《 The hardest part of this is leaving you 》
another! sabriel human au where sam and gabe are both in early 20s, dating for four years, and gabriel suddenly gets diagnosed with cancer – and it's caught pretty late.
and because sam's mom suffered from it (and gabriel saw sam broken when she died after months of chemo, it was truly a torture), he decides to flee and leave sam a letter on the counter writing that they're over and he doesn't love sam anymore. he writes it, because he wouldn't be able to lie to sam's face or see him disappointed.
gabriel lies, hoping this way sam would get pissed at him, angry – and move on from him quicker.
but instead sam is lost (and angry, of course, he writes to gabriel every other day), and he struggles to love anyone else. he cries himself to sleep, thinking that something must be wrong with him if gabriel left him this easily.
was he the problem? was he that unlovable? was he doomed to die alone?
5 years pass, and sam is 27. during that time, sam kept seeing gabriel in all the other men, and it never helped. so he finds eileen, a girl who's deaf – but he feels like he can understand her better than anyone else.
sam proposes, and she says "yes", excited. dean was allowed to bring a plus one to the engagement party, and it was gabriel's cousin, castiel.
dean asked sam if it was okay prior, and sam shrugged his shoulders – it was gabriel who had been a dick, after all.
tipsy and curious, sam walks up to cas that evening. he simply asks how gabriel was doing – sam was hurt pretty badly, but he still wished gabriel all the best.
cas looks up at him, head tilted to the side, like he's trying to understand whether sam is serious or not. he knew sam never attended the funeral, but he assumed it was for other reasons.
"you... want to know about gabriel."
"yeah," sam smiles a little, takes a swig at his beer. "I know I shouldn't do this during my engagement party, but all I want is to know whether he found his person – like I did."
cas looks to the side, and he doesn't know what's worse: to lie or tell sam the truth. he chose to do the latter.
"sam," he said, looking defeated. "gabriel passed away almost 5 years ago now."
there's a pause, denial. then shock.
"no," sam puts the bottle down and shakes his head. "no, he didn't. he didn't."
"sam, I was at his funeral. I never brought up the topic because I thought you knew, but couldn't be there. or talk about it."
"oh, really? why wouldn't I be there for my boyfriend's funeral?!"
castiel is afraid he said too much, but it's too late to keep it hidden – secrets are never a good thing.
"because gabriel died of cancer. and, if I understand that right, he never wanted you to find out."
and that drained sam of all the color in his face. because of course gabriel went and did both the most selfish and selfless thing imaginable.
would sam ever recover, had he gone through losing someone twice? he didn't know. but he deserved to say goodbye, and he didn't get that.
"you know where he's buried?"
castiel nods.
sam tells eileen what happened, kisses her and promises to be back. gabriel is buried in a cemetery just out of town, and sam figures he picked the other cemetery from where his mom was buried on purpose. what an asshole. idiot. a piece of shit.
well... that's exactly what sam yells in front of his dead boyfriend's gravestone, silent and cold to the touch.
the thing is – sam never stopped loving gabriel. but he hoped they'd reconnect as friends one day.
painful was the thought sam was unlovable – the more painful was the one that sam was loved so hard, it made gabriel choose to die alone for his sake.
was it worth it? debatable.
because sam is now left with 5 years of heartbreak and anger that now would double in grief.
sam looks at the date of death, and checks his phone. he sent a bunch of ugly words that day. and the day before that. and then 2 days prior.
so sam stands alone, wondering what's worse: gabriel dying and receiving the words "fuck you" from the person he loved, or sam living with the thought he was the one who sent it.
it was painful either way. and gabriel was the biggest idiot for doing that to him.
