Why? Because Gabriel, that's why. There's one or two lines mentioning Destiel, so if you're not into that it's fine and I assure you it's easily ignored.

But yeah. Gabriel musings and stuff, spoilers for everything and headcanons abound. Wrote this in ten minutes because my muse wouldn't shut up, so apologies for any mistakes, canonical, grammatical, or otherwise.

Gabriel wasn't an idiot. Quite far from it, actually. That's why he ran away in the first place: the two biggest brothers started comparing dicks, and nothing good came from finding out they were the same size.

So the littlest archangel did what he did best: tricked them. Faked his death, and when they weren't looking, ran from his grave. It was a simple matter, really. Pretend he had pissed off some pretentious god, make a fancy projection with his wings splatter-painted into the grasses of heaven, and voilà! He was free.

Well, for a little while. Then those jackass Winchester brothers had to be born and screw everything up. All Gabriel wanted was for this whole contest of "Daddy loved me best!" to be over. Was that so wrong?

So when he came face-to-face with Daddy's favourite once more, he was ready. Lucy wanted to go a few rounds with baby Gabriel and prove that he was the best archangel to ever live? Fine. Bring it on! Centuries upon centuries of being a Trickster had sharpened him, made him the king of deceit.

As if he would ever bring his own sword to the final fight. No, he had made a snappy detour into his favourite little slice of heaven and had, ahem, relieved the angel there of his blade. It would be back by the time Castiel noticed it had gone missing.

Fast forward to Gabriel's apparent demise, and pause the moment just as ol' Lucy stabbed him. Add special effects, a little light leaving his eyes here, another wing splatter there, and you've got the recipe for a fake death so real it could fool the devil. Literally.

Oh sure, being stabbed with an angel blade hurt like hell (as did the knowledge that Lucifer was so far gone that he would kill his own little brother, his favourite little brother, the one he taught and trained and fucking moulded into a younger, more devious version of him, but that was a story for another day). But it was worth it. Somewhat.

He was back in his personal witness protection program, and that's all he had ever wanted. Oh sure, he helped out the Winchesters behind the scenes, and maybe he elbowed Castiel around a little when the angel wasn't paying attention, but for the most part he flew—quite literally—under the radar.

Sure, he frowned when Cassie darling decided to deal with demons, and he tsked quite loudly when the self-proclaimed god suddenly wiped out a good portion of heaven, but he did no more then criticise. Even if he wanted to—which he didn't—he wouldn't dare step in. This was Castiel's problem, not his. Not yet.

So Gabriel fooled around, did what he had done for the past few millennia, and waited until it became his problem. And oh, it so did not last long enough. Damn Metatron and his ridiculous power complex. In Gabriel's mind, the lowly scribe was nothing more than a mini-Lucifer. Weak. Annoying. A complete waste of time.

Thankfully the spell had only cast the angels from heaven, leaving it wide open for archangels. Not that Gabriel had much use for heaven right now. No, instead he followed Castiel as the ex-angel made his way to the Winchester's secret bunker, and watched.

It was like a tv drama. Dean got pissed at Cas and punched him, then realised that the poor guy was mortal and nearly suffocated him in a bear hug. There were words in between, but Gabriel didn't care. He knew the gist of it. It started with a "what the fuck did you do" and then went to one of the classic "fix Samantha and I'll think about forgiving you"'s, and ended with a hug and a bunch of "everything's going to be okay"s. Somewhere in between there was probably a "sonova bitch!" or a lot of sexual tension, at the very least. When all of this was over, Gabriel was definitely going to do something about that.

For now, he resolved to popping up in the middle of their dining room during dinner, posing like a porn star on their table.

"Hello, boys! Didja miss me?" He asked with a mischievous grin.