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 ×
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.”
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.”
“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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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?”
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.
And Gabriel walked away in the opposite direction.
dededos
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