[NaNo] Once Had
Title: Once Had
Author: bagheera_101
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairings: Gabe/Sam
Word Count: 400ish
Warnings/Spoilers: S5 for sure
Prompt: 4: Trust
Summary: In the future, Gabriel's in the same camp as the other survivors, broken and desperate as a human.
A/N: Sims 3 + Supernatural = win. Today was awesome. I'm exhausted. This idea came out of nowhere. It seems that when I'm medicated, I write schmoopy fluffy stuff, and when I'm exhausted, I write angst. Good to know!
Trust didn't come easily to an Archangel of the Lord. Even a fallen one who was all but useless. Camp Chitaqua didn't really run on trust. Hardened loyalties, necessity, survival instincts, perhaps... but not trust.
Gabriel fit right in there, and he drank a lot with Castiel. Any enmity they'd once had was dead, except when they both got really drunk and fought over minor things like the dates of long-forgotten Heavenly wars and whose Grace had been more beautiful. They rolled in the mud like the two pathetic shells of angels, practically humans now, they were now; then, they got separated for the night by their long-suffering comrades in arms.
He woke up with hangovers, but he'd drown them in drugs. Sometimes, he had nightmares and he couldn't escape them. Good dreams were few and far between. When they did happen, he'd lie awake for an hour after he woke and keep his eyes closed, feigning sleep if anyone cared enough to look at him, imagining that he could create the world around him again.
Then he'd open his eyes and see the rough wood of the cabin around him and try to pretend he hadn't just hoped for a second to see what had appeared to him in dreams -- the Sahara, or his siblings, or occasionally Sam.
He tried really hard to pretend he didn't think about Sam.
This new, hardened Dean didn't believe him, didn't want to hear about it, didn't really like him. Gabriel didn't blame him. What good was a broken archangel who hadn't even succeeded at keeping his own lover around, now too wrapped up in his own sorrows to pick up a gun?
Castiel didn't really care about much aside from himself, though he made a passable attempt by inviting Gabriel to his "group-mind exploration" once in a while. Gabriel had only accepted the invitation once, and he'd spent the rest of the afternoon tasting bile in his mouth and self-loathing in his heart.
When the time came for the final mission, nobody had to tell Gabriel. He'd come, sober or not, because he'd sell the whole camp out for a single glimpse of Sam... not-Sam... his brother in his lover's body. He'd do things with that familiar mind -- if not Sam's -- and familiar body, truth be told.
He knew when and how it'd end: in the dirt, without even a glimpse of the tall, white-suited figure he'd scorch half the earth to see.
But Gabriel imagined it, pretended he could create this reality around himself, and fell into it as life slips away.
Author: bagheera_101
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairings: Gabe/Sam
Word Count: 400ish
Warnings/Spoilers: S5 for sure
Prompt: 4: Trust
Summary: In the future, Gabriel's in the same camp as the other survivors, broken and desperate as a human.
A/N: Sims 3 + Supernatural = win. Today was awesome. I'm exhausted. This idea came out of nowhere. It seems that when I'm medicated, I write schmoopy fluffy stuff, and when I'm exhausted, I write angst. Good to know!
Trust didn't come easily to an Archangel of the Lord. Even a fallen one who was all but useless. Camp Chitaqua didn't really run on trust. Hardened loyalties, necessity, survival instincts, perhaps... but not trust.
Gabriel fit right in there, and he drank a lot with Castiel. Any enmity they'd once had was dead, except when they both got really drunk and fought over minor things like the dates of long-forgotten Heavenly wars and whose Grace had been more beautiful. They rolled in the mud like the two pathetic shells of angels, practically humans now, they were now; then, they got separated for the night by their long-suffering comrades in arms.
He woke up with hangovers, but he'd drown them in drugs. Sometimes, he had nightmares and he couldn't escape them. Good dreams were few and far between. When they did happen, he'd lie awake for an hour after he woke and keep his eyes closed, feigning sleep if anyone cared enough to look at him, imagining that he could create the world around him again.
Then he'd open his eyes and see the rough wood of the cabin around him and try to pretend he hadn't just hoped for a second to see what had appeared to him in dreams -- the Sahara, or his siblings, or occasionally Sam.
He tried really hard to pretend he didn't think about Sam.
This new, hardened Dean didn't believe him, didn't want to hear about it, didn't really like him. Gabriel didn't blame him. What good was a broken archangel who hadn't even succeeded at keeping his own lover around, now too wrapped up in his own sorrows to pick up a gun?
Castiel didn't really care about much aside from himself, though he made a passable attempt by inviting Gabriel to his "group-mind exploration" once in a while. Gabriel had only accepted the invitation once, and he'd spent the rest of the afternoon tasting bile in his mouth and self-loathing in his heart.
When the time came for the final mission, nobody had to tell Gabriel. He'd come, sober or not, because he'd sell the whole camp out for a single glimpse of Sam... not-Sam... his brother in his lover's body. He'd do things with that familiar mind -- if not Sam's -- and familiar body, truth be told.
He knew when and how it'd end: in the dirt, without even a glimpse of the tall, white-suited figure he'd scorch half the earth to see.
But Gabriel imagined it, pretended he could create this reality around himself, and fell into it as life slips away.