know where he was going and he was fairly sure he wasn't allowed to be wherever it was, but it was quiet, and quiet was what he needed right now. He turned a few more corners and made his way through corridors with fancy wallpaper and carpets soft enough to go barefoot, and then when he finally found somewhere that seemed like he wasn't going to be interrupted, he sank to the floor and buried his face in his hands.
He was a fucking dumbass. He should have stuck with his instincts; he should never have taken this job just to prove a point. Should have known that it was only going to take a few days for him to fuck everything up. He was going to have a really good cry right here and right now because it didn't matter any more even if someone did catch him - it'd be embarrassing, but he'd get over it. Then, in the morning, he was going to quit and his boss could give the job to someone else, someone who actually knew what they were doing and wasn't a total fraud like Gabriel clearly was.
"Well, I'm certainly not accustomed to finding my employees in the floor back here, but I guess there's a first time for everything."
Gabriel froze. That voice was familiar, though he couldn't quite place it.
Slowly, he raised his head, higher and higher, until his eyes met those of a ridiculously tall man who also just happened to be the President of the United States.
Gabriel's eyes widened and he blinked rapidly in shock.
"Not that I'm complaining. This is the corridor I always come to to get some time away from everyone, and any man who has the same taste in corridors as I do must be someone worth talking to."
President Sam Winchester slid down the wall and settled next to Gabriel, just a few inches away from him.
Gabriel was terrified, but he was nothing if not an actor, and he was an actor who was already planning to quit his job in the morning, so what did he really have to lose?
He laughed. "Hey Sam, how's it going? Nice tie."
President Winchester raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sure any of his staff had called him by his first name before. He picked up his tie and inspected it - a light blue plaid pattern, contrasting nicely with his navy blue suit. "Thankyou. It was a birthday present from my brother."
Gabriel grinned, finally getting the chance to put his recent research to good use. "May second, right?" he asked, and then he finger-gunned the President.
President Winchester - Sam, Gabriel supposed, because finger guns generally meant first name terms - chuckled. "That's right. So close to International Star Wars Day, but not quite there."
Gabriel shrugged. "Maybe for the best, you don't want people to start comparing you to Emperor Palpatine. As it is, you can tell your brother when you see him that Gabriel Novak says he has good taste in ties."
"Gabriel Novak, huh?" Sam smiled; a different smile to the one he always did on TV, and Gabriel felt like he was being let in on a secret. "I'll let him know. He'll probably reply with something sarcastic, which I'll then be sure to pass on to you."
Gabriel nodded, deciding it was best not to mention the fact that this was almost certainly his last day on the job. He didn't entirely know how to carry on that conversation, so he dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of candies - the secret stash that he didn't usually share with anyone. "Would you like a Jolly Rancher?"
Sam nodded. "The green ones are my favorite."
"Excellent. I like watermelon and blue raspberry, so we can share these just fine."