gabe ☾

NOW HEAR ME OUT SAM'S GOT A TASTE

they're both devious little fella, they're both confident and flirtatious until it's a person they really like. they’ll flirt for fun, with confidence and sass — but the second it’s someone they actually care about? cue the emotional short-circuit. gabriel goes from cocky to lowkey protective and emotionally constipated. andy gets all nervous and sweet, like “uhh, do you maybe want to... come look at my van?”

both reject the roles imposed on them by powerful systems.

both have major “mischief energy.” smart, sneaky, and absolutely know how to work a situation in their favor — they’re the kind of guys who could talk their way out of a parking ticket with a grin.

they’re the “laid-back, goofy dude” archetype. gabriel’s pulling sitcom-level pranks; andy’s living in a van, vibing with his bong. but under the surface? major emotional baggage. both are running from massive responsibilities or pasts that hurt. they just wear it well — until they don’t.

when they care about someone, they really care. gabriel literally dies (twice) trying to do the right thing. andy tries to save people even when it means pushing himself too far. they’re the “you hurt them, you deal with me” type — just with jokes and smirks as armor.

both give off “I live alone and like it” energy but they actually crave connection. they just don’t trust easily, and once burned, they stay wary.

tags: Drabble ×Slow Burn ×Alternate Universe - High School ×High School ×Alternate Universe - College/University ×Alternate Universe - No Supernatural ×Pre-Law Student Sam Winchester ×Artist Gabriel (Supernatural) ×Painting ×Domestic ×Friendship/Love ×Friendship ×Hurt/Comfort ×Unrequited Love ×Not Actually Unrequited Love ×Pining ×Pining Gabriel (Supernatural) ×Nerds in love ×Coffee Shops ×Pre-Stanford Era (Supernatural) ×Stanford Era (Supernatural) ×Stanford University ×Stanford Student Sam Winchester ×Songfic ×Title from a Gigi Perez Song ×I Wrote This While Listening to Gigi Perez ×

🖤SOMETIMES🖤

chapter 2

There’s a moment when you start measuring time differently.

Not in days or weeks, but in goodbyes waiting to happen. In hallway glances that last too long. In sentences that almost turn into confessions but don’t. Gabriel didn’t expect endings to feel like this—quiet, stretched thin, like the sound of something unraveling slowly instead of snapping all at once.

He should’ve been excited. He was leaving. He was finally leaving. So why did it feel like loss?

“Don’t forget,” Sam said as he opened his locker, “I need your notes for that art history final.”

Gabriel leaned against the next locker over, pretending not to watch the way Sam’s fingers moved. “You don’t even take art history.”

“I’m using your notes to cheat on my civics paper. Obviously.”

“Ah,” Gabriel grinned, “my brilliance lives on.”

Sam rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. The hallway was thinning out—last period had let out twenty minutes ago, and most of the seniors were long gone. Except Gabriel, apparently. Still here. Still... hovering.

He didn’t have a reason to be. Not really.

“Hey,” Sam said, quieter now. “Are you okay?”

Gabriel blinked. “Yeah. Why?”

Sam shrugged, but it wasn’t casual. “You’ve been weird lately.”

“Wow. Hurtful.”

“You know what I mean.”

Gabriel swallowed. “I guess graduation’s just... looming.”

Sam’s face shifted slightly. A flicker. “Right.”

“You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

“Of course I will,” Sam said without hesitation. Then he paused, like he hadn’t meant to say it so plainly. “I mean. Yeah. It’ll be weird, not having you around.”

Gabriel looked at him. Really looked. Sam’s hair was still messy from gym, and he smelled faintly like chalk dust and detergent. He was staring at his locker like it held answers to questions he hadn’t figured out how to ask.

Gabriel wanted to tell him. Something. Anything. That he didn’t want to leave, not really. That being around Sam made everything feel a little less sharp, a little more bearable. That he’d started drawing again—real things, not just shadows and smudges—because Sam had said one kind thing six months ago and meant it.

Instead, he said: “You’ll be fine. You’ve got that whole law-school world waiting.”

Sam glanced at him. “That doesn’t mean I won’t miss you.”

And just like that, Gabriel felt like the floor tilted.

The bell rang, breaking whatever that was between them.

Gabriel gave a lopsided grin, covered in something like panic. “Careful, Sammy. If you keep saying things like that, I might not want to go.”

Sam smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m saying them for a reason.”

But Gabriel didn’t ask what reason. He just walked away, heart pounding, and pretended he hadn’t heard it.

The movie was halfway through when Sam finally let himself lean back.

Gabriel’s living room was small but warm—dim yellow lamps, a tangle of throw blankets, the soft hum of the TV casting flickering light across the walls. They were on their third film of the night, something old and full of practical effects and bad sound mixing, but Gabriel was grinning like a kid every time the music swelled. Sam didn’t even care about the plot anymore. He just watched Gabriel talk along with the lines.

“You really know all the dialogue?” Sam asked, low, not wanting to break the mood.

Gabriel tossed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Sammy. I’ve seen this movie thirty-two times.”

“You counted?”

“It’s a sacred tradition,” Gabriel said, very seriously. “You don’t just watch Star Wars, you absorb it into your soul.”

Sam huffed a laugh. “Nerd.”

Gabriel smirked. “Takes one to know one.”

They fell into silence again, except for the occasional crunch of popcorn and the pew-pew of retro sound effects. Sam’s foot brushed Gabriel’s under the blanket and neither of them moved it. Not right away.

Outside, the wind picked up. Inside, it was all warmth and soft colors and Gabriel’s breathing just a little too close.

“You’re lucky your parents are never home,” Sam said quietly, not turning to look. “Dean would’ve walked in by now, accused us of plotting alien world domination.”

“Maybe we are.”

Sam smirked, but didn’t answer. His head tilted toward Gabriel, resting against the couch back, and Gabriel let his eyes flick down for a second—Sam’s wrist against his, the slope of his jaw, the way his mouth was just slightly parted in concentration.

Gabriel could have kissed him. Right then. He could have.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he whispered, “What if this is the last time we get to do this?”

Sam’s brow furrowed slightly. “You’re not dying. You’re graduating.”

“Same thing,” Gabriel muttered, then sighed. “Everything’s gonna change.”

“Not everything.”

Gabriel turned, surprised by how sure Sam sounded.

Sam’s eyes were on the screen, but his voice was steady. “I’ll still call you. We’ll still hang out. You’ll just be... two bus rides away.”

Gabriel smiled faintly. “One if I lie to the driver.”

“See?” Sam bumped his shoulder gently. “Optimism.”

They sat like that until the end credits rolled, not talking, not moving. When Gabriel finally looked over, Sam was asleep—arms crossed, mouth soft, breathing slow.

Gabriel didn’t wake him.

He just sat there, watching the flicker of stars on the screen reflect in Sam’s hair, and tried not to fall even harder.

The gym smelled like flowers and floor polish.

Chairs in crooked rows. Proud parents holding up phones. Principal giving a speech no one would remember. Gabriel barely heard any of it—he sat in his gown, cap tilted slightly off center, one knee bouncing. He scanned the crowd for Sam, even though he knew Sam wouldn’t be down here with him. He just... looked anyway.

And when it was over—tassels flipped, confetti thrown, hugs exchanged—Gabriel stepped outside and found himself blinking against the light, heart thudding with a hollow kind of finality.

That’s when she found him.

“Congratulations,” a voice said, smooth as silk and twice as sharp.

Gabriel turned. She was leaning one shoulder against the stone wall just past the gym exit—dark waves spilling over her gown, her posture relaxed, like she’d been waiting for him. Her eyes caught the sunlight, unreadable.

“Kali,” Gabriel said, surprised. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Her smile curved slow and deliberate. “So. Freedom.”

Gabriel barked a laugh. “Yeah. Something like that.”

She stepped closer, and he couldn’t help noticing the way other people instinctively moved aside for her. Kali had that gravity—like she belonged in the middle of any room. Like if you looked away, you might miss something dangerous.

“You look good in black,” she said. “You should wear it more.”

Gabriel blinked. “You’re literally wearing the same thing I am.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it suits you.” She grinned. “Nervous?”

“A little,” he admitted.

She tilted her head. “About what comes next?”

Gabriel hesitated. And then, before he could stop himself, he said, “About leaving someone behind.”

Her expression softened for half a second. “Boyfriend?”

He laughed. Too quickly. “No. Just a friend.”

Kali didn’t press. She just looked at him like she saw more than she should.

“You ever think maybe you need to stop waiting for people to notice you,” she said, “and just... move forward?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Forward looks a lot like alone.”

She stepped even closer. “Doesn’t have to.”

For a second, everything went still. And Gabriel—filled with a thousand aching things he couldn’t say to the person he wanted to say them to—nodded.

“Wanna grab a drink?” Kali asked, like it wasn’t a question.

And Gabriel, feeling stupid and tired and lost, smiled like he meant it. “Yeah. Sure.”

Somewhere in the crowd, Sam was clapping for a friend’s photo. Somewhere, the summer was already beginning to end.

🖤SOMETIMES🖤

chapter 1

Gabriel never noticed when it started. Maybe it was always there, threaded quiet and harmless between hallway glances and the way Sam tapped his pencil during study hour. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Not when Sam sat three chairs away, all long limbs and ambition, muttering something about pre-law and scholarships with his hair falling into his eyes. Not when Gabriel was just passing time before graduation, slipping out of chemistry to sketch in the stairwell, smelling like acrylic and lemon gum.

Sam was younger. And straight. And so very serious.

Gabriel liked soft boys with sharp mouths, liked loud girls with fast cars, liked people who looked like neon signs when they laughed. Sam didn’t laugh much. He smirked, sometimes. He talked like he had somewhere to be, something to prove, and he looked at Gabriel like he was trying to figure out what didn’t fit.

It should’ve been annoying.

But Sam asked questions no one else did. He watched Gabriel paint once, said nothing for twenty full minutes, then told him the color looked like a bruise. Like something healing. Like something honest.

Gabriel had looked away too fast. His fingers had gone still, and the silence had pressed too close.

Sam never brought it up again. But the next week, he gave Gabriel a book on modern art movements with a sticky note tucked between the pages:

"I think you'd like this. Thought of your stuff on page 63."

He had. Gabriel flipped to that page a lot more than he meant to.

Gabriel flipped to that page a lot more than he meant to.

It was dumb. It was just a book. Sam had probably done the same thing for a dozen other kids—he always carried too many books, always had notes tucked into margins like breadcrumbs. Still, Gabriel found himself glancing at that stupid yellow sticky note every time he saw the book on his nightstand. He hadn’t taken it out. He hadn’t moved it.

Now, the library was quiet except for the gentle hum of the heating vents and the occasional scratch of pencils. Gabe had ducked into the corner table near the back, sketchpad open, but nothing was coming out. Just spirals and half-faces and a smudged fingerprint where he’d rubbed too hard at the charcoal.

He almost didn’t notice Sam sliding into the seat across from him.

“You’re in my spot,” Sam said, not looking up as he pulled a thick binder from his bag. His voice was calm, but Gabriel could see the flicker of amusement around his mouth. A barely-there smile.

Gabriel raised a brow. “Didn’t know we were getting territorial now.”

“You’ve sat here every Tuesday for three weeks. I figured that was a declaration of war.”

Gabe smirked. “Guess I’ll just have to fight you for it.”

That made Sam look up. Not all the way—just enough that their eyes met, and Gabriel felt it like static. Something unspoken moved between them, familiar and strange.

Then Sam glanced down again and shrugged. “I’d win.”

“You think you’re stronger than me?”

“I think I’d bore you into submission with legal jargon.”

Gabriel laughed, genuine and short. It startled them both.

Sam tilted his head, just slightly. “You should laugh more.”

And Gabriel, heart caught somewhere between a smile and a breath, couldn’t think of a single damn thing to say.

***

There are things you don’t notice while they’re happening.

Like how often you start memorizing someone else’s routine. The sound of their footsteps coming up the stairs. The way their laugh changes when they’re tired. The little things they do when no one’s looking—like how Sam chews the inside of his cheek when he’s thinking too hard, or how he always taps twice on the lid of a coffee cup before taking a sip.

Gabriel told himself it didn’t mean anything. You could learn anyone like this, if you saw them enough. If they let you in enough.

Still—there were parts of Sam that Gabriel didn’t know how to unsee.

“Hey, genius,” Sam muttered, nudging Gabriel with the corner of a textbook, “your toast is burning.”

Gabriel blinked. He’d been standing in front of the toaster, staring blankly at the counter. He glanced down at the toast—well, carbon square now—and groaned.

“That was my last piece of bread.”

Sam didn’t even flinch. “I brought muffins.”

“Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite person?”

Sam smirked, pulling a crumpled paper bag from his backpack. “Only every other day.”

They ended up sitting on the Gabriel’s kitchen floor, backs against the cabinets, sharing chocolate muffins and cold coffee. 

The conversation drifted—school, finals, college, the annoying new librarian who hated teenagers. Gabriel wasn’t really listening to what he was saying anymore. He was too busy watching the way Sam’s hand curled around his paper cup, the way his head tilted slightly when he laughed. There was a muffin crumb at the edge of his mouth. Gabriel wanted to brush it away, and that thought hit harder than he expected.

Shit.

He looked away fast, heart skipping in that terrible, familiar way. It was happening. It had been happening.

And Sam didn’t know.

Worse—Gabriel was pretty sure Sam didn’t even think of him that way. Not really. Not the way Gabriel did, not with this low ache in his chest and a thousand words he couldn’t say.

“Gabe?” Sam asked, voice soft.

Gabriel blinked. “Yeah?”

“You spaced out.”

Gabriel forced a smile, too sharp at the edges. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

Gabriel shrugged. “How badly I want a second muffin.”

Sam laughed. “You could just ask, you know.”

Yeah. Gabriel thought.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64969417

SABRIEL - ROYALTY

"i'm not running anymore" *looks at sam* BYE

i told once, i won't stop until i cosplayed all "jokers". drop it here cause no one cares