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Dean stares at the motel ceiling until his eyes start to sting and burn, and he blinks and rolls over. The bed smells like stale air freshener, which means that it used to smell like sex, which doesn’t bode well, but it’s either this or the backseat of the Impala, and it hit ten degrees last night. He should’ve stayed at the last motel longer than a couple nights. At least it seemed less likely to have mutated, futuristic, airborne STDs than this hellhole.
What’s he doing here?
His cell phone rings again in his pocket, and Dean finally chucks the thing against the wall until the battery pops out and it goes silent. He doesn’t need to hear Sam’s I told you so. He knows.
He’s just still not convinced.
«•»
“Cutting class again, Winchester?” Jo calls after him as he practically sprints out of the building. Dean turns back, squinting into the sun, and shoots Jo a grin so wide it threatens to break his face.
“You know me: places to go, people to see!”
“More like people to screw,” she yells with a laugh, walking backward toward the side doors of the school. “Say ‘hi’ to your boyfriend for me!”
Dean just laughs as he runs to his car, turning the engine over and reveling in the rumble around him as his baby purrs to life. She was an early graduation present from Dad—early because they’d had to fix her up themselves. But she’s worth every penny.
He rolls down the window and puts some Zeppelin on, ignoring the burn in his cheeks from grinning so much. Like his baby, it’s worth it.
Dean parks in the abandoned, dusty lot near the park that’s been there since he was a kid, and bites his lip as he walks toward a small cluster of trees nestled between the running paths and the playground. He catches a flash of movement from up in one of the trees—a big oak that’s become famous among the Lawrence youth as a make-out spot. Though luckily, not sleazy enough to be anything more than a make-out spot, unless his peers have some mad balancing skills.
Just before he approaches the base of the tree, he reminds himself to stop acting like a 13-year-old girl, and tries to adopt an air of cool nonchalance as he hauls himself up into the tree. He’s quiet enough and at the right angle that he manages to sneak up quietly, and he makes sure he’s got a good hold before he bolts forward with a shout, wrapping his arms around a trench coat-covered pair of shoulders.
Cas flails and Dean laughs, but they both manage to stay up in the tree. Dean situates himself on the large branch behind Cas and rests his crossed arms on Cas’s shoulders, brushing his lips over the back of Castiel’s neck lightly enough that he could pretend not to know what Cas is talking about if he brought it up. Of course, Cas won’t bring it up, but he feels it anyway.
“Hey, you,” Dean greets warmly.
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t, and Dean has half a mind to feel hurt before he grins and says “You bastard. I don’t see you for a month and all I get is a ‘hello’?”
“No,” Castiel replies simply. “I also said ‘Dean’.”
“Smart-ass,” Dean says and whacks playfully at Cas’s upper arm, almost losing his balance in the process. When he steadies himself he starts laughing so hard that Cas has to stop and grab onto a nearby branch before they both go tumbling down because someone got the giggles.
“I’m trading you in for a nicer model,” Dean says, and doesn’t mean it.
“Then I shall ‘trade you in’ for a ‘model’ with better balance,” Castiel replies, bringing out the air quotes, and Dean’s already flushed from laughing but he just starts up again, ridiculously giddy at his stupid boyfriend and his stupid air quotes, which even after two years of Dean’s coaching, he’s still not using correctly. Because he’s Cas.
His laughter is rudely interrupted when Cas twists around skillfully and presses their mouths together, smile against smile, winding a hand into Dean’s short hair. They don’t stop kissing until they’re both breathless.
“Missed you,” Dean says against his lips, and Castiel doesn’t say anything in response, just brings his other hand to his favorite spot on Dean’s shoulder, and presses.
They break for air just as the wind picks up, and it steals the weaker leaves from the branches around them. They catch on the sunlight and it’s stupid, it’s so stupid, because Dean is not actually a 13-year-old girl. But the sun is warm and bright, and the air smells like flowers and the promise of summer, and Castiel is finally home and here and beautiful, and Dean is just as in love with him as the day they met on the side of a dusty road in the middle of a crisp Kansan autumn.
The words fall unbidden from his lips, tumbling out on an exhale, nearly lost in the whipping of the wind, and he feels like a girl right now but he says them anyway.
“Marry me.”
There’s a moment where everything slows to a crawl, and Dean swears he can see the currents of the wind and feel the vibrations of the children playing in the park and then the sunlight reflects in Cas’s eyes and Dean’s entire world narrows down to deep, sharp blue.
Then Castiel smiles, slow and bright.
«•»
Dean wakes with a start, and it takes him a damn long moment to get his bearings and remember where he is, and why he probably shouldn’t be sleeping on these beds. Shouldn’t even be touching them. He sits up, resting his elbows on his knees, and scrubs a hand down his face.
His head is filled with the echoes of shouting, fights both long past and recent enough to still sting, and he considers his cell phone lying abused on the ground. Sam will worry, but Dean knows that calling him back right now would only make them both feel like shit.
Instead, he stands, stretching his spine until he hears a solid pop, and pads to the bathroom. He inspects it first, making sure that it’s actually serviceable, even if there are probably a million things he can’t see coating the counter tops. He strips and pretends not to notice that he turns the water to cold. His muscles freeze up when he steps in, but he just dunks his head under the shower head and adjusts to the cold.
He can’t help but feel this is just a small part of the punishment he deserves.
«•»
The pawn shop on Main smells like an old lady’s closet would if the old lady smoked a shit ton of dope. Castiel is currently studying something that looks like a fur coat but it’s not from any animal Dean’s ever seen, and Dean eyes it suspiciously like it might come alive and eat them. Castiel tilts his head to the side in contemplation.
“Come on, Cas,” he tugs him away, ignoring the protest of “But Dean, I believe—” and guiding them to the back where they keep all the smaller, slightly more valuable shit. The pawn broker is already eyeing them suspiciously, but Dean shoots him a glare and he seems content to scowl back and start tinkering with some kind of metal trinket he probably just got in.
The glass case in the back is filled with a bunch of random stuff in no particular order, and it doesn’t help that the glass is coated in some kind of cloudy film. Dean pokes at it tentatively and winces when his finger comes back sticky. He wipes it on his jeans and glances up to see Cas holding something up to his face that looks suspiciously like—
“Jesus!” He shouts and swipes the thing from his hand, hastily putting it back on a random shelf and moving a small porcelain angel figurine in front of it. He tries not to think about the multiple layers of ‘wrong’ in that, and reminds himself to wash his hands at least three times when they get out of here.
The pawn broker is watching them with slanted eyes, and Dean moves his body so he’s physically standing between Cas and the guy. As if becoming a physical shield will stop the rest of the world from getting to Cas, from changing him.
They maybe shouldn’t spend much more time in here.
He tries to tell Cas not to touch anything else with his eyes, and looks back into the cases filled with piles of glinting, probably fake gold and silver. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, only the needle is tainted with all sorts of unknown substances, and he needs to find two needles. He’s about three seconds from calling it quits, driving to the nearest gas station, and buying a couple of ring pops when he finally finds them. A pair of simple, silver rings hooked around what looks to be the chain to a rabbit’s foot, and he grins excitedly.
He waves the pawn broker over, a pot-bellied, greasy-looking man who Dean plans to forget about the second they get the rings and go. He points at the rings around the rabbit tails, asks “How much for those?” and sets his jaw in a hard line when the guy looks up, glancing between Dean and Castiel, narrowing his eyes. He probably has just enough brain cells to figure out exactly what this means, and Dean is more than aware of the fact that they’re still in Kansas.
He raises his eyebrows impatiently, growling “Don’t got all day, buddy,” and thankfully, the guy pulls out the rings, shaking them off the rabbit’s foot and letting them skitter down onto the glass.
He hums a moment and pokes at one, then grumbles “thirty for this one, twenty for the other.”
Dean frowns. “But they’re the same—”
The guy looks up with a challenge written in the crease between his caterpillar eyebrows, and Dean snaps his mouth shut and nods, pulling out his wallet. He’s only got enough cash on him because he started having the auto shop pay him in cash so he can give Sammy lunch money when Dad forgets. He’s been sneaking in as many hours as he can, telling everyone who asks that he’s saving up for college.
He’s not going to college, but no one needs to know that yet.
The broker counts his cash and Dean swipes the rings off the counter and gets them the hell out of there before he starts getting any more bright ideas, dragging Cas all the way back to the Impala before he lets out a breath, rolls his eyes, and smiles.
Cas is looking at him with something like intrigue, and Dean turns to him and grabs his hand, sliding the ring onto his ring finger and letting out a sigh of relief that it fits. He slides his on just to make sure, swallowing past the swirl of emotions in his head right now, and nods.
“Dean, I was under the impression we didn’t put on the rings until—”
“Hey, I’m just checking out the merchandise,” Dean says with a cheeky grin, sliding the ring back off and accepting the other from Cas. He shoves them deep into his pocket and starts the car, pretending it doesn’t give him a bit of a thrill when he can feel two tiny metal circles pressing into his thigh.
Dean flicks on the tape player and starts singing along to Fly By Night, probably badly, as he pulls out of Lawrence and heads North. Castiel makes a face like he’s constipated at the music, and Dean glances sidelong at him and says “You got a problem with the tunes, speak now. We got a long drive.”
Castiel shakes his head and huffs out “I have no qualms with your song choice, Dean,” and Dean would think he were actually irritated if it weren’t for the flash of a smile that tugs at Cas’s lips as he turns his face toward the window. Dean feels a tug somewhere inside and turns back to the road, singing louder and louder as they drive out of town.
«•»
He’s toweling off his hair, walking back out into the hotel room which seems about twenty degrees warmer than it had been before he doused himself in ice water. He spent a couple of overly emotional minutes staring at his face in the mirror noting the crow’s feet and laugh lines for the age markers they are, reminding him yet again that he fucked up, one way or another.
Dean doesn’t know why he chose this motel, other than the fact that it looked cheap and was there when he needed it, flickering vacancy sign and all. He realizes that this is futile. He doesn’t know where he expects to go from here. He’s got nothing but the Impala, the clothes on his back, and a grimy T-shirt in the trunk that he used to wipe grease off his hands and clean the shotgun he used to keep in the trunk—that is until Cas started complaining about how dangerous it was. As if Dean were some inexperienced, wide-eyed gun owner that thinks a couple of rounds at a shooting range will really matter when there’s a guy breaking into your house.
It’s not like it matters now. A shotgun isn’t going to fix this—though he huffs a bitter laugh at the idea that some crazies probably think it would, and then forces the thought from his mind because it’s not so funny when he applies it to Cas.
A part of him sees the appeal in handling this like a chick in an angsty rom-com, running off to some new town, getting a new name and a new job and a new life and brooding for a good long while before his knight in shining armor appears. Unfortunately for him, the whole idea loses some of its shine because Cas won’t be coming. Dean will just be running away, and that was one of the things he’d been trying to work on. For the sake of their relationship. Which, at this point…
Dean’s head snaps up as there’s a knock on the door. He stands and approaches carefully. He reasons that it’s probably just the maid. She probably just wants to fluff his pillows or something, try to deceive him into thinking the beds aren’t all that bad, and he won’t get an STD just from sitting on it.
He opens the door without really looking at who’s standing on the other side, and that’s his second mistake. His first was walking out in the first place.
«•»
They’re about fifteen minutes out from the Iowa border, and Cas hasn’t said a word since they left Kansas. Granted, neither has Dean, but that doesn’t help with the tight knot of worry slowly growing in his stomach with each passing mile marker.
He’s eighteen. Cas is barely twenty-one. They’re both still in school, both still mostly broke, and both still in the closet from at least one person in their lives. This could turn out to be the stupidest thing he’s ever done.
He keeps driving.
“Hey, Cas,” he says, clearing his throat. He can feel Cas look over to him, sharp eyes tracing Dean’s profile, and he remembers a time when he used to feel self-conscious about anyone looking that closely. But it’s Cas, and for Dean that’s enough. “You sure about this?”
Cas doesn’t answer right away, and Dean curses himself for asking in the first place. It’s not the first time he’s done something impulsive, and it probably won’t be the last. He should’ve just sucked it up and kept his mouth shut, kept on driving, and if everything fell apart later then he’d only have himself to blame and—
“Dean,” Castiel interrupts his thought process, voice low and gravelly and still sounding soft to Dean’s ears. “Are you sure?”
Damn Cas for reading him like a book. Dean looks over, trying to glean something from that ever-impassive face, trying to figure out how he’s supposed to answer so that he doesn’t wind up single and—
And it doesn’t matter. This isn’t— He laughs as he sets his eyes back on the road, shaking his head at himself for getting himself worked up over absolutely nothing. Cas isn’t one of his few, short-term girlfriends. Dean doesn’t even need to lie about promises, or love, or forever, because with Cas it’s all stupidly true. Like they’re living in a fucking fairy tale.
“Yeah,” he answers honestly, still smiling as they pass a sign welcoming them to Iowa, land of corn, more corn, and gay marriages. “I’m sure.”
“As am I,” Castiel replies, and Dean marvels at how easily Cas seems to be able to understand what it is Dean’s saying, why he’s saying it, and what it all means. Hell, most of the time Dean doesn’t even know that about himself. “I have faith in us, Dean,” Cas continues quietly, and Dean knows, after his religious crisis, after everything that happened with his family, it means a lot more to Cas than just that.
“I know,” Dean says under his breath, and they drive right on.
«•»
He rubs stubbornly at his jaw, wondering idly if Sammy’s punch broke it. Probably not. He’s gotten soft since he’s gone domestic. Then again, so has Dean.
“Come to gloat?” Dean asks bitterly, turning his back on Sam out of spite.
Silence greets his question when Dean had expected a rant. He frowns and turns around to see just what it is that’s got Sammy holding his tongue. Beneath the veneer of anger written plainly across his features, he looks…sad?
“What the hell, Dean?” Sam shuts the motel room door and crosses his arms, not even glancing at the chair or the bed to maybe sit down, settle in for the long haul—not that Dean can blame him. “You’re too old for this shit.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” Dean shoots back, “coming from you.”
Sam grinds his teeth and doesn’t try to defend himself. “We’re not talking about me,” he finally responds, and Dean has to stop himself from rolling his eyes at Sammy pulling out the psych card. “You’re running, Dean.”
No shit, Sherlock. Dean chews on the inside of his cheek and throws himself down on the motel bed with abandon, grabbing the TV channel listing and pretending to be fascinated by the fact that this place has Discovery channel. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Cas loves you.” It hits Dean like a brick wall, hearing it laid out so openly like that. And he knows that, okay? At least, he knew it before. He’s not entirely sure if it still holds up.
“I know that, Sammy,” he snaps viciously, refusing to meet Sam’s gaze.
“Then start acting like it!” Sam shouts, and Dean idly wonders when it is Sam started siding with Cas. There was a time when getting Sam to go up against his big brother was like pulling teeth.
“It’s better this way,” he mumbles, keeping his eyes downcast. There’s so much he’s not telling Sam that it could fill a lake. As for Cas, the things Dean hasn’t told him lately could probably fill the world’s oceans ten times over.
“Really, Dean?” Sam asks, his anger not as pronounced as before, taking on a tone of disappointment that makes Dean uncomfortable. “Because all I see are two miserable people that don’t need to be that way.”
«•»
They try four different town halls before they find one without a waiting period for the marriage license, and Dean whoops when they hand it over with no fuss. There are people staring, either because they’re both men or because they’re both young, or maybe because Dean’s wearing a grease-stained pair of jeans with holes in the knees and Cas is wearing a trench coat. He doesn’t care.
They sign things and shuffle around and it’s much more of a fiasco than it seems to be in movies. Dean gets the feeling that the whole process is slowed because they’re in this tiny town that’s probably never seen a gay couple before, and certainly not a couple of kids in casual clothes smiling like their faces are stuck that way.
But then there’s an amused-looking judge and they’re standing to the side of the hall like they’re just having a chat, and there are people milling about and Dean doesn’t even know the name of this god damned town and he literally could not care less because Cas is looking at him like he’s the only one in the room.
Dean repeats after the judge like a trained parrot, and Castiel swaps out a few words for synonyms just to be cheeky, and then Dean fumbles the rings out of his pocket and goes flying to the ground when he drops one and it rolls behind the judge. He snatches the thing, popping up like nothing even happened, and the judge is obviously trying not to laugh. He catches a glimpse of writing on the inside of the ring that he hadn’t noticed before then, and he frowns as he tilts it in the light.
It reads ‘get money’. Which, okay. Dean’s about to move on and ignore it, but then he takes a look at the inside of the other one and promptly bursts out laughing. He’s so loud that the judge jumps back and Cas tilts his head to the side, and Dean has to bend over to hold his stomach because ‘fuck bitches’ is definitely inscribed on the inside of his ring. The one he’s using to get married. Can you say ‘shotgun wedding’?
“Dean—”
Dean stands up straight, looking at Cas and still laughing. He calms himself just enough to step forward and show Cas the rings, saying “I’m pretty sure these used to belong to a pimp,” before he’s so overcome with laughter again that he just presses his forehead against Cas’s temple and hopes the judge won’t get bored with them.
When he finally pulls away, Cas is smiling in amusement, which is lucky, Dean knows—the few girlfriends he had before Cas would’ve balked at pretty much everything that’s happened today.
He catches his breath and the judge raises her eyebrows like You ready, now? and Dean nods once and they get married.
They get married.
They trade the rings—Dean gets the one that says ‘fuck bitches’, and he knows Cas did it on purpose and he loves the simple fact that he knows Dean well enough to figure out which ridiculous pimp ring he wants.
Then there’s more talking from the judge, and more repeating things, and then the judge gets to say the first half of “You may now kiss” before Dean grabs Cas by the hair and pulls him into a wild, laughing kiss with clacking teeth and bumped noses, and just after Dean pulls back, Cas shoves him against the wall and presses their mouths back together and grabs a fistful of Dean’s hair while the judge laughs and shakes her head.
They get married and it’s awesome.
«•»
“Jesus, it’s like Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade up in here!”
“Shut up, Dean,” Jo snaps at him and continues whispering with Sam in the corner like flirty schoolgirls. He doesn’t know why they need to do this here. It’s his damn motel room. If they wanted to start forking out the cash for the place…
He doesn’t even know how Jo found this place. Or how she even knows anything was wrong. Did Sam put out a bulletin or something? He didn’t think his marital problems concerned this many people.
He sighs loudly and rolls over on the bed, acting like an attention-starved cat, and is about three seconds from walking right out the door when they break up their little pow-wow and Jo marches over to the side of the bed. “Up,” she demands, and Dean swats her hand away until Sam attacks him from the other side and they physically drag him off the bed.
“What the— This is ridiculous!”
“You’re damn right it is,” Jo snaps, eyeing him up and down before shrugging in begrudging acceptance. “Come on, grab your shit, we’re taking you home.”
He swallows at the word ‘home’ before stalking away from Jo’s sharp grip and saying “No.” He doesn’t care if he sounds like a petulant teenager. It’s his fucking life to ruin.
“Dean, you need to talk to Cas,” Sam says, looking at Dean with his concerned-puppy face. Like he’s some fucking pedestal of marital bliss, just because he’s all settled down with perfect Amelia in their perfect house with their perfect dog.
“It’s not going to help!” Dean shouts, irrationally angry. All he wants to do is be left alone. If he needs to get further out of town to do that, motel hop until he hits a state border somewhere, he will. Go big or go home, right? Well, he’s not going home.
“Not if you don’t fucking try,” Jo says.
Dean shoots her a look and quickly turns away from her gaze. “There’s shit you don’t know,” he says under his breath, curling his left hand into a fist at his side and then releasing it, again and again. He can feel his ring press into his skin every time he does, the newer, nicer ones they got after the first five years. He has futuis puellis inscribed on the inside of his, and it fucking hurts that Cas is the only one who would get the joke.
“Dean, the shit I don’t know about your relationships could fill a book,” Sam offers in some semblance of humor before he and Jo manhandle him toward the door.
Fine. If they insist on confrontation, then he’ll give them the whole damn show. Then when everything goes tits-up, they get to deal with the fallout.
«•»
They go to the park and get ice cream and Dean attempts to see how many mothers he can get to pull their children away in horror by kissing Cas in increasingly lewd ways. Cas admonishes him when he starts laughing at the poor, traumatized mothers but actually doesn’t ask him to stop, so Dean decides that this is their honeymoon. He pushes Cas onto a relatively shaded bench, straddles him, and they make-out until they both start straining against their jeans and have to stop. Getting arrested for public indecency is not high on his list of things to do on their honeymoon.
“We should head back,” Cas says with a baleful look at the lowering sun, and Dean sighs and agrees. They leave the park and its scandalized mothers behind, trudging back to the Impala so they can get the hell out of Iowa.
“Dean,” Castiel says from a few steps behind him as they approach the spot where they parked the car, and Dean hums and turns around. “We’re married now,” Cas starts slowly, not moving his eyes away from Dean’s face, even as he takes a few measured steps forward.
Dean grins. “Glad you noticed.”
Cas smirks a little, taking another step forward until they’re so close that Dean can feel breath tickling his lips. “Does this mean I can drive the Baby?”
It takes Dean a moment to process what he’s talking about, and then he takes another moment because they obviously still need to work on the concept of how endearments for his car work. Then he draws a deep breath, holding it for a moment just to tease, and says “No.”
Castiel narrows his eyes and Dean would swear he was pouting for a moment, but then he falls forward and presses their lips together, pushing Dean back against the car. When he pulls back, he’s grinning, and Dean misinterprets it as lust when really, Cas is just a sneaky bastard and swiped his keys from his pocket. “I would like to drive, Dean,” he states with a carefully raised eyebrow, staring Dean down. He holds up the keys next to his face.
To be fair, Dean only says yes because he can see the ring glinting on Cas’s finger.
«•»
It’s like they think his house is the fucking Comfort Suites. Come one, come all, stay as long as you like, eat our food, use our things. Talk to your emotionally vulnerable brother and try not to let him notice that you’re hitting on your brother-in-law’s brother’s wife. Though Gabe has always been an odd one.
Of course, it doesn’t affect the sheer amount of seething hatred he can manage to work into one pointed glare. The moment Jo and Sam shove Dean into the kitchen, Gabe stands up and moves in front of Cas, like he expects Dean to hit him.
“Dean!” Gabe smiled threateningly. “Taken up kitten-kicking as a new hobby, have you? I’ll call up Luci, you can have a boy’s night out and stay the fuck away from Cassy.”
“Gabe,” Cas’s calm voice comes from behind his looming older brother. Gabriel looks ready to fight it, but instead he just withers, shooting Dean another glare and moving behind Cas’s shoulder.
Cas looks up and meets Dean’s gaze, and neither of them say anything. Cas has Amelia and Gabe flanking him, and Dean has Sam and Jo, and Dean feels about ready to pass out. He doesn’t want to be here. In fact, this is the very last place he wants to be, staring at Cas and trying not to drown in his own guilt.
“Hello, Dean.”
«•»
Every mile closer to Lawrence they drive, the happy buzz wears off and the nervousness sets in. Not about what they did—Dean hasn’t stopped twirling his ring around his finger and smiling—but about the fallout that he’s going to expect when they get back to Lawrence. They’ve been gone longer than Dean anticipated, so Sammy is going to be working himself up into a fit, and combining that with Dad’s brewing anger about Dean disappearing without telling anyone, his house is going to be apocalyptic.
It’ll probably pale in comparison to what’ll happen if Cas’s family finds out he married his secret boyfriend.
“So,” he starts anxiously, and Cas tips his head toward Dean to acknowledge that he heard. “How’re we gonna play this?”
Dean watches Cas’s face carefully, a benefit to being the one in the passenger seat for once. He frowns a little, eyebrows drawn down, and then says “What do you mean?”
Dean sighs. He’s trying to say this carefully, because he doesn’t want to give Cas the wrong idea, but they’re literally driving into the shark tank right now and Dean would like to have a plan. Sort of. “Are we telling people? About this?” Dean raises his hand, the one with the ring.
Castiel’s eyebrows shoot up. “Did you intend to sequester me away for the rest of our lives? This is not a secret easily kept, Dean.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” he replies hurriedly. “I just…” He drags his fingers through his hair and blows out a breath, staring down the road that leads into Lawrence. “My dad? Your family? We could wind up in some deep shit, pulling this kind of prank.”
“I wasn’t aware our union was a prank to you, Dean,” Cas snaps. Dean raises his palms in a placating gesture.
“Calm down. That’s not what I meant. But seriously. You can’t tell me the Bible-thumpers are gonna be okay with this, Cas.”
Cas’s lips turned down. “I don’t like that term.”
“Not the point.” Honestly, Dean loves the guy, but getting a straight answer out of him sometimes is like pulling teeth.
Cas sighs. “I have a plan,” he says, and Dean thinks Oh, really? “I will tell them at dinner tonight.”
Dean waits for the continuation of this master plan, but nothing comes. Well, this’ll be a cakewalk. “That’s your brilliant plan?” Dean asks with a hint of amusement. “I’m gay and eloped with my secret boyfriend today, pass the salt?”
Cas tilts his head slightly, and turns toward his neighborhood, the almost-ritzy section of Lawrence that Dad sometimes scoffed at and called “Heaven on Earth”.
“I don’t understand how table condiments relate to our marriage either, Dean.”
Dean cracks up and brings a hand to rest at the base of Cas’s neck before he gets indignant. “They don’t.”
Cas pulls up to the curb a few houses down from his own, parking the Impala and turning to look at Dean. There’s a halo of light glowing behind his head, from the streetlamp across the street, and he’s staring at Dean in that endearing, I-may-or-may-not-want-to-break-into-your-house-and-watch-you-sleeping-like-a-crazy-stalker way.
“Dean.” It sounds like a challenge.
“Hey, I’m all for going in guns blazing, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, okay? I just don’t want you getting hurt.”
Cas smiles at that, small and private. “A leap of faith.”
“Exactly,” Dean says, returning the smile full-force. He bolts forward and draws Cas into a kiss, pulling at his collar and straining against his seatbelt. Cas still tastes like the ice cream from earlier, sweet and sort of nutty—which makes Dean pull back and snort because he’s twelve and nuts.
“Good luck,” he says to Cas as they both unbuckle and get out of the car, Cas to go back to face the folks and Dean to drive his baby home.
“To you as well.” Cas pauses a moment, then steps forward and draws Dean in to another kiss, deeper and longer, in the brightness of the streetlights on the road in front of his house, which he can say is a new one. They’ve never really hidden their relationship, but they’ve sure as hell been more careful than this before. This is Kansas, after all.
Cas nips at Dean’s lower lip and then pulls away, walking swiftly toward his house as Dean stands there and pretends he’s not trying to get his bearings back like a swooning schoolgirl. By the time he throws himself behind the wheel of the Impala, he can’t see Cas outside, and he heads straight back home, to face down Sammy and his father.
«•»
“Cas,” he greets stiffly, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. Neither of them say anything. It starts to get pretty awkward. Dean sort of expects everyone else to realize they may want to discuss things in private, but they don’t seem to understand the concept and just keep on staring and glaring and standing around stupidly. So much for doing this without an audience, then.
“Did you enjoy yourself while you were away?” Cas asks. Dean frowns, thinking Cas has wildly misinterpreted the situation before he realizes that Sam probably told Amelia he was staying at a motel, and Amelia probably brought it up to Cas, and Cas probably assumed that Dean was—
“Jesus Christ, Cas, no! I didn’t— I wouldn’t—”
Cas doesn’t look convinced. Fuck, he really screwed the pooch on this one, if Cas thinks… He hasn’t even looked at a woman in over a decade. He’d never been one for thinking marriage suddenly meant putting on blinders, but all the women he’d met since Cas had just paled in comparison. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened, and for Cas to think that it’d be so damn easy for Dean is ridiculous. And insulting.
“Look,” he says, “I’m just gonna go.” Never mind the fact that he takes one step back and Sam is instantly at his side, holding him in place like he’s a fucking flight risk. Which, well, he is, but this is none of Sam’s business.
“Oh, yes, Dean. Great idea. Run away again. It worked so well the first time,” Cas snipes, and there’s so much venom in his voice that it momentarily floors Dean. That is, until his defenses kick in and he gives as good as he gets.
“You’re the one that told me to go!” He shouts, violently twisting so Sam lets go of his arm. He’s not a damn dog, he doesn’t need a leash. They want him to duke it out with Cas so much, fine. He’ll go down swinging.
“That’s not what I meant!”
He snorts. “Oh, really, Cas? What the hell did you mean? Because you know, fifteen years and I’m still not psychic! Sorry to disappoint.”
Cas stands up abruptly, the chair squeaking as it grinds against the kitchen tiling, and he opens his mouth to respond before something shifts. His shoulders slump and it’s like the fight goes out of him, leaving him eerily calm. There’s a muted, buzzing anger in his voice when he says “You should not be here.”
Dean throws up his hands in defeat.
“You’re angry,” Cas goes on. “We are both angry and I believe it would be best to continue this conversation when we are not.”
“Thank you!” He yells, turning away from Cas. “Can I go now?” He glares at Sam pointedly. Sam still looks angry, but lets him pass. He’s on his way out the door, planning to get the hell out of dodge until even Sam can’t track him down, when he hears Gabe mumble to Cas.
“They always run, I told you. You married too young.”
«•»
“Dean!” Sammy jumps up from the couch and runs to him the moment Dean walks in the door, keys jangling as he throws them in the bowl by the door. “Where have you been? Dad’s home, he—”
“Dean?” John's voice comes from around the corner, and then the man himself appears. Dean squares his shoulder and tilts his head up. His father has no business telling him where to be, not with the way he’d spent ten years after Mom died completely checked out. Just because he’s back to playing the good father doesn’t mean that Dean doesn’t remember raising Sam himself, most days.
When John doesn’t immediately attack him, he relaxes a bit, trying to play it off. “Hey, Sammy,” he ruffles the kid’s hair and gets swatted away. “Hey, Dad.” He brushes past, heading for the kitchen to dig up some real food. Sam and John follow along like lost puppies.
He’s about to take his first bite of a leftover piece of cold pizza when John says “School called.”
Shit.
“You’ve been skipping class.”
Yeah, no shit, he wants to say, but he holds his tongue. “It’s Senior year,” he answers instead with a shrug. Technically, it’s true.
John seems to consider this for a moment before he nods, saying “I still expect to see a diploma in a couple of weeks.”
Dean lets out a sigh of relief and reaches up to grab himself a glass for water. All this lying is making his throat dry. “Yeah, of course,” he says with a grin, and for a moment he thinks he’s gotten away for now. He’s filling up the glass with some water and gulping it down when he notices a change in John’s expression. He frowns, and his eyes are fixed on Dean’s hand—oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Of all the stupid things to overlook—
“Any reason you’re wearing that ring on that finger, Dean?” John asks, deceptively calm, and Dean could’ve played it off. Could’ve said it was a prank he was pulling on Jo, could’ve said he accidentally put it on the wrong hand this morning, could’ve said he didn’t even think about it. He could’ve, if it weren’t for Sammy’s wide-eyed look of recognition and his “Oh my god!”
God damn it, Sam.
John’s head snaps over to his younger son, then back to Dean, then back to Sam, who seems to at least realize that he just fucked up. He blushes furiously and gives Dean the puppy eyes for a moment, but they’re mostly overshadowed by shock.
“What?” John asks. It’s not his father voice, it’s his Marine voice, the one he uses when he reminds Dean to man up.
“It’s nothing.” Not right now, anyway. He’ll tell them eventually, just…not tonight. It’s his damn wedding day, for fuck’s sake. He’ll tell them tomorrow, preferably after consuming copious amounts of alcohol.
“Dean—”
“Dean—” Both John and Sam start, and Dean shoots Sammy a look. But it looks like his little brother decided to grow some balls, because he says “Did you really—”
“Yeah, Sam, ‘I really’,” he shoots back, a bit more vicious than he intended.
“Dean, you’re eighteen!”
“Last I checked, that was still legal, Sammy.” They’re both pointedly ignoring John right now, and he’s playing along for the sake of information, though Dean knows it won’t last. They’re doing this now, for better or worse.
“You haven’t even graduated yet!” Sam shouts, indignant, and since when did his baby brother get to tell him what to do? Just because the squirt is shooting up like a fucking beanstalk. “How do you know—”
“I know!” He interrupts. “Do you think I would’ve done this if I didn’t know, Sammy? I fucking raised you, I think I know what I’m doing.”
John looks hurt at that, but Dean ignores him for now. They all know it’s true, they just haven’t been saying it. Might as well start. No time like the present and all that.
“But Dean, Cas—”
“You boys going to tell me what the hell you’re going on about?” John growls. Sam jumps at the sound of his voice, like he forgot Dad was there, and then he looks back at Dean. “Who’s Cas?”
Dean shoots Sam a panicked look, a silent cry for help, and then swallows and looks up to face his Dad.
Despite all his faults, John Winchester is not a prejudiced man. He never had a problem when Dean was dating Cassie, and he’s never given any indication that he wouldn’t be okay with either of his sons deviating from the norm. Mom had been the religious one, and when she died, Church kind of fell by the wayside. Not that Mom would’ve minded, either. From what Dean remembers, she was a kind woman.
But none of that means that makes this any less terrifying. He draws in a breath, steadies his mind, and leaps.
“Cas is my boyfriend and we just eloped.”
Shit, that really sounded so much better in his head.
«•»
It’s instinctual. He’s spent fifteen years railing against people saying the same thing, over and over, that they took the leap before they knew what they were doing, that they were too young and it was never going to last, that neither of them had gotten a chance to test the waters and they were going to end up miserable and divorced.
So the first thing he does when he hears Gabe is move to punch the bastard out. He stops short—not by much, it seems, as Gabe looked ready to piss himself for a second there—but he does. And it’s because, if he’s honest with himself, he really doesn’t know if he still has a marriage to defend. He doesn’t know what Cas meant by telling him to go. He doesn’t know if they’re going to get through this fight. He doesn’t even know if Cas loves him anymore.
And hell if that isn’t a sucker punch.
He stops, suddenly unable to find air, looking around frantically like he doesn’t know where he is, or who all these people are, or who he is. He must look like a scared, injured animal or something, because even Sam’s lost all the anger he had toward Dean and is watching like he’s going to need to rush forward to catch Dean if he faints.
He’s not a fucking girl. He’s just…having some trouble dealing. Which he would’ve preferred to do in private, if these ass wipes hadn’t hijacked their house and turned it into a marital arena for their own twisted amusement.
Cas takes a few steps forward, concern replacing the anger and hurt he’d been almost used to seeing on Cas’s face by now, and he reaches a hand out to touch Dean’s shoulder gingerly.
It’s like electricity. Dean jolts and stares wildly at Cas, emotions flickering through him so quickly that he just settles on the easiest one and goes with that.
“Your cousin’s a divorce lawyer, right? I’m sure you could get a good deal.” His words are sharp, meant to hurt, and he can see as each one hits Cas, twisting his features into rage, hatred, blame, defeat. It’s not a good look on him, but Dean takes a sick kind of pleasure in it, and he’s screaming in his head Hit me with all you’ve got, I dare you. Hell knows I deserve it.
“Some of us like to work through our problems,” Cas grits out, narrowing his eyes at Dean, trying to get a read on him. On why he’s being so openly hostile. It’s not going to work. Dean’s beyond reason right now.
“Well I’m a cut and run kind of guy, Cas. I guess you should’ve thought of that before you married me.” He goes to leave again—they’re never getting anywhere tonight, and trading barbs is only going to make things feel that much worse for both of them. He might as well get out of Gabriel’s way so they can call up Luci and get this party started. What’s the point in drawing out the inevitable, right?
He doesn’t know why he turns back. He’s pissed and unreasonable and Cas is the last person on Earth he wants to look at right now. But he does, just after he opens the door. He turns back.
He expects anger, and disappointment, and resignation. The things he’s used to. It’s what he’s come to expect from the people in his life. Because he always fucks it up, in the end. He fucks up, and people get hurt.
What he doesn’t expect is for Cas to look fucking wrecked. Like Dean carved his heart right out of his chest, metaphor be damned. Like Dean had just confirmed every horrible thing anyone had said about them and…
Hadn’t he?
Is this Cas thinking that Dean believes them? All the people that screamed ‘mistake’ again and again, were they right? Fifteen years and it’s finally coming back to bite them in the ass?
And Jesus, he hadn’t meant that. He really hadn’t, hasn’t thought that even once, that they made a mistake. So what kind of person does that make him for letting Cas think he does? That he would, after all this time?
In the end, it all comes down to him. Because he’s the one who’s running, and he’s the one to blame for this whole, sprawling mess. Cas deserves better. Has deserved better, and Dean has been so fucking stupid to believe he could hold on to this. To believe he wouldn’t fuck this up, too.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes before he turns and walks out the door.
“Dean!” He keeps walking. “DEAN!” Cas follows him outside, into the cold, and Dean doesn’t turn around. He’s got his fingers on the door handle to the impala when the levee finally, finally breaks.
“It’s not your fault she died!”
Dean freezes, his blood running cold, and ducks his head. Damn it. He couldn’t just leave well enough alone and— Damn it.
“It’s not your fault,” Cas repeats, softer, and Dean can’t move. “You couldn’t have known, Dean. Marcy did everything right, even the doctors said she was fine until—”
“Stop!” He growls, cutting Cas off, jerking his head up to meet Cas’s gaze. Sam and Jo and the others are huddled on the porch, staring at them and shooting each other looks, and Dean doesn’t care anymore. They hadn’t told anyone. Hadn’t wanted to tell anyone until she was in their arms, in case—
“There was nothing you could do,” Cas says softly, and his voice speaks volumes of his sadness, his grief, so full and so much like Dean’s own. “There was nothing we could do.”
Maybe it’s the change from “you” to “we”. Maybe it’s the way Cas looks at him, raw and hurting and just as fucked up as Dean, and they’ve been so stupid. All this time, they were destroying each other because there was nothing left of themselves to destroy. Because her death had fucking gutted them.
“I loved her,” Dean breaks, suddenly, looking at Cas in something like panic. “I hadn’t even met her but I loved her already, so much, and I—”
“I know,” Cas says, and catches Dean when he falls into him. Dean grips the front of Cas’s shirt with both hands and dips his head, clutching desperately because he’s drowning.
“Eight months,” he croaks out, and he can feel Cas draw in a sharp breath. He knows it down to the day; was counting from the moment they got the call up until… Eight months, one week, three days. He spent eight months, one week, and three days loving her with his whole damn being and she—
“I loved her,” he repeats stupidly, helplessly, clinging to Cas and crying because he can’t fucking breathe, doesn’t know what to do. “I loved her and I never got to meet her.”
“I did too,” Cas says quietly, pulling dean closer and cradling the back of his head. He presses his face against the side of Dean’s neck and holds on.
Silence engulfs them, and they exist in their own, private world for a while, taking each other’s grief and softening it, sanding the edges until it’s no longer tearing them both to ribbons.
“I love you,” he says softly, calmly, because he needs Cas to know. Dean still loves him. He’ll always love him.
“I know, Dean,” Cas says patiently, stroking the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck. “We’ll try again.”
“Cas—” Dean starts, panicked, but Cas quiets him.
“Not now. We will take some time. Perhaps we can look into adoption again,” he offers, and Dean nods into his shoulder. He can’t go through that again. He won’t even allow himself to hope.
“We can do this, Dean,” Cas says solemnly, and Dean finds himself believing it for the first time since this whole thing happened. “Please,” Cas breathes, and he sounds desperate and scared and Dean clutches him tighter. “Please stay.”
Dean sucks in a shaky breath and says “I will.”
«•»
Dean’s sitting on the back porch steps halfway through a six pack when he hears footsteps. It’s not John—he’s stomping around upstairs, screaming at God and himself and Mary for giving him an impulsive idiot for a son (though surprisingly, the word “faggot” has not made an appearance.) Sam is working on homework in his room, though Dean suspects this is just a ruse for “I need alone time to adjust to the idea of my brother being gay married in high school oh God I have to look my classmates in the eyes tomorrow kill me now.”
Dean looks up when something bumps his shoe, and Castiel is standing in front of him, trench coat and all. “Cas!” he says, smiling and then frowning. “What are you doing here?” Dean’s head jumps to the worst, but Cas isn’t sporting any bruises, just the usual sex hair, and he hasn’t got any bags—though Dean’s still worried.
“I have been,” he pauses, looking for the words. “Kicked out” he says with air quotes, “until I see the error of my ways and ask forgiveness for my sins.”
“Oh, man.”
“Mother was not pleased.” He pauses, a small smile playing at his lips. “Michael called me an abomination.” He sounds positively cheerful about that one, which, hey, more power to him.
“Jeez, that bad?” Dean asks with a wince, patting the spot beside him. Cas sits down gingerly. Dean wordlessly offers him a beer. Cas just stares at him in response and doesn’t take it. Dean shrugs, pops off the cap, and drinks it himself.
“I believe they will come around,” Cas says lightly. “They simply need to remember that God preaches love, not hate.” Dean shakes his head, doubtful, but doesn’t say anything.
“You need a place to stay?” He asks, shifting closer so their shoulders touch. He thinks of Sam and Dad finding Cas in Dean’s bed in the morning and he nearly spits his beer out. Still, they can deal. And Dean wouldn’t mind waking up next to Cas every morning.
“No,” Cas responds, and it’s a bit of a relief. “Gabriel seemed quite proud of my newfound ability to make Michael extremely uncomfortable, and has charitably offered for me to stay at his apartment until school resumes.”
Dean nods. He’d figured Gabe would be cool about it. Of all Castiel’s brothers, he seemed the least like he had a stick the size of a tree up his ass.
“I am assuming, as you are out here and consuming a rather significant amount of alcohol on a school night, that you told Sam and your father.”
Dean nods and takes another sip of his beer. Luckily, Dad seems to have recognized the futility in telling Dean not to drink underage when there’s usually alcohol in the house and he’s dating—now married—to someone of legal age. Not that Cas would ever buy Dean alcohol. It would be ‘highly improper’. But John doesn’t need to know that.
“It went okay,” Dean says with a deciding nod. “There was a lot of cursing and shouting at first, but I think they’ll warm up. Sammy’s mortified. He’s gonna be known as the kid brother of ‘that gay kid who eloped’ for the rest of high school.” Dean snickers at the thought. Talk about living up to a reputation.
“But…it’s good.” He grins. “The world didn’t end.”
“Did you expect it to?” Cas asks, and it takes Dean a moment to realize he’s being playful, and by that time Cas is kissing him. He’s not complaining. Cas takes the bottle from his hand and sets it aside, pushing Dean by the shoulders until he’s lying flat against the wood panels of the porch, Cas hovering over him and kissing him menacingly.
He doesn’t want to, but he has to stop them before he threatens to say ‘fuck it’ and do something about the growing discomfort in his jeans right here, right now. Sam would kill him. John would probably kill Cas. The blood stains would ruin the porch.
Castiel stops kissing him but doesn’t stop pinning Dean down, hovering over him, which doesn’t really help.
He doesn’t know why he brings it up now, of all moments, or why it suddenly seems so urgent. But he needs to know.
“Aren’t you worried?” He blurts out, blushing afterward and then cursing because he blushed like they’re in some fucking anime romance thing. “I mean,” he starts again, slowly. “What if we really are making a mistake? What if we change our minds? Where are we gonna be in five years? In fifteen?” What if you stop loving me? “Aren’t you even a little freaked?” Because Dean might be having a minor panic attack. Maybe.
Cas is quiet for a moment, considering Dean with steady blue eyes and a slight tilt of the head. Then he says, with absolute conviction, “No.”
Dean fish-mouths in shock for a moment, staring up at Cas in wonder and disbelief, then asks, incredulously, “How?”
Castiel ducks his head to press a chaste kiss to Dean’s lips before he pulls back, considering. He smiles.
“I have faith.”