the open sky (is mine tonight) [supernatural] - part 2
the open sky (is mine tonight)
rated nc-17 - dean/castiel, dean/anna, becky/chuck, sam/ruby - supernatural fic
And Cas wants to believe that this is the way it can be.
note: 21,904 words (both parts)
Cas has never understood chair covers, among other things. Of course, from the start he's never understood weddings or marriage or the entire system, so it's always been a wonder that he's lasted this long in the business anyway. He's pretty sure it goes back to that happiness thing, but as he watches Dean run his hand over bolts of fabric, he remembers that it might be this wedding that ruins him.
While Dean is distracted, Cas quickly gives one of the employees their order. "How about red?"
"I took care of it."
"Oh come on. You didn't even give me the chance to change your mind."
"I'd like to keep my head, thank you very much."
"I know how to pick 'em. Hey, check it out! They cover couches! I need to get the ones in my waiting room fixed." Dean flits over to a section of the store and starts asking one of the employees a slew of impromptu questions while Cas checks his list.
He's thinking about flowers when a voice sounds very loudly near him. He's thinking about the list as he recognizes that voice. He's thinking about running like hell as the voice realizes that Cas is standing in the middle of a fabric show room, trying very hard to will the ground to swallow him whole.
"Well, well. Look what the dogs dragged in from outside."
There comes a point in life when a person has to hide from the past, or turn around and face it. Cas would give anything for that day to not be today, but he's clutching Anna's list in his hand and he can't leave without Dean and he's feeling just the tiniest bit masochistic today, so he turns around.
"Zacharia."
"Jesus Christ. They still let you work in this town?" Zach laughs and shifts his briefcase from one hand to another. It's so fucking tacky and he's had it for as long as Cas can remember, but it's made of real alligator skin and there's something about man that carries something like that around that scares the hell out of him. "I would have thought-"
"I have my own business," Cas tries to say, but his voice in tiny and raw and not quite real in his own throat. He wants to vomit. Zacharia makes him sick, makes him remember things he wants to forget.
"Well, I guess since no one actually knew-"
"Is there a problem here?" Dean steps in at the perfect moment. He looks so stupid standing there in his scrubs and clogs with the fucking blue booties over them and his hospital ID still clipped to his shirt. Cas wants to kiss the obnoxious, I-mean-business look right off his face and then some, but he stays still. "Dean Winchester," he says, offering Zach a hand. "Castiel's current employer."
"Fascinating." Zacharia turns back to Cas. "You never learn, do you? You think this will end any better than the last time? Or the time before that?"
"That was a long time ago. I think we both know things have changed."
"Right. Well! I have a bar mitzvah to finish planning. I'm sure your wedding will turn out splendidly. Castiel is, for all his flaws, a very talented man. But, maybe you already know that, ah, Doctor Winchester." He walks away, leaving Castiel flustered and red in the face and Dean a bit open mouthed and confused.
"That was the most obnoxiously vague encounter of my entire life." He pauses, looking down and then back at Cas. "Come on. I'm buying you a drink."
- - -
Flashback. Of sorts. Cas always neglects to mention the year of his life he spent working for Luke Forrester, San Francisco's big-deal event planner. Luke was brilliant, and what Cas didn't learn from his mother, he learned from this guy. He was a freight train of productivity and for a year and almost four months, Cas learned how to plan under eight thousand kinds of stress. He worked with the best. He planned for the best. And then Luke wanted to make him a partner, and everything was going fine.
And then he met Meg.
It wasn't Meg who was the problem, really. She was just a ridiculous encouragement. She hired Luke to plan her brother's wedding, the wedding she knew was a sham, but didn't have it in her to say a word about. Cas met her brother. And he fell pretty fucking hard. And all the while there was Meg, who didn't know how to tell everyone that her brother was hiding in his own skin, but here was this other man who could do it for her. Cas was never sure how Zacharia found out. He had always been disgustingly secretive. But he knew, and he gave Cas an ultimatum: leave the group, or have Luke find out that one of his biggest weddings of the year had been called off because his star planner fucked the groom.
Cas left because he was ashamed. Zach became a partner. And when Luke left for New York, he got the group, too.
It took Cas a long time to get a lot of things back, but in the end, he was pretty sure he'd moved beyond it all. By his fifth drink, he knows that that isn't true.
They're sitting in Cas's kitchen, because Dean wasn't going to let him get shit faced in a bar, he decided, and being able to crash in your own bed is like heaven. He's silently sipping on one of the beers he bought, watching Cas robotically relive the most shameful memory he has and then down his glass of vodka.
"So that's it."
"That's it."
"That Zacharia guy's a dick." Cas nods. "I get it though, why you quit."
"I couldn't have Luke know. He trusted me and I...I failed. Miserably."
"You messed up. You didn't fail. You were just...human."
"I couldn't afford to be human. I should have...I should have just stayed away. But Meg. Jesus Christ, she was relentless."
"She sounds like a bitch."
"She just didn't know what else to do."
"That's dumb. And you're drunk and you think it wasn't. You still blame yourself."
"So? I fucked up. Astronomically."
"Right. But you didn't do it again."
"Dean, I don't think you realize how dangerously close I come to fucking up every time I'm near you."
They both grow very quiet and there's a wire in the air that snaps. Dean clears his throat and stares at the counter. Cas wants to die. He crunches ice because there's nothing else to do and it's too silent. Dean finally looks up.
"I, uh, I've never told Anna's family that I, you know, uh...I play for both teams. Anna has a brother. And like you may think that her family's cool with this whole nondenominational thing, but they're not. At all. I mean, like, Catholic like you would not believe. And I don't know, her brother. He came out to the family and they lost their fucking shit over it. I don't know what they'd do about me."
"You're marrying their daughter."
"You don't think I have doubts? Ever? I do. All the time. Am I doing this because I need to hide? Because I feel like I should be hiding? Should I hide at all? I love Anna. I mean, I really love her. But, sometimes, it feels like it's this weird different kind of love."
"Dean."
"And sometimes I think, am I just marrying her because we've been dating since we were twenty and I think that that might be it, but that can't be the only reason, right?"
"Dean. You really need to stop telling me these things."
"Why?"
"Because I am your wedding planner."
"Yeah?" Dean goes around the counter and sits on the bar stood opposite Cas. "Well you're also the guy who walked in front of a taxi cab and bought me dinner and watched the fucking sky fall with me." His hands are on Cas's knees now and Cas knows Dean's not nearly drunk enough to do what Cas wishes he would do. He's not drunk enough, but he does it anyway. Clumsy and half-shamed, Cas kisses back, his hands gripping the back of Dean's neck like a vise, pulling him closer, trying to taste more, feel more - all of it, just there and for him. He thinks of Anna once. It's a sick thought and it makes his stomach turn, but Dean stops him.
"Just don't. Don't think about it. I'll fix it. All of it, I'll fix it I promise." Cas nods over and over as Dean tilts his head to the side and trails teeth and tongue down his neck. He grabs Dean by the sleeves of his scrubs and half-drags him back to his bedroom, pushing him onto the mattress like a man possessed. Dean smiles sheepishly. "Easy," he mutters. "It's okay. I'm here. It's okay." But Cas needs him to be quiet. No more words, no more noises except the ones he can pull from Dean's throat every time he palms the erection that is so glaringly obvious in his pants. Dean groans into Cas's neck, fighting with his shirt and tie. "I...I haven't done...this in a - fuck - while." Cas keeps nodding and kisses him again to keep him from talking.
Dean gets the picture and stops talking, stripping off his scrubs with ease as Cas struggles with the lube and a condom from his bedside table. They don't say anything at all as Cas covers his fingers and slowly presses one into Dean, pulling a whimper from his throat. He waits, moves again, then pushes in another. By the time he has three inside, Dean is trembling, head tossed back. Cas can't help himself as he moves forward and drags his teeth along the bared skin of his neck. Carefully, he pulls his fingers away and rolls the condom down his cock, feeling the pressure of want and need as he rubs the lube on and tosses it aside, appreciating the subtle cant upward of Dean's hips. In one swift move, he sinks in, hands pressed hard on Dean's chest as he moves slowly, adjusting to the tightness and drowning in heat and the noises he can steal.
Because it's stealing, really. He's a thief and this isn't his and he can't stop taking it. He knows Dean's letting him have it, but Anna doesn't know and her family can't know and there's no way he can ever tell anyone he knows at all.
Dean pushes toward him, reaching for his own cock and stroking slowly while Cas keep pushing, in and out, again and again. He's almost there, almost there, almost there when he feels Dean's body jerk and hears a shout and an almost too quiet, "There, fuck yes, right there," and Cas knows he's got it. He hits that spot again until Dean comes, teeth gritted and eyes shut tight. Cas follows, his last thrusts sloppy and desperate. He collapses next to Dean and, for a while, they stare at the ceiling, not touching or speaking. Dean opens his mouth several times, like he's about to confess or apologize or something, but stops himself. Cas is grateful.
"Anna," he finally says. "I...I need to get home. It's late."
"She'll wonder."
"Rounds. It's always rounds," he mutters, pushing himself out of the bed and fumbling for his clothes. Cas sits up, exposed and unsure.
He feels utterly wrecked.
But, then again, he asked for this.
Silently, he watches Dean go, nodding when he makes his excuses. Because he understands and this will end the way it always does. But Cas won't let it stop the future this time. He'll hold out that he and Dean are just sparks flying in the friction and that, when the metal stops running, it'll fade.
- - -
There's no sign of Dean until, one afternoon, Cas is sitting at Crowley's, listening to him bitch about a waitress stealing from the registers when he gets a text. Cas doesn't like texting, but he tolerates them. He ignores this one, though, like he does with most things when he's with Crowley, and waits until he gets back to his office, frowning at his phone as he loosens his tie.
text from: dean winchester at 11:43 AM
anna wants to pick out flowers today. also i'm sorry.
The phone buzzes again.
text from: dean winchester at 1:01 PM
my brother is in town.
It's strange how this sounds more like a warning than the statement Cas thinks it's intended to be. He reads the line, trying to find some other meaning behind it. Why so brief? Why after the apology? Why any apology at all? Weren't they both a part of what had happened? He sits down, spreading out his notes and starting to call the florist when Chuck knocks on his door.
"Chuck. I'm busy."
"I know. But there's a sasquatch in your waiting room."
"I'm sorry?"
"A sasquatch. In your waiting room. Said he knows Anna." Cas raises an eyebrow and gets up, following Chuck out into the lobby and trying to understand exactly what he means. In about five seconds, he does.
Sam Winchester is huge. Cas is tall, and he knows Dean is tall, but this was not what he was expecting.
Sasquatch, indeed.
"Hi," is all he says, grinning and extending his only free hand while his other holds onto the Blackberry that Cas knows is probably fused to the skin. "You're...Castiel?"
"You must be Sam."
"Dean warned you, huh?"
"You could say that." Sam laughs and finally puts his phone into his pocket, leaning back a little and shaking his head.
"I wasn't supposed to get here until week after next, before the wedding, but Dean called, said he needed me here, so. Duty calls, I guess." Cas nods, well aware that the wedding date is fast approaching. "Anyway, I was wondering if, uh, I could talk to you? In your office?"
"Yes, of course. That's fine. Chuck, memos."
"Mmhm." Chuck is already at his desk, bored with the exchange between the two and texting Becky. Cas leads Sam into his office and shuts the door. "Have a seat."
"Great thanks." The entire room is too small compared to Sam, but he has this thing about him that makes him fit anywhere, like he came with the furniture when Cas bought it. Sitting across from him, Cas has to admire the fact that he seems a bit too nice to be a lawyer. He'd expected a more ruthless version of Dean, but what he finds is quite different.
"Something you wanted to talk about?"
"Yeah, uh, are you trying to fuck up my brother's marriage? Or are you actually in love with him?"
Cas balks, freezing before he can even sit in his chair. Sam doesn't look angry, but instead oddly calm, as though this was something he'd ask anyone. His head is tilted slightly to the right and Cas swears he sees the ghost of a smile there, like this is funny and Cas is some sort of joke.
"I...I, uh..."
"I mean, I'll get it if you do love him. But, like, why now?"
"Sam, I-"
"Dean doesn't doubt. Not himself, not what he's feeling, not what he thinks is right. Nothing. And then you come along and now he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And I know I should be really fucking mad, but you're the first person who has really ever made Dean ask why he's doing something." Sam shakes his head. "Marrying Anna is a terrible idea."
"Don't tell me that," Cas snaps, beginning a furious pacing by the door. "Don't even tell me that. No. No. I have poured my sweat and blood into this wedding. You can't...you can't-"
"It's true. He's marrying her because he thinks it's what he's supposed to do. They've been together since college! He has this warped, fucked up sense of obligation to her and everyone around him." Sam stands and stares at Cas with eyes that remind him frighteningly of a small animal's. "Look, I don't know how you really feel about my brother, but if you felt something strong enough to...to, you know..." Cas looks away and Sam groans. "Just hear me out, okay?"
"Sam. I made a mistake. I...Why am I telling you this?"
"I listen to excuses for a living. People tend to spill everything around me."
"Excuses? I..." Cas trails off. Because everything really is just an excuse at this point. And a bad one, at that. Cas can't say if he's in love with Dean, because he doesn't admit to things like that. Ever. Not like this, not this soon. He starts pacing and looking at Anna's list and thinking about Anna and how they just clicked and how excited she's been and how they're picking out flowers in-
Cas's cell phone buzzes and, of course, it's Anna. He shakes off what he's feeling for a minute and composes himself.
"Flowers?" he answers, feeling suddenly lighter at the prospect of hearing Anna's voice on the other end. Even though he seems to be ruining her marriage from the inside out, there's still a part of Cas wants to see Anna's wedding to its conclusion.
"It would seem so," she says, sounding a bit deflated. Cas swallows, wondering if it's at all possible if she knows. "I'll meet you there in thirty? Dean said you have Sam."
"I do, yes."
"Bring him. I haven't seen my future brother-in-law in almost a year." She laughs then, and Cas feels better when he hangs up, turning to Sam with a small smile.
"Anna wants to see you." Sam just laughs and stands, clapping a hand on Cas's shoulder and shaking his head.
"Man, you are ten kinds of fucked."
Cas has to agree.
- - -
Anna is nowhere to be found when they get to the florists, so Cas sends Sam into the greenhouse to look for her while he heads into the back to find the female attendant he always works with, but whose name consistently escapes him. Something with a "J." He racking he brain trying to remember when he bumps headlong into Anna.
"Sam's in the greenhouse, he's...Anna. Are you alright?" She looks at him now, eyes rimmed red from crying, and nods. But it's a shaky, slightly psychotic sort of nod that Cas has seen a hundred thousand times before on women just as strong as Anna. "Come here." Disregarding the employees only sign on the break room, he pulls her in and shuts the door, sitting her on a flimsy metal folding chair across from him and snagging a handful of paper towels from the dispenser behind him. "Spill it."
Cas has done this before. Pep talks and therapy sessions. He talked a woman out of killing herself two years ago, but he's pretty sure Anna's nowhere close enough to coming that undone that quickly. She blows her nose and shakes her head.
"It's Dean. He's just...he's been weird for like a week now, and I don't have any fucking clue why. I bring up wedding stuff and he just brushes it off. He wants to talk about what we're feeling or whatever, like we just fucking met or something. He's always asking me if I remember different dates we went on, or if I remember our first Christmas together or whatever. And then he asks me these questions and it's like...like I start asking them to myself later, when I'm alone. And then I wonder if I'm just doing this because...because it's only been Dean since I was nineteen, I've never been with anyone else. Not in any official capacity." She groans and holds her face in her hands, shaking her head over and over. "I'm so fucking confused."
Cas leans forward. As much as he knows he's the wrench that's been tossed into the spokes of her future marriage, Cas also knows that, right now, he has to pretend he isn't the man who fucked her fiancé and that he isn't the man who may or may not be in love with Dean Winchester. May or may not have been in love with him since they say on the hood of a car and watched the stars. He pretends, for a moment, that he is none of these. And he holds Anna's face in one of his hands and smiles.
"You love him." A statement. Not a question. But something behind Anna's eyes falters and she stares at him for far too long for Cas to be comfortable. "Anna..."
"I...I don't know anymore."
The door swings open and a strung-out college student in a dirty green apron scowls at them.
"Employees only guys."
"We were just leaving," Cas says quickly, guiding Anna out by the elbow. "Clean up. Breathe. I'll be in the greenhouse looking at lilies with Sam."
"Okay," she murmurs. "Okay. I'm okay."
"Yes. You are." Cas pulls her close to him and presses a rare kiss to her forehead. He wants that tiny bit of pressure to hold every apology he could ever give her. To beg her forgiveness and hold the promise that he will see this to the end.
- - -
The last two weeks before a wedding are usually Cas's most productive. He spends larger quantities of time at the actual site, arranging and rearranging things in his head, revisiting every florist, baker, and musician he's spoken two in the planning process, and calming the bride down.
But since the episode in the greenhouse, Anna hasn't said a thing about her doubts. And in fact, every time Cas sees her with Dean, they were ridiculously happy, smiling and touching one another and whispering. Sometimes, Dean catches his eye and Cas will look away, because Anna is happy and that's what he wants. It isn't what he wants most anymore, but it's at least one thing, and if he gets that, then everything else should fall away.
Shouldn't it?
Because as much as Cas is dedicated to this wedding, there is a part of him that consistently returns to that night. And he feels the sweat cling to his skin like it was yesterday and he can hear Dean and feel the want rippling through both their bodies and everything fits and is right. And he doesn't ever want to forget it.
He wants to feel it again. And again, and again, and again and he never wants to be without it.
But the person he wants is marrying a woman he cares about and he won't be that thing that comes between two people again. He just won't.
Sam doesn't say anything else, just shuffles around behind his brother, texting his own wife, a small woman Cas has seen numerous photos of named Ruby. He despises the park that Anna has chosen to have their ceremony in, and apparently Ruby finds the idea of holding the reception there as well a bit tactless. Cas politely reminds him that, as lovely as Ruby may be, she is not, in fact planning the wedding. Cas is.
"Is 'fuck the groom' on your list?" Sam snaps back one evening while they are alone at a dinner table together and Dean and Anna are dancing to a nauseatingly romantic slow-song. Sam does not take shots at his wife lightly and usually retaliates this way when Cas inadvertently insults her. It's only the hundredth time it's happened, so he's not all that take aback by it this time around.
"It's a sublist, top secret," he drawls back, annoyed with Sam's near-permanent pissy attitude. He's had enough to drink to make him irritable and Sam's most recent attack is enough to make him want to get up and just get a cab home and be done with it all. But Anna insisted he come to dinner with them, mainly because Ruby was supposed to fly in that night, but was delayed by rain in, of all places, Arizona, where a lightening storm coupled with 122 degree temperatures grounded her plane in Phoenix. Cas's latest subtle jab at Ruby, coupled with her non-arrival, makes Sam nearly impossible to now sit with. Cas downs the last of his beer and doesn't bother telling Sam he'll be in the restroom, namely because Sam is furiously texting Ruby, probably telling her every last fucking detail about how Cas is slowly trying to ruin everyone's life.
He's a paranoid drunk, too.
The bathroom has a long wall of urinals and two stalls on the end. Naturally, the only other person there is Dean, and he staring at Cas like maybe, if he looks hard enough, Cas will vanish.
"What?" he snaps, watching Dean with narrowed, foggy eyes.
"Fuck it," Dean mutters, and he grabs Cas by the shirt and shoves him into a stall at the end of the row, locking the door behind. Cas is miles ahead, shoving Dean against the stall door and half-biting an angry kiss in his mouth, hands scrambling with his belt. "You have fucked everything up," Dean spits, snagging the upper hand as Cas gets distracted with his belt buckle. "Do you know that?"
"Shut. Up." Cas kisses him again, sucking the words from his mouth, leaving a lazy trail across his lips with his tongue. The music from the restaurant is a constant presence in Cas's ears, and he is distantly aware of someone entering the bathroom, talking loudly on a cell phone. He rolls Dean's tie up in his hands and shoves it as indelicately as he possibly can in his mouth and dropping to his knees. He's wanted to do this for so fucking long, it's been driving him insane. Dean hisses when Cas pulls his cock from under his boxer shorts, immediately wrapping his mouth around the tip and moving slowly down. He feels fingers dig into his hair and hears the far-away sound of the thud of Dean's fist against the stall.
Cas knows that this should feel wrong. That he should feel like completely and utter shit for everything is doing and wants to do. His mind is completely depraved at this point, thinking of all the ways he could ravage Dean and be ravaged right back. He nearly comes himself just thinking about it, but manages to concentrate. Dean is breathing heavily through his tie, sounding completely wrecked. Cas moves faster, sucking harder before moving back down, tightening his grip on Dean's thighs. When Dean comes, it's with a sharp thrust forward and the tie falls from his mouth, letting loose a sharp cry with Cas's name suddenly in the air as Cas swallows thickly.
Cas wants that name to go away, because it makes it harder, now, to clean himself up. He nearly cries when he sees the knees of his pants are still fairly clean, nothing the dark of the restaurant wont' cover up, but he has no idea how he and Dean will get back to the table.
"Go back," Dean says, shoving his tie into his pocket and pulling out his phone. "I'll take care of it." Cas hesitates before leaving the stall, glancing quickly back before getting a gentle push from Dean. "Go. I got this." Nodding, he exits the bathroom, realizing how unbelievable lucky they are that no one noticed or said a thing. At the table, Sam is still brooding over his phone and Anna is ordering another round of beers.
"Was Dean in the bathroom with you?" she asks. Sam's head snaps up.
"I haven't seen him since you two went off to dance."
"Weird," Sam says, lips quirking into a wicked smile. The smile doesn't falter a bit when Dean comes to the table, phone pressed to his ear, nodding.
"Everything okay?"
"Some kid tried to eat a balloon. The ER doc got him, he's just a patient of mine." He takes a seat next to Anna and kisses her temple, pointedly not looking at Cas. Sam goes back to his phone, but he stops periodically to look between Cas and Dean and shake his head. "Hey, dude, could you put that thing away for five minutes, okay? She's still in Phoenix, she's not going anywhere."
"She should be going somewhere, namely your wedding."
"That's a week away."
"She's here to be supportive." Dean's mouth is turned down in a quiet, subtle snarl, but he says nothing, choosing, instead, to drink his beer, arm around Anna's shoulder. Cas refuses to drink anymore and, after a while, decides he's had about enough.
"You sure? We'll give you a ride home."
"I want to stop by my office, it's just up the street. I'll get a cab."
"Well...okay." Anna stands and wraps him in a quick hug. "Well go over the seating chart on Monday, okay? Take the weekend off. Seriously, Cas," she says, when he opens his mouth to protest. "Take a break. You're stretched thin, I can tell. Relax this weekend and we'll get back into it on Monday." Cas nods and breaks away from the group. He can feel Dean's eyes on his retreating back, reminding him of what a terrible fucking excuse for a human being he is.
- - -
When he leaves the restaurant, Cas realizes that the only place in the world he'd like to be right then is home.
And not his house or this city, but home.
The only person he wants to talk to is his fucking mother. And something about that single thought makes something break inside of him. He walks blindly to his office, unlocked the door and goes straight for his desk. Before he knows it, his fingers are fumbling with his cell phone and he's collapsed in his office chair, something Becky picked out that has always been more comfortable than any bed or couch. The phone rings once. Twice. On the third ring, his mother's voice hits his ears and he nearly sobs with relief.
"Cas, what in the hell are you doing?"
"Hey...hey mom."
"Honey, you sound completely wrecked. Are you drunk? You're drunk, aren't you? Look, just-"
"Mother, I'm not drunk."
"It's okay if you are. I probably am."
"I know. It's okay. I love you, you know that?"
"How much did you drink, exactly?"
"Mom, I'm serious." She pauses and Cas wonders how fucking crazy she thinks he is.
"Cas," she says gently, her voice nearly breaking his heart. "Honey, are you okay? What's wrong?"
And then it all comes tumbling out, everything that he's been feeling and everything that he wishes he hadn't done and things he didn't even know he was feeling before. And she listens, doesn't make a sound as he takes in shaky breaths and tries to keep talking. But his voice gives out and after a while it's just the noise of his breathing, hard and ragged. He becomes aware of her voice, soothing and slow, calming him down. There is a memory of her hand on his back, rubbing in smooth, concentric circles as he breathes through a panic attack or another fight with his father.
"If you love him, you should just say something, honey."
"Mother, he's getting married."
"Castiel," she says sharply. He sits up straight. "You got yourself into this mess. You kissed him and you let him into your bed. You have to fix it." He nods and even though she can't see him, she knows. "Good. I know you'll do what's right, baby. Now get some sleep and call me when you've set things straight, understand."
"Okay." Then, "Love you."
"Love you more."
- - -
Cas spends the weekend sleeping, having lunch with Becky, and stealing wine from Crowley, who listens to him bemoan his current situation and then tells him to do exactly what his mother told him. Becky is a bit nicer.
But only a bit.
"I mean, I'm sorry, hon, but you fucked up."
"Thank you."
"Look," she says, coating her hamburger bun with strawberry jam shamelessly and calmly. Their waiter raises an eyebrow as he sets Cas's glass of wine down on the table. "You fucked. Twice. Sort of. And, like, obviously both those moments mean something to you. But you can't pretend they mean the same thing to him."
"We've never talked about it."
"Your communication skills. I want them."
"Get to the point." Becky stops spreading the jam and sets her knife down pointedly.
"What I'm saying is this. To you, he might be the love of your life, meant to be forever, wander into the sunset and ride off a cliff into oblivion or whatever. But to him, you could just be stress relief, something different from Anna. And if he's getting married, he's not allowed to, you know, do other people anymore. Not technically. He's not supposed to do this now, but hell, who needs rules, right?" She takes a large bite of the burger, mustard and jam dropping onto the plate.
"One, you're disgusting. And two..." Cas trails off.
"You know I'm probably right."
"I don't want you to be right."
"Well, that's your problem then. I mean, you don't know anything about what he's feeling because you won't talk about it. Mostly because you're an introverted moron who thinks that a look into your psyche is a privilege reserved for like an elite club or something." Becky dips her fries in mayo and shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe you should just go talk to him."
"Maybe."
"The wedding is in, like, a week. You are going to be so fucking busy that if he says you were just an easy lay or whatever, you won't have time to look at his stupid ugly face for more than five seconds."
"He's not ugly."
"Oh I know." She giggles. "Chuck is insanely jealous, though not as jealous as he is of his brother who is, and I quote 'a sasquatch or something.'"
"Sam is very tall."
"And sexy, from what I can gather." Cas shrugs and Becky loses herself in another fit of laughter, stopping only to scold her unborn child for kicking. "When I laugh, she loses her shit."
"When you have a son, I am going to give Chuck a raise for suffering through your nine month denial episode."
He narrowly misses a french fry Becky lobs at his head, but at the end of the day, he feels better.
- - -
Becky's right. The last week before the wedding, Cas hardly has any time to see Dean at all. Anna stops working for an entire week to dedicate herself to checking and rechecking the seating, but there is a bit of her that isn't really in it. Cas catches her staring at flowers without really seeing them. She goes off to have long conversations with people Cas doesn't know and comes back crying most of the time. When Dean is around, they fight. The wedding is Saturday. By Thursday night, nothing is okay.
"I'm leaving," she snaps after an entire morning and afternoon of bickering with Dean over wine choices which escalates into a fight about colors which evolves into another fight about the cost. In the end, Cas hears a rather loud smack and Anna is gathering her things and leaving Cas's office in a huff. Dean doesn't go after her, choosing to stay seating and watch her retreating back with sad, tired eyes. Cas pretends he can't see.
"She doesn't love me."
"Sorry?"
"I said, she doesn't love me. Not anymore. Not like she used to."
"Please, stop saying these things, alright? Your wedding is in two days, Dean."
"I wish it wasn't this big. I wish we'd just done something small. It'd...it'd make it easier."
"Make what easier?"
"Nothing," Dean mutters, trying to brush it off.
"Dean. What are you going to do?" Dean stands, folding his arms over his chest and staring Cas down.
"I can't go through with this."
"What?!" Cas throws everything he has onto the ground and grabs Dean by the shirt, shoving him against the wall. "Would you mind repeating yourself, please?"
"I said that I can't do this."
"That's what I thought you said." In one swift move, Cas lands a punch straight into Dean's stomach, sending him folding into himself, gasping for breath.
"What the fuck, Cas?"
"Look, I made be...a colossal idiot. And I might even be in love with you. But I swear, the only thing I want to happen on Saturday is for you to get married."
"Cas-"
"Because Anna deserves this. She deserves to be happy. And so do you. Now I'm sorry that I came into your life and I did what I did because fucking things up is just something I'm good at and I'm sorry. But I make things beautiful, too. Anna came to me with an idea and I just wanted to make that idea real. And if you leave her, if you abandon her at that altar, you are never going to forgive yourself and I am never going to be able to live the rest of my life without knowing that, if I could, I would throttle you and throw your body into the bay and not think twice about it. Because if you leave her on Saturday, that is what I will do."
Dean is very quiet and Cas is shaking. A car alarm starts going off outside, but after a while, it just fades into the background. Dean clears his throat.
"You, uh...you love me?"
"I honestly don't know."
"You feel something then."
"I feel a lot of things," Cas says, frustrated. "And I want them all to just go away and leave me be so I can plan this wedding and pretend you were never a part of my life."
"That's what you want?"
"No, but it's for the best." Dean steps closer, a small smile playing over his lips.
"What do you want?"
"Honestly?" Dean nods. "I want you. And I don't want you to get married and I want us to live in a different world where this wasn't a problem." Cas looks at his shoes. "But...but mostly, I just don't want to leave behind a mess. Again."
"If you could have me-"
"Dean, stop."
"Cas, if you could...if...if I weren't getting married, would you take me?"
"In a heartbeat," Cas murmurs, breathless as Dean steps closer. He's kissing him again, and he knows he shouldn't be, but he figures if it's gone this far, it might as well go a bit further.
"I'll leave Anna, I'll-"
"Dean, you-"
"And we'll go somewhere else, we'll-"
"She loves you, she-"
"Fuck, Cas-" Dean presses him into the desk, tugging at his belt and his pants, shoving things from the desk onto the floor.
And Cas would say something, but there is a part of him that wants to savor the feel of Dean's teeth on his shoulder and the way his presses one, two fingers inside him coated with bad, discount lotion Cas bought at Costco two years ago. He wants to remember the way it all feels and what it does to him as Dean's hips thrust sharply forward and he falls apart beneath him, aware that everything Dean is giving him can not and will not ever belong to him.
The last thing he thinks, as Dean comes and collapses with a groan, is that his mother, of all people, would be obscenely disappointed in him.
- - -
Friday arrives. Cas is reminded of the calm before the storm, the deadly peace and silence before the violence sets in. Anna is all smiles on Friday, assuring Cas that Dean is out of the planning picture for the last twenty-four hours, as he has office all day and told Anna that it was probably best if he just wasn't around while she and Cas finished up. Cas has to agree.
He doesn't tell Becky what happened, mostly because he's busy planning the rehearsal dinner that he almost forgot about, but had to pretend that he knew was happening the entire time. Anna buys it. It's a small affair, and it marks the first time that Cas actually will get to meet Ruby, something he's wanted to do for a while. Sam comes to the office to help him coordinate things with the caterer for the dinner and tells him that Ruby's had a migraine since she got into town, but it's probably just a side effect of being within a sixty mile radius of Dean.
"They don't get along?"
"Yeah, something like that. Chicken or tilapia?"
"Chicken, but add also check the box next to that tofu thing. Anna's maid of honor is vegan."
"What about steak?"
"Chicken, Sam. You can have you red mean fix tomorrow night."
"Cas." Chuck knocks on the door, looking entirely put out.
"I'm busy."
"Your mother is on the phone."
"Did I hire you yesterday? For the love of God, Chuck, take a fucking message."
"She's buying a plane ticket to San Francisco."
"Put her through."
Cas picks up the phone when it begins flashing, not sure what he's going to say.
"Mother. Whatever you're doing, stop."
"The man you're in love with is getting married on Saturday. I am coming to that God-forsaken city and we are going on a bender to end all benders."
"That is the worst idea I've ever heard."
"Well I already bought my ticket."
"What?!" Sam looks up from the order form.
"I'll be there at noon."
"The wedding is at noon."
"Then I guess you'll have to leave Chuck in charge, won't you?"
"Mother-"
"Castiel. This is not up for discussion. You will be at the airport to pick me up, understand."
"Yes ma'am."
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow." She hangs up and Cas swears, even the tiny click on the other end sounds smug.
"Everything okay?"
"No, but really, nothing is ever okay, is it?" Sam shrugs and hands over the order form. "You saved me, thank you."
"You coming tonight?"
"Of course."
"Everything alright between you and my brother?"
"Yes, Sam. Everything is fine." Sam nods and Cas knows that he knows that it's a lie, but he keeps moving, because Anna is calling and having a heart attack about the rehearsal and Dean still isn't done and she doesn't care if he fucking shows up in scrubs, he's coming and that's final and if Cas could call him and be polite, but firm, it would appreciated because she's still getting her hair done.
Cas calls Dean and leaves a message that, essentially, reminds him that he is, in fact, getting married and that if he'd like to show up to the rehearsal dinner he knows what where and what it is. And if doesn't, then he can just fucking forget about it.
Thankfully, he shows up. And Anna is good to her word and doesn't even mine that she practices saying "I do," with her fiancé wearing a maroon scrub top with orange bottoms, because that's all he could find that morning.
"When we move into the new place, he's getting an entire dresser for these things," Anna jokes over dinner.
"Remind why you two don't live together again?" Ruby asks, wine glass dangling loosely between her fingers.
"Just something we agreed on," Anna says, bumping Dean's shoulder with hers. After a while, she stands up, steadying herself with a hand on Dean's arm, raising her glass. "Thank you, everyone, for being here. We are more than excited to have you all be a part of a huge moment in our lives tomorrow afternoon. A moment that probably wouldn't be possible without one of the most amazing men I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Other than Dean." Cue appropriate laughter. "Cas, could you wave?" Cas complies. "Castiel has been translating my rantings and ravings for almost two months now, when Dean and I decided to throw this wedding together. Lisa-" Cas had been avoiding her the entire night, but her presence was thrown into the spotlight - "couldn't recommend him enough and I am so, so glad she did. Without him, this just wouldn't have been possible. Thank you, Cas. For everything."
Cas nods and drinks his wine, daring for a moment to meet Dean's gaze. There is a quick wink and then nothing. Ruby nudges him in the side.
"You have to be the bravest man I know to deal with them both at once."
"They're alright."
"Dean and I fight like cats and dogs, but Anna-" She shakes her head. "There's just something about her. I think it's her hair."
"Ruby, stop it," Sam warns, but his heart isn't in it. "Ruby hates redheads."
"Don't trust 'em."
"I'm sure you have your reasons."
"So you're the one who fucked Dean?"
Cas nearly spits out his wine, thankful that most of the table is listening to Anna's father tell an awkward story about horses and cow shit. Or something. Sam grimaces.
"Ruby. I told you-"
"What? I'm just asking."
"It's fine. Yes, I am."
"Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic."
"Ruby."
"Alright, alright." She leans back in her chair and then against Sam, who pries the wine glass from her hands and kisses the top of her head.
When Anna's father passes out, everyone decides that it's time to go home. Cas hasn't told Anna he won't be there tomorrow. He's not worried about it. Of course, he hasn't told Chuck that he'll be the one taking care of everything, but he's fairly certain that if anyone can take care of Anna's wedding, Chuck can.
"Need a ride? Anna and the girls are staying with Lisa tonight."
"I'll take a cab."
"Cas, come on. Let's just talk about this."
"Talk about what?"
"About...about last night."
"We fucked, Dean. Again. What else am I supposed to say?"
"You said you loved me."
"I said I might." Then, "You never said anything like that, so-"
"Cas, don't make me do this."
"You're the one who wants to talk."
"I...fine. I'll see you tomorrow."
Cas nods, extending his hand and hailing a cab, turning his back on Dean, looking only once in the cabbie's rearview mirror to see him standing at the curb, defeated and worn. He goes to bed that night, talking to his mother once more the reaffirm that their earlier conversation was not a fever dream, and he dreams about shooting stars again. He dreams about sitting in the yard next to Michael and Gabe and not hitting or teasing or tormenting and just wondering how many wishes you got when all the stars started falling from the sky.
- - -
Cas has Chuck meet him at the park at eight, just like they always do before a wedding. They go through the checklist, and Chuck makes notes and calls people and yells at the florist and then yells at the baker and then hands the phone over to Cas who yells at the baker some more until the van with the cake arrives at ten. At eleven, he hands over his clipboard and his walkie talkie and Chuck almost vomits.
"What?"
"You're in charge."
"Um, no. No and fucking no, Cas. Your mother can get a cab."
"You know that's not happening. I promised."
"So tell her you lied. You lie to me all the time."
"Chuck-"
"I can't do this."
"You can."
"No. I can't."
"Yes. You can." He presses the clipboard tighter into Chuck's hand. "I know you can. You've watched me do this a million times. If I didn't think you could do this, I'd call Becky."
"That's...Cas. Please. You don't have to see Dean, okay? I'll-"
"This isn't about Dean."
"Then what is it about?"
"It's about me promising my psychotic mother that I would pick her up at the airport and following through on that promise." He sighs. "And it's a little about Dean. Just...please, Chuck. Do this for me and you will get a raise and a half, alright?" Chuck swallows, looks at the clipboard, and then back at Cas. He nods. "Thank you. I owe you. A lot."
"You bet your fucking ass you do."
Cas grips Chuck's arm for a moment and the leaves him, deciding it best not to look back. He doesn't need to be there for the wedding. He doesn't need to see Dean say yes because, even though he wants that to happen, that want lives in constant conflict with everything else he seems to want lately, those wants mainly consisting of just Dean. He hails a cab for the airport and rests his head against the window, falling into a light sleep where he doesn't dream of anything.
- - -
While Cas is in a cab headed toward the airport, Anna is standing in a room alone, staring at a painting on the wall. It's an ugly painting, but it's real, and when she reaches out to touch it, she can almost feel the weight of the heavy brush strokes it took to bring the picture together. The paint is thick under her fingers, the colors rich to her eyes. It's an oil painting of a house in the middle of a field, and she can't stand it, but she is in love with what it's made of.
"Hey gorgeous." She wheels around.
"Dean. You can't be here."
"I know." He shuts the door and locks it behind him, walking slowly toward her and taking her hands in his. "You look fantastic."
"Well I'm glad you think so. But it's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding."
"Anna, I don't think I could get any more bad luck that I already have."
"Dean...what's wrong." He leans forward and kisses her, slowly and carefully, almost methodically, like he's trying to figure her out. "Dean-"
"Anna, we need to talk."
"Dean, no. No, you are not pulling this shit on me on our wedding day, okay? So-so just go back out there, okay?"
"Anna, listen to me! What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Why are you marrying me?"
"You asked me! You asked and I-"
"You said yes. Why? Why did you say yes?"
"Because I loved you," she snaps.
"I know. Because you loved me." He brushes a piece of hair from her face. "But you don't love me anymore, do you?"
"I-" She freezes, mouth open in protest. "I love you," she says, but the words sound weak even to her. "I...I do. Don't you? Don't you love me?"
"Anna, I have loved you since you walked into that pathetic excuse of a diner I was working in and turned everything upside down. You have been the most important woman in my life since I was twenty-four years old."
"It...it's been that long."
"Yeah. Yeah, it has."
"Oh my God," she murmurs. "I'm thirty. You're thirty-five. Dean, we've been....we've been doing this for eleven years. I mean, it hasn't...it hasn't been perfect, or anything. Not at all. But...but I always go back to you. Always. You're so...
"Usual?"
"Comfortable," Anna says, and figures that she might as well and sits on the ground in a small explosion of white fabric. Dean sits across from her, holding her hands tight in his. "When things went to hell, you were always so safe."
"It was always the same."
"It felt good."
"It still feels good. And if that's what you want, then that's okay! We can be happy, I know it. I just...you are the most amazing woman I have ever met. You are smart and shrewd and deserving of all the love in the world. If anyone doesn't deserve to be loveless, it's you. And it's not that I don't love you in some way. I just...I don't love you the way you should be loved. Baby, don't cry."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"So are you," she laughs, and Dean realizes he is. "Who did you meet?" she says quietly. She's suspected for a while and it's not like it doesn't hurt worse than anything else Dean has ever done to her over the years, it's just there's a small part of her wouldn't mind if she could chalk it all up to that. To some torrid affair that ended her marriage before it had even begun.
"Anna-"
"Did you meet someone, Dean?" He nods. "Tell me. Please. Don't sit here and tell me you can only love me one way when there's someone out there who already has every bit of your heart that I used to have. You owe me this." He stares at her hands, rubbing his thumbs across the tops of them.
"Would you believe me if I told you it was our wedding planner?"
Anna stares for a moment, watching his face to see if it's some kind of joke. When she realizes it's not, she starts to laugh. Her entire body shakes with it and she thinks she might not ever be able to stop. Because it's all too fucking strange and weird and perfect, in it's only little way. Of course her fucking wedding planner would be the one to steal her fiancé. Of course. It's the only thing that makes sense, really. Cas is the only one, she thinks. The only one.
"When he walked in front of that cab."
"The idiot had his hooks in me from the beginning."
"Do you love him?"
"I think so."
"Jesus," she breathes, closing her eyes and leaning forward, pressing her forehead to Dean's chest. "Story of my fucking life, I guess."
"Anna, I-"
"Dean. I know you're sorry. I know that. And I am, too. But that doesn't really change much."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean all the people downstairs waiting for us to walk down that aisle."
"Anna, if that's what you want-"
"Dean. I don't want to marry you. I don't. I want to go South America, is what I want to do." Dean raises an eyebrow. "What I mean is that I want to live. I want to go on our honeymoon and I don't really want to come back for a long fucking time. I want to learn another language and I want to bike around Italy and hike mountains and God, I just want to do something with myself, you know?"
"I do."
"I love you, too, I guess. In the same way you love me. But I don't think I can marry you." Dean sighs and Anna curls the upper part of her body into his lap, his body warm and familiar, just like it always has been.
"So. What do we do now?"
- - -
While Cas is scowling at the incoming flight list and the notice next to his mother's own flight number that keeps flashing delayed, Chuck is frantically searching for the bride and groom, who seem to have vanished. When one of the caterers points to a white dot on the edge of the park getting into a taxi cab, he books it for curb, watching with anguish as Dean shuts the door to a cab and waves goodbye.
"Did you just put the bride in a cab?"
"Mmhm?"
"Why?"
"Today just isn't our day."
"Really? Because I'm pretty sure it's been 'your day' for like two fucking months now. Fuck. Cas is going to kill me when he gets back."
"Cas. He's not here?"
"No you dumbass. And if you hadn't been shoving your fiancé into a taxi cab, you might have picked up on that little fact."
"Where is he?"
"He went to pick up his mom at the airport, okay? Because he promised or whatever. I don't know they have a special bond or something it's weird and it might be Oedipal but I don't ask those questions because he's my boss."
"Okay, I'm going to ignore half of that and ask you when her flight gets in."
"Noon."
"Great." And then Dean takes off running down the sidewalk, yelling for a taxi.
"Okay then! I'll just let everyone know that you're not getting married today! It's not a big deal!" He's shaking when he calls Becky to come and help. And because she's always been braver than him, always been an unstoppable force of pure will and drive, she comes, hauling herself out of her tiny car and calming him down with quiet kisses and promises that it will all work out. And Chuck believes her. He desperately wants to believe that she's not just talking about the wedding, but about Dean finding Cas, too. Because he knows she'd really like to be right about that.
- - -
At 12:36, Dean arrives at the airport, wondering if every decision he's made in the past hour is either going to be worth it all, or backfire and blow up in his face. He looks like a fucking idiot running through the airport in a tuxedo, muttering Cas's name and trying to figure out where he might be. Of course he has no idea where Cas's mother is from, or where she'll be or what gate, but he has to give a silent thanks to the steel-like quality of airport security the minute he sees that ugly-ass trench coat that you could only wear in the middle of the summer in San Francisco. He sees that familiar, uptight way that Cas stands and nearly chokes on his own happiness.
"Cas!"
And then the idiot turns around, face wearing the expression of someone who is about to do something they might really, really regret. And Dean is so fucking happy to see him that he grabs him and kisses that expression right off of his face.
Cas starts a little, sorting through the thoughts in his head, half of which are exploding with joy, the other wondering how many ways he could tear Dean Winchester into a million fucking pieces.
But he goes with it, because for once he feels like he just has to trust someone long enough to hear what they have to say - to really say. And he grips Dean's face in his hands and kisses back with renewed fervor, thanking whatever God for small miracles and laughing the whole time.
"I will murder you, I swear-"
"The wedding's off."
"Obviously. Where's Anna?"
"Home. Packing. She's going to Chile, I think. Or Italy. Or Russia. Fuck, I don't know. She's going backpacking and bike riding and she's going to ride horses on the beach and make love to strangers and just live her fucking life, you know? I don't know, that's what she told me."
"And...and that's it? That's-"
Cas. I think I might be in love with you. And I'm not entirely sure what that means for me right now, but I do know that I'm thirty-five and I want to be with someone because I love them, not because I'm used to them. Or because they're comfortable, okay? I mean, I am so uncomfortable around you it's not even funny. You make me want to tear every hair in my head out, you know? And that's okay. I want that. I want something else. I want you."
Cas nods, again and again, kissing him again and wondering why it took him this fucking long to find someone worth throwing every last inhibition out the window for.
"You will hate me. I swear, you will. I'm obsessive compulsive to a sickening degree and I watch C-SPAN."
"I hate C-SPAN. I hate it so fucking much."
"Well I watch it. And I'm not going to stop."
"Don't change. Never change, okay? Just don't."
"I won't." And they're kissing again, like maybe it's all just been one big joke. And when Cas's mother finally gets there, she's laughing and holding them both and smacking Dean on the back of the head and wondering who's going to buy her a fucking drink because those bottles on the plane are a joke.
And they're in the cab when Cas remembers that he left Chuck in charge. "Shit." he mutters. "We have to go to the park. Chuck's going to be a wreck. He's-"
"Hey," Dean says. "He's going to be fine." Leaning back, he smiles, placing his hands on the back of his head and grinning. "Let's bring the drinks to him, yeah?"
And Cas is so completely and utterly wrecked by this man that he kisses with zero inhibition while his mother naps in the front seat of the cab, tongue heavy with all the words he wants to say, all the questions and doubts that he knows he will have, but will be unafraid to speak. They press their foreheads together and stay quiet and still for a long time. Cas thinks that, maybe, that's how the rest of his life will be, if he has Dean. Quiet and perfect and still. And he won't kid himself into thinking that everything is about to change and that things will go up and down and that he'll want to break things and take it all back -
but for now, things can be that way. Quiet, and still.
Epilogue
In July, Becky had her baby. And even though Chuck had insisted on painting the nursery blue and Cas's mother held a quarter tied to a hemp string over her belly and proclaimed it would be a boy, Becky had a girl and Chuck wasn't even angry about it. Cas watched him hold the squirming bundle in his arms and cry. He watched Dean and his mother each take their turn and when it came to him, she gripped one of his fingers and squeeze and cried until the nurse handed her back to her mother. Becky whispered to her and she grew very quiet.
"Anna wanted, like, a different number of kids every year," Dean said one day as they left the hospital. "Like, for eleven years we danced around and dated and didn't date and did whatever. And she could never pick. Even when we were engaged. She couldn't decide."
"I like kids."
"You?"
"I always have."
"Great. We'll get a dog."
"Let's get dinner instead."
"I like that plan."
They stopped at Crowley's. And even though he told Cas he wouldn't give him a discount, he gave them the wine for free anyway, winking at Dean the entire time.
In the fall, they went back East for Marie's birthday. She let Gabriel plan it and the pasta salad was terrible, but everyone agreed that the steak was delicious. Sam was invited and Ruby was pleasant enough that even Marie liked her, a friendship which Dean did not approve of.
Anna sent postcards, but it was a long time before they saw her again. When she did get home, she held Cas for a long time and told him that if he didn't take care of Dean, she'd take care of him. Dean had to wonder why every person he fell in love with was secretly homicidal.
In the end, Becky and Chuck named the girl Hope. And when she was ready to go home, Dean and Cas drove the little family to the outside of the city. They split a bottle of wine while Hope dozed in Becky's arms and Chuck read his manuscript, which turned out to not be about Cas at all, but Chuck's indelible and unshakable belief in love.
And if ever there was a happy ending that Cas was happy to be a part of, it was this one, sitting under the blanket of midnight, watching Dean uncork another bottle of wine and Becky kiss Chuck long and slow as the sky started falling, a shower of stars that Cas silently pretended was made just for them.
rated nc-17 - dean/castiel, dean/anna, becky/chuck, sam/ruby - supernatural fic
And Cas wants to believe that this is the way it can be.
note: 21,904 words (both parts)
Cas has never understood chair covers, among other things. Of course, from the start he's never understood weddings or marriage or the entire system, so it's always been a wonder that he's lasted this long in the business anyway. He's pretty sure it goes back to that happiness thing, but as he watches Dean run his hand over bolts of fabric, he remembers that it might be this wedding that ruins him.
While Dean is distracted, Cas quickly gives one of the employees their order. "How about red?"
"I took care of it."
"Oh come on. You didn't even give me the chance to change your mind."
"I'd like to keep my head, thank you very much."
"I know how to pick 'em. Hey, check it out! They cover couches! I need to get the ones in my waiting room fixed." Dean flits over to a section of the store and starts asking one of the employees a slew of impromptu questions while Cas checks his list.
He's thinking about flowers when a voice sounds very loudly near him. He's thinking about the list as he recognizes that voice. He's thinking about running like hell as the voice realizes that Cas is standing in the middle of a fabric show room, trying very hard to will the ground to swallow him whole.
"Well, well. Look what the dogs dragged in from outside."
There comes a point in life when a person has to hide from the past, or turn around and face it. Cas would give anything for that day to not be today, but he's clutching Anna's list in his hand and he can't leave without Dean and he's feeling just the tiniest bit masochistic today, so he turns around.
"Zacharia."
"Jesus Christ. They still let you work in this town?" Zach laughs and shifts his briefcase from one hand to another. It's so fucking tacky and he's had it for as long as Cas can remember, but it's made of real alligator skin and there's something about man that carries something like that around that scares the hell out of him. "I would have thought-"
"I have my own business," Cas tries to say, but his voice in tiny and raw and not quite real in his own throat. He wants to vomit. Zacharia makes him sick, makes him remember things he wants to forget.
"Well, I guess since no one actually knew-"
"Is there a problem here?" Dean steps in at the perfect moment. He looks so stupid standing there in his scrubs and clogs with the fucking blue booties over them and his hospital ID still clipped to his shirt. Cas wants to kiss the obnoxious, I-mean-business look right off his face and then some, but he stays still. "Dean Winchester," he says, offering Zach a hand. "Castiel's current employer."
"Fascinating." Zacharia turns back to Cas. "You never learn, do you? You think this will end any better than the last time? Or the time before that?"
"That was a long time ago. I think we both know things have changed."
"Right. Well! I have a bar mitzvah to finish planning. I'm sure your wedding will turn out splendidly. Castiel is, for all his flaws, a very talented man. But, maybe you already know that, ah, Doctor Winchester." He walks away, leaving Castiel flustered and red in the face and Dean a bit open mouthed and confused.
"That was the most obnoxiously vague encounter of my entire life." He pauses, looking down and then back at Cas. "Come on. I'm buying you a drink."
- - -
Flashback. Of sorts. Cas always neglects to mention the year of his life he spent working for Luke Forrester, San Francisco's big-deal event planner. Luke was brilliant, and what Cas didn't learn from his mother, he learned from this guy. He was a freight train of productivity and for a year and almost four months, Cas learned how to plan under eight thousand kinds of stress. He worked with the best. He planned for the best. And then Luke wanted to make him a partner, and everything was going fine.
And then he met Meg.
It wasn't Meg who was the problem, really. She was just a ridiculous encouragement. She hired Luke to plan her brother's wedding, the wedding she knew was a sham, but didn't have it in her to say a word about. Cas met her brother. And he fell pretty fucking hard. And all the while there was Meg, who didn't know how to tell everyone that her brother was hiding in his own skin, but here was this other man who could do it for her. Cas was never sure how Zacharia found out. He had always been disgustingly secretive. But he knew, and he gave Cas an ultimatum: leave the group, or have Luke find out that one of his biggest weddings of the year had been called off because his star planner fucked the groom.
Cas left because he was ashamed. Zach became a partner. And when Luke left for New York, he got the group, too.
It took Cas a long time to get a lot of things back, but in the end, he was pretty sure he'd moved beyond it all. By his fifth drink, he knows that that isn't true.
They're sitting in Cas's kitchen, because Dean wasn't going to let him get shit faced in a bar, he decided, and being able to crash in your own bed is like heaven. He's silently sipping on one of the beers he bought, watching Cas robotically relive the most shameful memory he has and then down his glass of vodka.
"So that's it."
"That's it."
"That Zacharia guy's a dick." Cas nods. "I get it though, why you quit."
"I couldn't have Luke know. He trusted me and I...I failed. Miserably."
"You messed up. You didn't fail. You were just...human."
"I couldn't afford to be human. I should have...I should have just stayed away. But Meg. Jesus Christ, she was relentless."
"She sounds like a bitch."
"She just didn't know what else to do."
"That's dumb. And you're drunk and you think it wasn't. You still blame yourself."
"So? I fucked up. Astronomically."
"Right. But you didn't do it again."
"Dean, I don't think you realize how dangerously close I come to fucking up every time I'm near you."
They both grow very quiet and there's a wire in the air that snaps. Dean clears his throat and stares at the counter. Cas wants to die. He crunches ice because there's nothing else to do and it's too silent. Dean finally looks up.
"I, uh, I've never told Anna's family that I, you know, uh...I play for both teams. Anna has a brother. And like you may think that her family's cool with this whole nondenominational thing, but they're not. At all. I mean, like, Catholic like you would not believe. And I don't know, her brother. He came out to the family and they lost their fucking shit over it. I don't know what they'd do about me."
"You're marrying their daughter."
"You don't think I have doubts? Ever? I do. All the time. Am I doing this because I need to hide? Because I feel like I should be hiding? Should I hide at all? I love Anna. I mean, I really love her. But, sometimes, it feels like it's this weird different kind of love."
"Dean."
"And sometimes I think, am I just marrying her because we've been dating since we were twenty and I think that that might be it, but that can't be the only reason, right?"
"Dean. You really need to stop telling me these things."
"Why?"
"Because I am your wedding planner."
"Yeah?" Dean goes around the counter and sits on the bar stood opposite Cas. "Well you're also the guy who walked in front of a taxi cab and bought me dinner and watched the fucking sky fall with me." His hands are on Cas's knees now and Cas knows Dean's not nearly drunk enough to do what Cas wishes he would do. He's not drunk enough, but he does it anyway. Clumsy and half-shamed, Cas kisses back, his hands gripping the back of Dean's neck like a vise, pulling him closer, trying to taste more, feel more - all of it, just there and for him. He thinks of Anna once. It's a sick thought and it makes his stomach turn, but Dean stops him.
"Just don't. Don't think about it. I'll fix it. All of it, I'll fix it I promise." Cas nods over and over as Dean tilts his head to the side and trails teeth and tongue down his neck. He grabs Dean by the sleeves of his scrubs and half-drags him back to his bedroom, pushing him onto the mattress like a man possessed. Dean smiles sheepishly. "Easy," he mutters. "It's okay. I'm here. It's okay." But Cas needs him to be quiet. No more words, no more noises except the ones he can pull from Dean's throat every time he palms the erection that is so glaringly obvious in his pants. Dean groans into Cas's neck, fighting with his shirt and tie. "I...I haven't done...this in a - fuck - while." Cas keeps nodding and kisses him again to keep him from talking.
Dean gets the picture and stops talking, stripping off his scrubs with ease as Cas struggles with the lube and a condom from his bedside table. They don't say anything at all as Cas covers his fingers and slowly presses one into Dean, pulling a whimper from his throat. He waits, moves again, then pushes in another. By the time he has three inside, Dean is trembling, head tossed back. Cas can't help himself as he moves forward and drags his teeth along the bared skin of his neck. Carefully, he pulls his fingers away and rolls the condom down his cock, feeling the pressure of want and need as he rubs the lube on and tosses it aside, appreciating the subtle cant upward of Dean's hips. In one swift move, he sinks in, hands pressed hard on Dean's chest as he moves slowly, adjusting to the tightness and drowning in heat and the noises he can steal.
Because it's stealing, really. He's a thief and this isn't his and he can't stop taking it. He knows Dean's letting him have it, but Anna doesn't know and her family can't know and there's no way he can ever tell anyone he knows at all.
Dean pushes toward him, reaching for his own cock and stroking slowly while Cas keep pushing, in and out, again and again. He's almost there, almost there, almost there when he feels Dean's body jerk and hears a shout and an almost too quiet, "There, fuck yes, right there," and Cas knows he's got it. He hits that spot again until Dean comes, teeth gritted and eyes shut tight. Cas follows, his last thrusts sloppy and desperate. He collapses next to Dean and, for a while, they stare at the ceiling, not touching or speaking. Dean opens his mouth several times, like he's about to confess or apologize or something, but stops himself. Cas is grateful.
"Anna," he finally says. "I...I need to get home. It's late."
"She'll wonder."
"Rounds. It's always rounds," he mutters, pushing himself out of the bed and fumbling for his clothes. Cas sits up, exposed and unsure.
He feels utterly wrecked.
But, then again, he asked for this.
Silently, he watches Dean go, nodding when he makes his excuses. Because he understands and this will end the way it always does. But Cas won't let it stop the future this time. He'll hold out that he and Dean are just sparks flying in the friction and that, when the metal stops running, it'll fade.
- - -
There's no sign of Dean until, one afternoon, Cas is sitting at Crowley's, listening to him bitch about a waitress stealing from the registers when he gets a text. Cas doesn't like texting, but he tolerates them. He ignores this one, though, like he does with most things when he's with Crowley, and waits until he gets back to his office, frowning at his phone as he loosens his tie.
text from: dean winchester at 11:43 AM
anna wants to pick out flowers today. also i'm sorry.
The phone buzzes again.
text from: dean winchester at 1:01 PM
my brother is in town.
It's strange how this sounds more like a warning than the statement Cas thinks it's intended to be. He reads the line, trying to find some other meaning behind it. Why so brief? Why after the apology? Why any apology at all? Weren't they both a part of what had happened? He sits down, spreading out his notes and starting to call the florist when Chuck knocks on his door.
"Chuck. I'm busy."
"I know. But there's a sasquatch in your waiting room."
"I'm sorry?"
"A sasquatch. In your waiting room. Said he knows Anna." Cas raises an eyebrow and gets up, following Chuck out into the lobby and trying to understand exactly what he means. In about five seconds, he does.
Sam Winchester is huge. Cas is tall, and he knows Dean is tall, but this was not what he was expecting.
Sasquatch, indeed.
"Hi," is all he says, grinning and extending his only free hand while his other holds onto the Blackberry that Cas knows is probably fused to the skin. "You're...Castiel?"
"You must be Sam."
"Dean warned you, huh?"
"You could say that." Sam laughs and finally puts his phone into his pocket, leaning back a little and shaking his head.
"I wasn't supposed to get here until week after next, before the wedding, but Dean called, said he needed me here, so. Duty calls, I guess." Cas nods, well aware that the wedding date is fast approaching. "Anyway, I was wondering if, uh, I could talk to you? In your office?"
"Yes, of course. That's fine. Chuck, memos."
"Mmhm." Chuck is already at his desk, bored with the exchange between the two and texting Becky. Cas leads Sam into his office and shuts the door. "Have a seat."
"Great thanks." The entire room is too small compared to Sam, but he has this thing about him that makes him fit anywhere, like he came with the furniture when Cas bought it. Sitting across from him, Cas has to admire the fact that he seems a bit too nice to be a lawyer. He'd expected a more ruthless version of Dean, but what he finds is quite different.
"Something you wanted to talk about?"
"Yeah, uh, are you trying to fuck up my brother's marriage? Or are you actually in love with him?"
Cas balks, freezing before he can even sit in his chair. Sam doesn't look angry, but instead oddly calm, as though this was something he'd ask anyone. His head is tilted slightly to the right and Cas swears he sees the ghost of a smile there, like this is funny and Cas is some sort of joke.
"I...I, uh..."
"I mean, I'll get it if you do love him. But, like, why now?"
"Sam, I-"
"Dean doesn't doubt. Not himself, not what he's feeling, not what he thinks is right. Nothing. And then you come along and now he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And I know I should be really fucking mad, but you're the first person who has really ever made Dean ask why he's doing something." Sam shakes his head. "Marrying Anna is a terrible idea."
"Don't tell me that," Cas snaps, beginning a furious pacing by the door. "Don't even tell me that. No. No. I have poured my sweat and blood into this wedding. You can't...you can't-"
"It's true. He's marrying her because he thinks it's what he's supposed to do. They've been together since college! He has this warped, fucked up sense of obligation to her and everyone around him." Sam stands and stares at Cas with eyes that remind him frighteningly of a small animal's. "Look, I don't know how you really feel about my brother, but if you felt something strong enough to...to, you know..." Cas looks away and Sam groans. "Just hear me out, okay?"
"Sam. I made a mistake. I...Why am I telling you this?"
"I listen to excuses for a living. People tend to spill everything around me."
"Excuses? I..." Cas trails off. Because everything really is just an excuse at this point. And a bad one, at that. Cas can't say if he's in love with Dean, because he doesn't admit to things like that. Ever. Not like this, not this soon. He starts pacing and looking at Anna's list and thinking about Anna and how they just clicked and how excited she's been and how they're picking out flowers in-
Cas's cell phone buzzes and, of course, it's Anna. He shakes off what he's feeling for a minute and composes himself.
"Flowers?" he answers, feeling suddenly lighter at the prospect of hearing Anna's voice on the other end. Even though he seems to be ruining her marriage from the inside out, there's still a part of Cas wants to see Anna's wedding to its conclusion.
"It would seem so," she says, sounding a bit deflated. Cas swallows, wondering if it's at all possible if she knows. "I'll meet you there in thirty? Dean said you have Sam."
"I do, yes."
"Bring him. I haven't seen my future brother-in-law in almost a year." She laughs then, and Cas feels better when he hangs up, turning to Sam with a small smile.
"Anna wants to see you." Sam just laughs and stands, clapping a hand on Cas's shoulder and shaking his head.
"Man, you are ten kinds of fucked."
Cas has to agree.
- - -
Anna is nowhere to be found when they get to the florists, so Cas sends Sam into the greenhouse to look for her while he heads into the back to find the female attendant he always works with, but whose name consistently escapes him. Something with a "J." He racking he brain trying to remember when he bumps headlong into Anna.
"Sam's in the greenhouse, he's...Anna. Are you alright?" She looks at him now, eyes rimmed red from crying, and nods. But it's a shaky, slightly psychotic sort of nod that Cas has seen a hundred thousand times before on women just as strong as Anna. "Come here." Disregarding the employees only sign on the break room, he pulls her in and shuts the door, sitting her on a flimsy metal folding chair across from him and snagging a handful of paper towels from the dispenser behind him. "Spill it."
Cas has done this before. Pep talks and therapy sessions. He talked a woman out of killing herself two years ago, but he's pretty sure Anna's nowhere close enough to coming that undone that quickly. She blows her nose and shakes her head.
"It's Dean. He's just...he's been weird for like a week now, and I don't have any fucking clue why. I bring up wedding stuff and he just brushes it off. He wants to talk about what we're feeling or whatever, like we just fucking met or something. He's always asking me if I remember different dates we went on, or if I remember our first Christmas together or whatever. And then he asks me these questions and it's like...like I start asking them to myself later, when I'm alone. And then I wonder if I'm just doing this because...because it's only been Dean since I was nineteen, I've never been with anyone else. Not in any official capacity." She groans and holds her face in her hands, shaking her head over and over. "I'm so fucking confused."
Cas leans forward. As much as he knows he's the wrench that's been tossed into the spokes of her future marriage, Cas also knows that, right now, he has to pretend he isn't the man who fucked her fiancé and that he isn't the man who may or may not be in love with Dean Winchester. May or may not have been in love with him since they say on the hood of a car and watched the stars. He pretends, for a moment, that he is none of these. And he holds Anna's face in one of his hands and smiles.
"You love him." A statement. Not a question. But something behind Anna's eyes falters and she stares at him for far too long for Cas to be comfortable. "Anna..."
"I...I don't know anymore."
The door swings open and a strung-out college student in a dirty green apron scowls at them.
"Employees only guys."
"We were just leaving," Cas says quickly, guiding Anna out by the elbow. "Clean up. Breathe. I'll be in the greenhouse looking at lilies with Sam."
"Okay," she murmurs. "Okay. I'm okay."
"Yes. You are." Cas pulls her close to him and presses a rare kiss to her forehead. He wants that tiny bit of pressure to hold every apology he could ever give her. To beg her forgiveness and hold the promise that he will see this to the end.
- - -
The last two weeks before a wedding are usually Cas's most productive. He spends larger quantities of time at the actual site, arranging and rearranging things in his head, revisiting every florist, baker, and musician he's spoken two in the planning process, and calming the bride down.
But since the episode in the greenhouse, Anna hasn't said a thing about her doubts. And in fact, every time Cas sees her with Dean, they were ridiculously happy, smiling and touching one another and whispering. Sometimes, Dean catches his eye and Cas will look away, because Anna is happy and that's what he wants. It isn't what he wants most anymore, but it's at least one thing, and if he gets that, then everything else should fall away.
Shouldn't it?
Because as much as Cas is dedicated to this wedding, there is a part of him that consistently returns to that night. And he feels the sweat cling to his skin like it was yesterday and he can hear Dean and feel the want rippling through both their bodies and everything fits and is right. And he doesn't ever want to forget it.
He wants to feel it again. And again, and again, and again and he never wants to be without it.
But the person he wants is marrying a woman he cares about and he won't be that thing that comes between two people again. He just won't.
Sam doesn't say anything else, just shuffles around behind his brother, texting his own wife, a small woman Cas has seen numerous photos of named Ruby. He despises the park that Anna has chosen to have their ceremony in, and apparently Ruby finds the idea of holding the reception there as well a bit tactless. Cas politely reminds him that, as lovely as Ruby may be, she is not, in fact planning the wedding. Cas is.
"Is 'fuck the groom' on your list?" Sam snaps back one evening while they are alone at a dinner table together and Dean and Anna are dancing to a nauseatingly romantic slow-song. Sam does not take shots at his wife lightly and usually retaliates this way when Cas inadvertently insults her. It's only the hundredth time it's happened, so he's not all that take aback by it this time around.
"It's a sublist, top secret," he drawls back, annoyed with Sam's near-permanent pissy attitude. He's had enough to drink to make him irritable and Sam's most recent attack is enough to make him want to get up and just get a cab home and be done with it all. But Anna insisted he come to dinner with them, mainly because Ruby was supposed to fly in that night, but was delayed by rain in, of all places, Arizona, where a lightening storm coupled with 122 degree temperatures grounded her plane in Phoenix. Cas's latest subtle jab at Ruby, coupled with her non-arrival, makes Sam nearly impossible to now sit with. Cas downs the last of his beer and doesn't bother telling Sam he'll be in the restroom, namely because Sam is furiously texting Ruby, probably telling her every last fucking detail about how Cas is slowly trying to ruin everyone's life.
He's a paranoid drunk, too.
The bathroom has a long wall of urinals and two stalls on the end. Naturally, the only other person there is Dean, and he staring at Cas like maybe, if he looks hard enough, Cas will vanish.
"What?" he snaps, watching Dean with narrowed, foggy eyes.
"Fuck it," Dean mutters, and he grabs Cas by the shirt and shoves him into a stall at the end of the row, locking the door behind. Cas is miles ahead, shoving Dean against the stall door and half-biting an angry kiss in his mouth, hands scrambling with his belt. "You have fucked everything up," Dean spits, snagging the upper hand as Cas gets distracted with his belt buckle. "Do you know that?"
"Shut. Up." Cas kisses him again, sucking the words from his mouth, leaving a lazy trail across his lips with his tongue. The music from the restaurant is a constant presence in Cas's ears, and he is distantly aware of someone entering the bathroom, talking loudly on a cell phone. He rolls Dean's tie up in his hands and shoves it as indelicately as he possibly can in his mouth and dropping to his knees. He's wanted to do this for so fucking long, it's been driving him insane. Dean hisses when Cas pulls his cock from under his boxer shorts, immediately wrapping his mouth around the tip and moving slowly down. He feels fingers dig into his hair and hears the far-away sound of the thud of Dean's fist against the stall.
Cas knows that this should feel wrong. That he should feel like completely and utter shit for everything is doing and wants to do. His mind is completely depraved at this point, thinking of all the ways he could ravage Dean and be ravaged right back. He nearly comes himself just thinking about it, but manages to concentrate. Dean is breathing heavily through his tie, sounding completely wrecked. Cas moves faster, sucking harder before moving back down, tightening his grip on Dean's thighs. When Dean comes, it's with a sharp thrust forward and the tie falls from his mouth, letting loose a sharp cry with Cas's name suddenly in the air as Cas swallows thickly.
Cas wants that name to go away, because it makes it harder, now, to clean himself up. He nearly cries when he sees the knees of his pants are still fairly clean, nothing the dark of the restaurant wont' cover up, but he has no idea how he and Dean will get back to the table.
"Go back," Dean says, shoving his tie into his pocket and pulling out his phone. "I'll take care of it." Cas hesitates before leaving the stall, glancing quickly back before getting a gentle push from Dean. "Go. I got this." Nodding, he exits the bathroom, realizing how unbelievable lucky they are that no one noticed or said a thing. At the table, Sam is still brooding over his phone and Anna is ordering another round of beers.
"Was Dean in the bathroom with you?" she asks. Sam's head snaps up.
"I haven't seen him since you two went off to dance."
"Weird," Sam says, lips quirking into a wicked smile. The smile doesn't falter a bit when Dean comes to the table, phone pressed to his ear, nodding.
"Everything okay?"
"Some kid tried to eat a balloon. The ER doc got him, he's just a patient of mine." He takes a seat next to Anna and kisses her temple, pointedly not looking at Cas. Sam goes back to his phone, but he stops periodically to look between Cas and Dean and shake his head. "Hey, dude, could you put that thing away for five minutes, okay? She's still in Phoenix, she's not going anywhere."
"She should be going somewhere, namely your wedding."
"That's a week away."
"She's here to be supportive." Dean's mouth is turned down in a quiet, subtle snarl, but he says nothing, choosing, instead, to drink his beer, arm around Anna's shoulder. Cas refuses to drink anymore and, after a while, decides he's had about enough.
"You sure? We'll give you a ride home."
"I want to stop by my office, it's just up the street. I'll get a cab."
"Well...okay." Anna stands and wraps him in a quick hug. "Well go over the seating chart on Monday, okay? Take the weekend off. Seriously, Cas," she says, when he opens his mouth to protest. "Take a break. You're stretched thin, I can tell. Relax this weekend and we'll get back into it on Monday." Cas nods and breaks away from the group. He can feel Dean's eyes on his retreating back, reminding him of what a terrible fucking excuse for a human being he is.
- - -
When he leaves the restaurant, Cas realizes that the only place in the world he'd like to be right then is home.
And not his house or this city, but home.
The only person he wants to talk to is his fucking mother. And something about that single thought makes something break inside of him. He walks blindly to his office, unlocked the door and goes straight for his desk. Before he knows it, his fingers are fumbling with his cell phone and he's collapsed in his office chair, something Becky picked out that has always been more comfortable than any bed or couch. The phone rings once. Twice. On the third ring, his mother's voice hits his ears and he nearly sobs with relief.
"Cas, what in the hell are you doing?"
"Hey...hey mom."
"Honey, you sound completely wrecked. Are you drunk? You're drunk, aren't you? Look, just-"
"Mother, I'm not drunk."
"It's okay if you are. I probably am."
"I know. It's okay. I love you, you know that?"
"How much did you drink, exactly?"
"Mom, I'm serious." She pauses and Cas wonders how fucking crazy she thinks he is.
"Cas," she says gently, her voice nearly breaking his heart. "Honey, are you okay? What's wrong?"
And then it all comes tumbling out, everything that he's been feeling and everything that he wishes he hadn't done and things he didn't even know he was feeling before. And she listens, doesn't make a sound as he takes in shaky breaths and tries to keep talking. But his voice gives out and after a while it's just the noise of his breathing, hard and ragged. He becomes aware of her voice, soothing and slow, calming him down. There is a memory of her hand on his back, rubbing in smooth, concentric circles as he breathes through a panic attack or another fight with his father.
"If you love him, you should just say something, honey."
"Mother, he's getting married."
"Castiel," she says sharply. He sits up straight. "You got yourself into this mess. You kissed him and you let him into your bed. You have to fix it." He nods and even though she can't see him, she knows. "Good. I know you'll do what's right, baby. Now get some sleep and call me when you've set things straight, understand."
"Okay." Then, "Love you."
"Love you more."
- - -
Cas spends the weekend sleeping, having lunch with Becky, and stealing wine from Crowley, who listens to him bemoan his current situation and then tells him to do exactly what his mother told him. Becky is a bit nicer.
But only a bit.
"I mean, I'm sorry, hon, but you fucked up."
"Thank you."
"Look," she says, coating her hamburger bun with strawberry jam shamelessly and calmly. Their waiter raises an eyebrow as he sets Cas's glass of wine down on the table. "You fucked. Twice. Sort of. And, like, obviously both those moments mean something to you. But you can't pretend they mean the same thing to him."
"We've never talked about it."
"Your communication skills. I want them."
"Get to the point." Becky stops spreading the jam and sets her knife down pointedly.
"What I'm saying is this. To you, he might be the love of your life, meant to be forever, wander into the sunset and ride off a cliff into oblivion or whatever. But to him, you could just be stress relief, something different from Anna. And if he's getting married, he's not allowed to, you know, do other people anymore. Not technically. He's not supposed to do this now, but hell, who needs rules, right?" She takes a large bite of the burger, mustard and jam dropping onto the plate.
"One, you're disgusting. And two..." Cas trails off.
"You know I'm probably right."
"I don't want you to be right."
"Well, that's your problem then. I mean, you don't know anything about what he's feeling because you won't talk about it. Mostly because you're an introverted moron who thinks that a look into your psyche is a privilege reserved for like an elite club or something." Becky dips her fries in mayo and shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe you should just go talk to him."
"Maybe."
"The wedding is in, like, a week. You are going to be so fucking busy that if he says you were just an easy lay or whatever, you won't have time to look at his stupid ugly face for more than five seconds."
"He's not ugly."
"Oh I know." She giggles. "Chuck is insanely jealous, though not as jealous as he is of his brother who is, and I quote 'a sasquatch or something.'"
"Sam is very tall."
"And sexy, from what I can gather." Cas shrugs and Becky loses herself in another fit of laughter, stopping only to scold her unborn child for kicking. "When I laugh, she loses her shit."
"When you have a son, I am going to give Chuck a raise for suffering through your nine month denial episode."
He narrowly misses a french fry Becky lobs at his head, but at the end of the day, he feels better.
- - -
Becky's right. The last week before the wedding, Cas hardly has any time to see Dean at all. Anna stops working for an entire week to dedicate herself to checking and rechecking the seating, but there is a bit of her that isn't really in it. Cas catches her staring at flowers without really seeing them. She goes off to have long conversations with people Cas doesn't know and comes back crying most of the time. When Dean is around, they fight. The wedding is Saturday. By Thursday night, nothing is okay.
"I'm leaving," she snaps after an entire morning and afternoon of bickering with Dean over wine choices which escalates into a fight about colors which evolves into another fight about the cost. In the end, Cas hears a rather loud smack and Anna is gathering her things and leaving Cas's office in a huff. Dean doesn't go after her, choosing to stay seating and watch her retreating back with sad, tired eyes. Cas pretends he can't see.
"She doesn't love me."
"Sorry?"
"I said, she doesn't love me. Not anymore. Not like she used to."
"Please, stop saying these things, alright? Your wedding is in two days, Dean."
"I wish it wasn't this big. I wish we'd just done something small. It'd...it'd make it easier."
"Make what easier?"
"Nothing," Dean mutters, trying to brush it off.
"Dean. What are you going to do?" Dean stands, folding his arms over his chest and staring Cas down.
"I can't go through with this."
"What?!" Cas throws everything he has onto the ground and grabs Dean by the shirt, shoving him against the wall. "Would you mind repeating yourself, please?"
"I said that I can't do this."
"That's what I thought you said." In one swift move, Cas lands a punch straight into Dean's stomach, sending him folding into himself, gasping for breath.
"What the fuck, Cas?"
"Look, I made be...a colossal idiot. And I might even be in love with you. But I swear, the only thing I want to happen on Saturday is for you to get married."
"Cas-"
"Because Anna deserves this. She deserves to be happy. And so do you. Now I'm sorry that I came into your life and I did what I did because fucking things up is just something I'm good at and I'm sorry. But I make things beautiful, too. Anna came to me with an idea and I just wanted to make that idea real. And if you leave her, if you abandon her at that altar, you are never going to forgive yourself and I am never going to be able to live the rest of my life without knowing that, if I could, I would throttle you and throw your body into the bay and not think twice about it. Because if you leave her on Saturday, that is what I will do."
Dean is very quiet and Cas is shaking. A car alarm starts going off outside, but after a while, it just fades into the background. Dean clears his throat.
"You, uh...you love me?"
"I honestly don't know."
"You feel something then."
"I feel a lot of things," Cas says, frustrated. "And I want them all to just go away and leave me be so I can plan this wedding and pretend you were never a part of my life."
"That's what you want?"
"No, but it's for the best." Dean steps closer, a small smile playing over his lips.
"What do you want?"
"Honestly?" Dean nods. "I want you. And I don't want you to get married and I want us to live in a different world where this wasn't a problem." Cas looks at his shoes. "But...but mostly, I just don't want to leave behind a mess. Again."
"If you could have me-"
"Dean, stop."
"Cas, if you could...if...if I weren't getting married, would you take me?"
"In a heartbeat," Cas murmurs, breathless as Dean steps closer. He's kissing him again, and he knows he shouldn't be, but he figures if it's gone this far, it might as well go a bit further.
"I'll leave Anna, I'll-"
"Dean, you-"
"And we'll go somewhere else, we'll-"
"She loves you, she-"
"Fuck, Cas-" Dean presses him into the desk, tugging at his belt and his pants, shoving things from the desk onto the floor.
And Cas would say something, but there is a part of him that wants to savor the feel of Dean's teeth on his shoulder and the way his presses one, two fingers inside him coated with bad, discount lotion Cas bought at Costco two years ago. He wants to remember the way it all feels and what it does to him as Dean's hips thrust sharply forward and he falls apart beneath him, aware that everything Dean is giving him can not and will not ever belong to him.
The last thing he thinks, as Dean comes and collapses with a groan, is that his mother, of all people, would be obscenely disappointed in him.
- - -
Friday arrives. Cas is reminded of the calm before the storm, the deadly peace and silence before the violence sets in. Anna is all smiles on Friday, assuring Cas that Dean is out of the planning picture for the last twenty-four hours, as he has office all day and told Anna that it was probably best if he just wasn't around while she and Cas finished up. Cas has to agree.
He doesn't tell Becky what happened, mostly because he's busy planning the rehearsal dinner that he almost forgot about, but had to pretend that he knew was happening the entire time. Anna buys it. It's a small affair, and it marks the first time that Cas actually will get to meet Ruby, something he's wanted to do for a while. Sam comes to the office to help him coordinate things with the caterer for the dinner and tells him that Ruby's had a migraine since she got into town, but it's probably just a side effect of being within a sixty mile radius of Dean.
"They don't get along?"
"Yeah, something like that. Chicken or tilapia?"
"Chicken, but add also check the box next to that tofu thing. Anna's maid of honor is vegan."
"What about steak?"
"Chicken, Sam. You can have you red mean fix tomorrow night."
"Cas." Chuck knocks on the door, looking entirely put out.
"I'm busy."
"Your mother is on the phone."
"Did I hire you yesterday? For the love of God, Chuck, take a fucking message."
"She's buying a plane ticket to San Francisco."
"Put her through."
Cas picks up the phone when it begins flashing, not sure what he's going to say.
"Mother. Whatever you're doing, stop."
"The man you're in love with is getting married on Saturday. I am coming to that God-forsaken city and we are going on a bender to end all benders."
"That is the worst idea I've ever heard."
"Well I already bought my ticket."
"What?!" Sam looks up from the order form.
"I'll be there at noon."
"The wedding is at noon."
"Then I guess you'll have to leave Chuck in charge, won't you?"
"Mother-"
"Castiel. This is not up for discussion. You will be at the airport to pick me up, understand."
"Yes ma'am."
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow." She hangs up and Cas swears, even the tiny click on the other end sounds smug.
"Everything okay?"
"No, but really, nothing is ever okay, is it?" Sam shrugs and hands over the order form. "You saved me, thank you."
"You coming tonight?"
"Of course."
"Everything alright between you and my brother?"
"Yes, Sam. Everything is fine." Sam nods and Cas knows that he knows that it's a lie, but he keeps moving, because Anna is calling and having a heart attack about the rehearsal and Dean still isn't done and she doesn't care if he fucking shows up in scrubs, he's coming and that's final and if Cas could call him and be polite, but firm, it would appreciated because she's still getting her hair done.
Cas calls Dean and leaves a message that, essentially, reminds him that he is, in fact, getting married and that if he'd like to show up to the rehearsal dinner he knows what where and what it is. And if doesn't, then he can just fucking forget about it.
Thankfully, he shows up. And Anna is good to her word and doesn't even mine that she practices saying "I do," with her fiancé wearing a maroon scrub top with orange bottoms, because that's all he could find that morning.
"When we move into the new place, he's getting an entire dresser for these things," Anna jokes over dinner.
"Remind why you two don't live together again?" Ruby asks, wine glass dangling loosely between her fingers.
"Just something we agreed on," Anna says, bumping Dean's shoulder with hers. After a while, she stands up, steadying herself with a hand on Dean's arm, raising her glass. "Thank you, everyone, for being here. We are more than excited to have you all be a part of a huge moment in our lives tomorrow afternoon. A moment that probably wouldn't be possible without one of the most amazing men I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Other than Dean." Cue appropriate laughter. "Cas, could you wave?" Cas complies. "Castiel has been translating my rantings and ravings for almost two months now, when Dean and I decided to throw this wedding together. Lisa-" Cas had been avoiding her the entire night, but her presence was thrown into the spotlight - "couldn't recommend him enough and I am so, so glad she did. Without him, this just wouldn't have been possible. Thank you, Cas. For everything."
Cas nods and drinks his wine, daring for a moment to meet Dean's gaze. There is a quick wink and then nothing. Ruby nudges him in the side.
"You have to be the bravest man I know to deal with them both at once."
"They're alright."
"Dean and I fight like cats and dogs, but Anna-" She shakes her head. "There's just something about her. I think it's her hair."
"Ruby, stop it," Sam warns, but his heart isn't in it. "Ruby hates redheads."
"Don't trust 'em."
"I'm sure you have your reasons."
"So you're the one who fucked Dean?"
Cas nearly spits out his wine, thankful that most of the table is listening to Anna's father tell an awkward story about horses and cow shit. Or something. Sam grimaces.
"Ruby. I told you-"
"What? I'm just asking."
"It's fine. Yes, I am."
"Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic."
"Ruby."
"Alright, alright." She leans back in her chair and then against Sam, who pries the wine glass from her hands and kisses the top of her head.
When Anna's father passes out, everyone decides that it's time to go home. Cas hasn't told Anna he won't be there tomorrow. He's not worried about it. Of course, he hasn't told Chuck that he'll be the one taking care of everything, but he's fairly certain that if anyone can take care of Anna's wedding, Chuck can.
"Need a ride? Anna and the girls are staying with Lisa tonight."
"I'll take a cab."
"Cas, come on. Let's just talk about this."
"Talk about what?"
"About...about last night."
"We fucked, Dean. Again. What else am I supposed to say?"
"You said you loved me."
"I said I might." Then, "You never said anything like that, so-"
"Cas, don't make me do this."
"You're the one who wants to talk."
"I...fine. I'll see you tomorrow."
Cas nods, extending his hand and hailing a cab, turning his back on Dean, looking only once in the cabbie's rearview mirror to see him standing at the curb, defeated and worn. He goes to bed that night, talking to his mother once more the reaffirm that their earlier conversation was not a fever dream, and he dreams about shooting stars again. He dreams about sitting in the yard next to Michael and Gabe and not hitting or teasing or tormenting and just wondering how many wishes you got when all the stars started falling from the sky.
- - -
Cas has Chuck meet him at the park at eight, just like they always do before a wedding. They go through the checklist, and Chuck makes notes and calls people and yells at the florist and then yells at the baker and then hands the phone over to Cas who yells at the baker some more until the van with the cake arrives at ten. At eleven, he hands over his clipboard and his walkie talkie and Chuck almost vomits.
"What?"
"You're in charge."
"Um, no. No and fucking no, Cas. Your mother can get a cab."
"You know that's not happening. I promised."
"So tell her you lied. You lie to me all the time."
"Chuck-"
"I can't do this."
"You can."
"No. I can't."
"Yes. You can." He presses the clipboard tighter into Chuck's hand. "I know you can. You've watched me do this a million times. If I didn't think you could do this, I'd call Becky."
"That's...Cas. Please. You don't have to see Dean, okay? I'll-"
"This isn't about Dean."
"Then what is it about?"
"It's about me promising my psychotic mother that I would pick her up at the airport and following through on that promise." He sighs. "And it's a little about Dean. Just...please, Chuck. Do this for me and you will get a raise and a half, alright?" Chuck swallows, looks at the clipboard, and then back at Cas. He nods. "Thank you. I owe you. A lot."
"You bet your fucking ass you do."
Cas grips Chuck's arm for a moment and the leaves him, deciding it best not to look back. He doesn't need to be there for the wedding. He doesn't need to see Dean say yes because, even though he wants that to happen, that want lives in constant conflict with everything else he seems to want lately, those wants mainly consisting of just Dean. He hails a cab for the airport and rests his head against the window, falling into a light sleep where he doesn't dream of anything.
- - -
While Cas is in a cab headed toward the airport, Anna is standing in a room alone, staring at a painting on the wall. It's an ugly painting, but it's real, and when she reaches out to touch it, she can almost feel the weight of the heavy brush strokes it took to bring the picture together. The paint is thick under her fingers, the colors rich to her eyes. It's an oil painting of a house in the middle of a field, and she can't stand it, but she is in love with what it's made of.
"Hey gorgeous." She wheels around.
"Dean. You can't be here."
"I know." He shuts the door and locks it behind him, walking slowly toward her and taking her hands in his. "You look fantastic."
"Well I'm glad you think so. But it's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding."
"Anna, I don't think I could get any more bad luck that I already have."
"Dean...what's wrong." He leans forward and kisses her, slowly and carefully, almost methodically, like he's trying to figure her out. "Dean-"
"Anna, we need to talk."
"Dean, no. No, you are not pulling this shit on me on our wedding day, okay? So-so just go back out there, okay?"
"Anna, listen to me! What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Why are you marrying me?"
"You asked me! You asked and I-"
"You said yes. Why? Why did you say yes?"
"Because I loved you," she snaps.
"I know. Because you loved me." He brushes a piece of hair from her face. "But you don't love me anymore, do you?"
"I-" She freezes, mouth open in protest. "I love you," she says, but the words sound weak even to her. "I...I do. Don't you? Don't you love me?"
"Anna, I have loved you since you walked into that pathetic excuse of a diner I was working in and turned everything upside down. You have been the most important woman in my life since I was twenty-four years old."
"It...it's been that long."
"Yeah. Yeah, it has."
"Oh my God," she murmurs. "I'm thirty. You're thirty-five. Dean, we've been....we've been doing this for eleven years. I mean, it hasn't...it hasn't been perfect, or anything. Not at all. But...but I always go back to you. Always. You're so...
"Usual?"
"Comfortable," Anna says, and figures that she might as well and sits on the ground in a small explosion of white fabric. Dean sits across from her, holding her hands tight in his. "When things went to hell, you were always so safe."
"It was always the same."
"It felt good."
"It still feels good. And if that's what you want, then that's okay! We can be happy, I know it. I just...you are the most amazing woman I have ever met. You are smart and shrewd and deserving of all the love in the world. If anyone doesn't deserve to be loveless, it's you. And it's not that I don't love you in some way. I just...I don't love you the way you should be loved. Baby, don't cry."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"So are you," she laughs, and Dean realizes he is. "Who did you meet?" she says quietly. She's suspected for a while and it's not like it doesn't hurt worse than anything else Dean has ever done to her over the years, it's just there's a small part of her wouldn't mind if she could chalk it all up to that. To some torrid affair that ended her marriage before it had even begun.
"Anna-"
"Did you meet someone, Dean?" He nods. "Tell me. Please. Don't sit here and tell me you can only love me one way when there's someone out there who already has every bit of your heart that I used to have. You owe me this." He stares at her hands, rubbing his thumbs across the tops of them.
"Would you believe me if I told you it was our wedding planner?"
Anna stares for a moment, watching his face to see if it's some kind of joke. When she realizes it's not, she starts to laugh. Her entire body shakes with it and she thinks she might not ever be able to stop. Because it's all too fucking strange and weird and perfect, in it's only little way. Of course her fucking wedding planner would be the one to steal her fiancé. Of course. It's the only thing that makes sense, really. Cas is the only one, she thinks. The only one.
"When he walked in front of that cab."
"The idiot had his hooks in me from the beginning."
"Do you love him?"
"I think so."
"Jesus," she breathes, closing her eyes and leaning forward, pressing her forehead to Dean's chest. "Story of my fucking life, I guess."
"Anna, I-"
"Dean. I know you're sorry. I know that. And I am, too. But that doesn't really change much."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean all the people downstairs waiting for us to walk down that aisle."
"Anna, if that's what you want-"
"Dean. I don't want to marry you. I don't. I want to go South America, is what I want to do." Dean raises an eyebrow. "What I mean is that I want to live. I want to go on our honeymoon and I don't really want to come back for a long fucking time. I want to learn another language and I want to bike around Italy and hike mountains and God, I just want to do something with myself, you know?"
"I do."
"I love you, too, I guess. In the same way you love me. But I don't think I can marry you." Dean sighs and Anna curls the upper part of her body into his lap, his body warm and familiar, just like it always has been.
"So. What do we do now?"
- - -
While Cas is scowling at the incoming flight list and the notice next to his mother's own flight number that keeps flashing delayed, Chuck is frantically searching for the bride and groom, who seem to have vanished. When one of the caterers points to a white dot on the edge of the park getting into a taxi cab, he books it for curb, watching with anguish as Dean shuts the door to a cab and waves goodbye.
"Did you just put the bride in a cab?"
"Mmhm?"
"Why?"
"Today just isn't our day."
"Really? Because I'm pretty sure it's been 'your day' for like two fucking months now. Fuck. Cas is going to kill me when he gets back."
"Cas. He's not here?"
"No you dumbass. And if you hadn't been shoving your fiancé into a taxi cab, you might have picked up on that little fact."
"Where is he?"
"He went to pick up his mom at the airport, okay? Because he promised or whatever. I don't know they have a special bond or something it's weird and it might be Oedipal but I don't ask those questions because he's my boss."
"Okay, I'm going to ignore half of that and ask you when her flight gets in."
"Noon."
"Great." And then Dean takes off running down the sidewalk, yelling for a taxi.
"Okay then! I'll just let everyone know that you're not getting married today! It's not a big deal!" He's shaking when he calls Becky to come and help. And because she's always been braver than him, always been an unstoppable force of pure will and drive, she comes, hauling herself out of her tiny car and calming him down with quiet kisses and promises that it will all work out. And Chuck believes her. He desperately wants to believe that she's not just talking about the wedding, but about Dean finding Cas, too. Because he knows she'd really like to be right about that.
- - -
At 12:36, Dean arrives at the airport, wondering if every decision he's made in the past hour is either going to be worth it all, or backfire and blow up in his face. He looks like a fucking idiot running through the airport in a tuxedo, muttering Cas's name and trying to figure out where he might be. Of course he has no idea where Cas's mother is from, or where she'll be or what gate, but he has to give a silent thanks to the steel-like quality of airport security the minute he sees that ugly-ass trench coat that you could only wear in the middle of the summer in San Francisco. He sees that familiar, uptight way that Cas stands and nearly chokes on his own happiness.
"Cas!"
And then the idiot turns around, face wearing the expression of someone who is about to do something they might really, really regret. And Dean is so fucking happy to see him that he grabs him and kisses that expression right off of his face.
Cas starts a little, sorting through the thoughts in his head, half of which are exploding with joy, the other wondering how many ways he could tear Dean Winchester into a million fucking pieces.
But he goes with it, because for once he feels like he just has to trust someone long enough to hear what they have to say - to really say. And he grips Dean's face in his hands and kisses back with renewed fervor, thanking whatever God for small miracles and laughing the whole time.
"I will murder you, I swear-"
"The wedding's off."
"Obviously. Where's Anna?"
"Home. Packing. She's going to Chile, I think. Or Italy. Or Russia. Fuck, I don't know. She's going backpacking and bike riding and she's going to ride horses on the beach and make love to strangers and just live her fucking life, you know? I don't know, that's what she told me."
"And...and that's it? That's-"
Cas. I think I might be in love with you. And I'm not entirely sure what that means for me right now, but I do know that I'm thirty-five and I want to be with someone because I love them, not because I'm used to them. Or because they're comfortable, okay? I mean, I am so uncomfortable around you it's not even funny. You make me want to tear every hair in my head out, you know? And that's okay. I want that. I want something else. I want you."
Cas nods, again and again, kissing him again and wondering why it took him this fucking long to find someone worth throwing every last inhibition out the window for.
"You will hate me. I swear, you will. I'm obsessive compulsive to a sickening degree and I watch C-SPAN."
"I hate C-SPAN. I hate it so fucking much."
"Well I watch it. And I'm not going to stop."
"Don't change. Never change, okay? Just don't."
"I won't." And they're kissing again, like maybe it's all just been one big joke. And when Cas's mother finally gets there, she's laughing and holding them both and smacking Dean on the back of the head and wondering who's going to buy her a fucking drink because those bottles on the plane are a joke.
And they're in the cab when Cas remembers that he left Chuck in charge. "Shit." he mutters. "We have to go to the park. Chuck's going to be a wreck. He's-"
"Hey," Dean says. "He's going to be fine." Leaning back, he smiles, placing his hands on the back of his head and grinning. "Let's bring the drinks to him, yeah?"
And Cas is so completely and utterly wrecked by this man that he kisses with zero inhibition while his mother naps in the front seat of the cab, tongue heavy with all the words he wants to say, all the questions and doubts that he knows he will have, but will be unafraid to speak. They press their foreheads together and stay quiet and still for a long time. Cas thinks that, maybe, that's how the rest of his life will be, if he has Dean. Quiet and perfect and still. And he won't kid himself into thinking that everything is about to change and that things will go up and down and that he'll want to break things and take it all back -
but for now, things can be that way. Quiet, and still.
Epilogue
In July, Becky had her baby. And even though Chuck had insisted on painting the nursery blue and Cas's mother held a quarter tied to a hemp string over her belly and proclaimed it would be a boy, Becky had a girl and Chuck wasn't even angry about it. Cas watched him hold the squirming bundle in his arms and cry. He watched Dean and his mother each take their turn and when it came to him, she gripped one of his fingers and squeeze and cried until the nurse handed her back to her mother. Becky whispered to her and she grew very quiet.
"Anna wanted, like, a different number of kids every year," Dean said one day as they left the hospital. "Like, for eleven years we danced around and dated and didn't date and did whatever. And she could never pick. Even when we were engaged. She couldn't decide."
"I like kids."
"You?"
"I always have."
"Great. We'll get a dog."
"Let's get dinner instead."
"I like that plan."
They stopped at Crowley's. And even though he told Cas he wouldn't give him a discount, he gave them the wine for free anyway, winking at Dean the entire time.
In the fall, they went back East for Marie's birthday. She let Gabriel plan it and the pasta salad was terrible, but everyone agreed that the steak was delicious. Sam was invited and Ruby was pleasant enough that even Marie liked her, a friendship which Dean did not approve of.
Anna sent postcards, but it was a long time before they saw her again. When she did get home, she held Cas for a long time and told him that if he didn't take care of Dean, she'd take care of him. Dean had to wonder why every person he fell in love with was secretly homicidal.
In the end, Becky and Chuck named the girl Hope. And when she was ready to go home, Dean and Cas drove the little family to the outside of the city. They split a bottle of wine while Hope dozed in Becky's arms and Chuck read his manuscript, which turned out to not be about Cas at all, but Chuck's indelible and unshakable belief in love.
And if ever there was a happy ending that Cas was happy to be a part of, it was this one, sitting under the blanket of midnight, watching Dean uncork another bottle of wine and Becky kiss Chuck long and slow as the sky started falling, a shower of stars that Cas silently pretended was made just for them.