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i.
Like so many things in Gabriel’s life, it begins with a lie.
Gabriel knows the exact split-second he decides that this fight in Elysian Fields will not end until one of them dies. “Watch your tone,” Lucifer said, and until that moment he was still the brother Gabriel had loved for aeons before their father had even considered creating humanity - haughty and prideful but so, so bright.
But then (“So this is all just one big temper tantrum. Time to grow up,” Gabriel said) his face morphed into something else, something befitting of the Devil and - Gabriel had known, intellectually, but it wasn’t until he saw the twisted mess his brothers Grace had become that he truly realized. Lucifer, the Morning Star, bright, cold, blinding light and a mischievous yet debonair swirl of Grace framing him almost like a halo from biblical fiction - the brother that had loved Gabriel in turn - was dead. Had been dead for a long time.
And then Gabriel hadn’t wanted to run anymore; he’d wanted to fight, to lash out, to scratch out the eyes of this thing that wore his brother's memory like a cheap suit. He thought he’d die, honestly, but somehow, by some miracle, some quirk of luck, when the smoke cleared, it was Lucifer’s vessel dead on the floor, Lucifer’s wings imprinted on the carpet.
So now here he stands, outside Elysian Fields, shellshocked, and Sam Winchester is holding him at arms length - because they’d hugged, Sam had hugged him - and tries to grasp for an answer to the question he’d just been asked: “Why did you decide to fight for us, in the end?”
Gabriel wishes he could tell Sam - wishes he could tell anyone, but there are no words for the bonedeep sorrow, the loss, the grief he feels. So he grasps for something else, something more familiar, the mantle of carefree trickster.
“Couldn’t let'cha get toasted,” he says, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully at Sam, trailing his eyes downward as if appreciating the Hunter's body even if his mind is in no space to do that. It’s a half-hearted show, even he has to admit he’s phoning it in, but it seems to work on Sam because - oh.
Sam Winchester is kissing him, warm and soft but insistent, heedless of Dean’s indignant noises. Gabriel could get used to this. Just as he’s about to return the kiss in earnest, Sam backs away again.
“Sorry,” he says, breathless, licks his lips and Gabriel follows the movement of his tongue like hypnotized. “Post-battle adrenaline,” Sam claims, a desperate edge to his voice. Gabriel says nothing. “And uh- I. Thank you. What you did for me ...,” he trails off, and Gabriel continues to say nothing.
Like so many things in Gabriel’s life, it began with a lie.
ii.
There’s still a lot of mopping up to be done after the Apocalypse-that-never-was. Gabriel thinks he should mourn his brother, but when he invokes the name Lucifer it’s not the twisted monster he’d fought in Elysian Fields that comes to mind, it’s his brother, the Lightbringer, so he does his best not to touch those memories with a ten-foot-pole.
Sam is his best distraction. He seems to have taken Gabriel’s throw-away pick-up line at face value and the Hunter's pretty damn grateful. Like, three blowjobs in one day grateful. Gabriel drops in on the Hunters often, pranks Dean, flirts with Sam, pretends to be utterly disinterested in their hunts while ‘accidentally’ dropping hints.
It’s a pretty good life, he thinks, four months into it. Aside from the fratricide he’d had to commit to get here.
Oh, and also, Sam seems to be of the opinion that they’re dating. Gabriel hasn't disabused him of the notion because - well, he's not in anyone's good books anymore where the pagans are concerned and even waves of celestial intent need friends. Sam hasn’t confessed his love yet, but Gabriel can tell he’s wants to from the words he traces in long-forgotten languages into the archangels skin after sex, forgetting that Gabriel speaks all of them.
Sam's feelings are putting a damper on this whole ‘sex with a tree’ gig he’s got going on. Gabriel’s been too depressed to seriously scout around for any other lovers so he supposes he’s technically monogamous, but that doesn’t mean - that is to say ... it’s not like he hates the moose. But he’s also never asked himself if he likes Sam, and four months may seem like a lot of time to a relationship-averse Hunter, but Gabriel’s an eternal being and to him it’s been an hour and three minutes since he’d stumbled out of a hotel smeared in his beloved brother’s blood.
***
It’s eight months after Lucifer’s death when Gabriel drops into the Winchester’s motel room du jour to find warm cookies waiting for him.
“Dean’s out,” Sam says from where he’s hunched over his laptop. Gabriel keeps staring at the cookies. Sam looks up to meet his gaze shyly; “They’re for you,” he says.
Gabriel raises one eyebrow. “You know I can just snap up a bakery, right?”
Sam fidgets now, laptop forgotten, a soft dusting of pink on his cheekbones. “I know but - we had to take, uh, baking lessons for a case because Dean thought the instructor could be a - and, well, I thought - I thought you’d like them. It’s Valentines Day.”
Gabriel realizes with a start and a heart wrenching pain somewhere near the center of his Grace, that for this - this overgrown puppy and his hand-made Snickerdoodles and the adoration pouring out of him, he’d have killed Lucifer any day. If he’d known, back then, what it’d feel like to have Sam Winchester bake him Valentines cookies, he’d have ... well, he had, for other reasons, but it was functionally the same, right?
“Thanks, kiddo,” he says, softer than he’d intended, and takes a bite out of one. They're Christmas cookies and Gabriel imagines Sam's had to put up with a lot of weird looks in that class to bake these, just because Gabriel had once off-handedly mentioned he thought the name was funny. The cookie tastes like cinnamon and raw affection, just like Sam does a moment later when he’s kissing him.
“I love you,” Sam says against his lips, breathlessly, and he’s shaking underneath Gabriel’s palms and the archangel knows without a doubt that he’ll lose all of this, that this’ll all stop, if he comes clean now.
“Love you, too, Samshine,” he says instead.
iii.
Gabriel has mulled this problem over extensively. Sam is handsome and kind. Full of affection, ready to offer Gabriel comfort and understanding and love and, most importantly, ready to watch seasons upon seasons of Dr Sexy with him with minimal complaints.
Sam brings him small gifts that reminded him of the archangel from his hunts, Sam falls asleep wrapped around Gabriel’s vessel every night, right after he’s whispered something sappy into his ear. Sam doesn’t just listen to Gabriel’s verbose, intricate stories about historic figures both famous and obscure, he practically devours them.
Gabriel likes what they have very much. Gabriel does not love Sam Winchester. Gabriel can not lose this.
It’s been almost two years since Lucifer’s death and Sam and Dean are constantly arguing because Sam wants to settle down somewhere - retire, become part of the research network.
“You’ll go stir-crazy in a month,” Dean asserts right now; he’s driving the Impala which is likely the only thing keeping him from gesturing wildly.
Sam makes bitchface #7 (“You don’t know what you’re talking about” - Gabriel has an encyclopedic knowledge of Sam’s bitchfaces by now, seeing as he is often the recipient of them) and retorts, “I was at Stanford for years, Dean, and it’s not like I’ll never hunt again. I just want some place to call home!”
Gabriel quietly stuffs another spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s into his mouth. They’ve been at it for weeks and frankly, he’s bored of it. He should do something fun, like snap Dean's mouth away, but the last time he'd done that, he'd earned himself Sam's bitchface #17 ("What did I say about bullying my brother?").
When they stop at a motel for the night, Dean storms off instantly, undoubtedly in the direction of the nearest bar. Sam sighs, and Gabriel takes pity on him and snaps their duffel bags to the room he knows Sam is about to be given the keys to by the pimply kid at reception.
“Thanks,” Sam says tiredly, right before Gabriel snaps himself into the room as well and sprawls out on the bed, ice-cream disintegrated into nothingness on the way, waiting for Sam to return and maybe make out while watching Japanese game shows.
When Sam returns, he’s more tired than Gabriel had anticipated so the making out is instead turned into a leisurely cuddle. “Why is this so important to you anyway?,” Gabriel asks a sleepy Sam hours later.
Sam sighs, his breath tickling Gabriel’s throat where the Hunter’s face is buried in the crook of his neck. “Because,” he starts, then pauses. “I really, really wanna have a real life, with you,” he adds quietly. “I want to ask you to marry me,” he says, barely audible over the background murmur of a man in a green chicken costume being kicked in the balls on the TV screen.
“Would you say yes, when I do, Gabe?,” Sam asks, voice so sleepy that Gabriel is pretty sure his boyfriend doesn’t even know what he’s saying, but also equally certain that Sam is serious about the question.
Suddenly, he’s ultra-aware of Sam’s warm, half-naked body pressed leisurely against him, not for any kind of gratification, just because. Sam’s eyes are hazel and his lips are warm and pink and his eyelashes are so long where they rest against his perfectly sculpted cheekbones. Gabriel has been in bed with a gorgeous man for hours and it’s never even occurred to him to screw him because this is perfect, just like that, with Sam’s floppy hair tickling at his throat.
Gabriel is in love with Sam Winchester. He may not have been the first time he’d said the words or any of the times after that, but now he thinks that if he’d known about the warmth sparking all along his Grace with every one of Sam’s lazy caresses then he would have been from the start.
“Yeah, kiddo,” Gabriel lies, because he doesn’t want to ever lose this. Marriage is an insane proposition; he’s an archangel. Til death do us part wasn’t really applicable, even Til the heat death of the universe do us part was questionable, he might be binding his existence for all of eternity to Sam’s fragile human soul, and Gabriel’s not ready, not at all. But if there’s one thing Sam Winchester has taught him then it’s that he makes his lies come true.
iv.
It’s another year until Gabriel is ready to marry Sam Winchester. They’ve bought a house under fake identities and Gabriel picks the last name Speight because he thinks it sounds funny. Dean has gotten used to being on the road without his brother; he’d even helped them renovate the house accompanied by much grumbling, of course.
(Gabriel had asked Sam why he couldn’t just snap the whole house perfect after Dean accidentally-on-purpose spilled paint all over his clothes for the third time, Sam had only laughed.)
They’ve been living in the house on the hill for two months and Sam is outside in the garden on a picnic blanket watching the stars when Gabriel joins him.
“Wine?,” he asks, snapping up two wine glasses. Sam takes one with a grateful smile and returns to stargazing. They’re not that far from the outskirts of a medium town and there is some light pollution; Sam frowns at it.
“In my heaven there’ll be miles and miles of open sky positively bursting with stars,” he says quietly, gaze still turned upward.
And Gabriel watches his boyfriend with his hair glittering in the moonlight and the stars sparkling in his hazel eyes and the small frown that slowly gives way to a rapturous smile at the sight of a falling star, and he thinks I’ll marry you any day, Sam Winchester.
***
Six months after that Sam finally asks; it’s the anniversary of the day they first kissed, Sam admits, sheepishly, and Gabriel barely remembers that it’s also the day he killed what was left of his favourite brother.
Finally he can honestly say that he means all the promises he makes Sam - finally, all his lies are the truth.
They get married the next spring.