Fic: Nothing is Fair in Love and Tea Parties
Title: Nothing is Fair in Love and Tea Parties
Author: tawg
Word count: ~2,000
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Sam Winchester/Castiel (Chuck/Becky)
Notes: Written ages ago for the Let's Get Gay Married! comment fic meme. Consider checking out the follow up to this fic, A Problem Shared is a Wedding Out of Control.
Summary: Human AU. Cas brings Sam home to meet his family and announce that they're getting married now that it's legal in NY. Sam thinks that everything will be fine. He's wrong. Castiel's family is freaking nuts.
Sam almost gets his nose cut off with a cake fork. “You do love my little brother, don’t you?” Sam looks up from the fork, his gaze travelling up a slender arm, to locks of red hair falling over pale shoulders, to the look on Anna’s face. Sam is pretty sure that she could kill him with a tea set and no one would ever find the pieces.
Castiel’s hand comes into Sam’s line of vision, pressing Anna’s cake fork of ultimate destruction away from Sam’s eyeballs. “Yes,” Castiel replies on Sam’s behalf. He looks at Sam, and his expression is a little worn. “Which is why I tried to keep him safe from you for as long as possible.”
Anna gives Sam a narrow glare, the kind that could kill a person by slowly lasering away at their flesh and burning through muscle and eating, slowly slowly slowly through their bone.
“So,” Becky says brightly, “more cake, Sam?” She piles three different kinds of cake on Sam’s plate before he can answer. Castiel takes his seat by Sam’s side, waits until his step-mother isn’t looking, and redistributes several slices onto one of his brothers’ plates (Sam has only just met the Miltons, and keeps getting them all confused).
“Do you love him back?” the be-caked brother asks. “Because it’s fine if you don’t. Heaps of people are getting married these days for the tax benefits. And if you’re getting some mad gay sex out of it-” Sam chokes slightly on a mouthful of Earl Grey tea “-all the better.”
“Thank you, Gabriel,” Cas says, his tone dry as a desert. “Your support is appreciated.”
“Our Castiel says you’re a lawyer,” Becky says. She seems to have the gift of selective hearing when it comes to her step-children (“Don’t worry,” Cas will tell him later, “you’ll learn it with time”). “What’s it like going to court? Is it like Judge Judy?”
“Not really,” Sam replies. “I’m on the defence team at the moment, and it’s mainly research and stuff. I’m not the lead lawyer or anything.”
Becky frowns, her bright face crumpling in and her mouth a perfect, semi-circle frown. “Well, that’s not right. Not a boy with your obvious talent.” How Sam has displayed anything other than fear during this most stressful of afternoon teas is beyond him. “We’ll have to make sure you get upgraded or promoted or however that works, isn’t that right, dear?”
Chuck - and Sam will never understand how someone named Chuck, who married a Becky, could possibly produce kids with the names that are surrounding him - looks up from the coconut ice he’s slowly crumbling into piles of coloured sugar. “Um, yes?”
“Oh, that’ll look so good on the headlines, won’t it? Junior Vice Chief Justice of the Supreme Court-” Sam opens his mouth to explain that nothing works that way but Castiel catches his eye, and shakes his head slightly, “-Samuel Milton.”
Castiel doesn’t choke on his tea, but his eyelids do lower in what is his very mild and moderate take on a look of extreme pain.
“That’s a point,” Anna says, once again wielding her cake fork and Sam has to lean back out of range of its deadly arc. “Who’s taking whose name?”
“Forget names,” Gabriel says, his mouth full of what Sam thinks might be a lamington. “Who’s taking who will be information enough. Because let’s face it, Cas can bake and Sam is wearing a pastel shirt. Blushing brides all ‘round!”
Sam wonders if Gabriel has been drinking. Later Castiel will shamefacedly assure him that, no, he’s always like that.
“Sorry I’m late,” calls a smooth voice, and the eldest of the Miltons grabs a chair from a nearby table and slings it between Sam and Anna’s seats. Sam is incredibly grateful for all of seven seconds. Then the last brother is sitting down, and leaning close into Sam’s space, inhaling deeply. “Mmm,” he purrs. “Don’t you smell good. Is that the cologne Cassie got you?” He inhales again. “It smells like... birthday, three years ago.”
“Hello, Luc,” Cas says dully.
“Very impressive,” Gabriel says as he tries to dissolve a sixth sugar cube into his tea. “Now tell us what kind of underpants he’s wearing.”
Luc pulls back to peer under the table, and Sam presses his knees together, and leans towards Castiel. “Oh, Cassie,” Luc says, sighing dramatically. “Why didn’t you tell us he was so handsome?” He reaches out to brush a lock of hair out of Sam’s eyes, and stares at him for more than a little bit too long. “And did I hear lawyer? Oh, he’s far too good for you.”
“Is that why you popped the question?” Gabriel asks. “Trying to tie him down before he gets bored? That’s the Milton spirit!” Gabriel cheerfully slaps Castiel on the back, and nearly knocks Cas into the delicate flower arrangement of orchids and daises. “You know, I know a guy who knows a stripper who does a bang up wedding. She makes her tassels go in two different directions while you exchange vows.”
Chuck is writing on the tablecloth as he absently replies, “Cas said they were going to wait a while before worrying about the ceremony.”
The table goes still, and Cas takes the opportunity to signal the waiter for more tiny sandwiches.
Sam rocks back in his seat to avoid serious maiming from Anna’s cake fork, and Becky has turned the saddest of eyes onto Sam.
“What, you’re not ready to commit, is that it? Are you just playing Cas until you find something better? Because I swear to god-”
“Anna, language,” Chuck admonishes without looking up from the tablecloth.
“Oh, honey,” Becky says to Cas. “I was so hoping you’d have a Spring wedding. We have the house down on the coast and you could get married barefoot on the beach.” Becky eyes mist over. “You’d both look so handsome in white suits.”
Sam looks at Cas, unable to hide the panic on his face. “White suits?”
Gabriel looks at his little brother and smirks. “What’s wrong, Cassie? Not a blushing virgin anymore?”
Anna’s fork harpoons Sam’s sleeve to the table. “It had better have been magical. If you went and defiled my-”
Anna’s words trail into the background as Luc rests his palm over the top of Sam’s hand before Sam can free it from the cutlery assault. “Well,” Luc says, leaning in close again, “now that you’re not going anywhere, why don’t you tell me more about yourself?” His fingers draw a lazy circle on the back of Sam’s hand. “I’d really like to,” his eyes flick from Sam’s face down to his chest, and loiter there like teens about to commit an act of vandalism, “get under that firm skin of yours.”
Sam inhales a loud, shuddery breath, and tries not to freak out.
Gabriel’s voice pierces through Sam’s attempt at calm. “I think you should have a nude wedding, make it easy to pick the hotties in the wedding party. Besides me, I mean. You got any hot siblings, Sam? And hey, it’ll make your big ceremonial smooch all the more interesting. Show to everyone that you’re really into it, if you know what I mean.” Gabriel wiggles his eyebrows far more suggestively than should be allowed in a public venue, and Sam officially starts hyperventilating.
“So,” Becky says, having been placated by whatever Castiel had assured her about their eventual wedding. “How long until you two adopt? Or were you going to use a surrogate? Because I’m getting older-” She isn’t. Becky is barely a handful of years older than Luc, “-and I want some grandchildren. Oh,” she croons. “Your babies will be so cute.”
Sam is stunned, like a fish that has been hauled up on the docks and is seeing a very large club heading right for its eyes as it gasps those pathetic, last breaths. From a great distance, he can hear his own voice saying, “I think I want Cas to meet my family before we start talking about starting one of our own.”
Castiel assures him later that there was no long, endless silence at the table. Sam can only attribute that part of his memory to the phenomenon of time slowing down that people experience when they realise that they are about to die.
“What do you mean Our Cas hasn’t met your family?”
“Are you ASHAMED of him?! Give me your fork, Luc, I’ll show him ashamed!”
“Well now, Sammy, is that some uncertainty I see in your eyes? Because I’ve been told that I can be certain enough for two people.”
Chuck looks up from the table cloth then. “Stop,” he says. And everyone stops.
“Thank you, father,” Castiel says. He takes a slow sip of his own tea. “Our lives have not afforded the opportunity for travel, as you are already aware. Also, due to our different backgrounds, I suspect that Sam has been concerned that the meeting would be traumatic for me.”
Gabriel barks out a laugh, a follows it up with a string of amused chuckles. “Oh, kiddo,” he says at last. “You think anything could be more traumatic than growing up with this?”
“I like Sam,” Chuck contributes idly, not tearing his attention away from the novel he is apparently writing on the hotel linen.
“I like Sam, too,” Castiel replies, reaching over and pulling Anna’s fork out of the table. Luc moves his hand out of his little brother’s way, and Sam isn’t sure which action his is more grateful for.
“Anthony,” Becky says happily. “You should name your first-born Anthony. Calypso, if it’s a girl.”
Sam looks at his soon-to-be-step-mother-in-law and smiles weakly. “We just got fish,” he tells her. “Kids are a long way off.”
“Are the fish named?”
“... no?”
“Anthony,” Becky says again, that happy smile back on her face. “And Calypso.”
“So, Samuel,” Cas murmurs into Sam’s ear, taking a moment to appreciate the way it makes Sam shiver. “When do I get to meet your family?”
“As soon as I never have to see yours again.”
Castiel pulls back, and gives Sam a small, sedate smile - and suddenly Castiel makes so much more sense to Sam. He’s always loved him, but now he understands, just a little - and says, “Just be glad Michael isn’t here.”
“That’s right,” Gabriel says, slapping the table. He pauses to take the tray of tiny sandwiches from their waiter and sets it in front of him, handing the waiter his dirty plate. “You’ll have to come back when he’s on shore leave. You don’t have any plans for Thanksgiving, do you?”
Sam locks eyes with Cas, and sees the small smile at his lips. Yeah, he thinks, he can learn to handle this. And then Castiel turns to his brother, his hand slipping down to rest on Sam’s thigh. “I’m sure we’ll have plans,” he says.
“Ones that you’ll realise at the last minute?” Gabriel prompts. “They’re the best kind.”
Becky turns to Anna. “Oh, do you think they’ll elope?”
Sam folds his hand over Castiel’s smaller one. “I think we’re in love,” he says, and it takes a moment for him to realise he said it out loud. He looks up at Castiel’s family, so loud and daunting, and he can see traces of his own family in the protectiveness, in the pride in their eyes. “And we’ll get married when we get married.”
Castiel kisses him on the cheek, and Sam turns his face into the touch. Over the warmth of their moment, he can vaguely hear Chuck ordering Anna to put the teapot down.
Author: tawg
Word count: ~2,000
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Sam Winchester/Castiel (Chuck/Becky)
Notes: Written ages ago for the Let's Get Gay Married! comment fic meme. Consider checking out the follow up to this fic, A Problem Shared is a Wedding Out of Control.
Summary: Human AU. Cas brings Sam home to meet his family and announce that they're getting married now that it's legal in NY. Sam thinks that everything will be fine. He's wrong. Castiel's family is freaking nuts.
Sam almost gets his nose cut off with a cake fork. “You do love my little brother, don’t you?” Sam looks up from the fork, his gaze travelling up a slender arm, to locks of red hair falling over pale shoulders, to the look on Anna’s face. Sam is pretty sure that she could kill him with a tea set and no one would ever find the pieces.
Castiel’s hand comes into Sam’s line of vision, pressing Anna’s cake fork of ultimate destruction away from Sam’s eyeballs. “Yes,” Castiel replies on Sam’s behalf. He looks at Sam, and his expression is a little worn. “Which is why I tried to keep him safe from you for as long as possible.”
Anna gives Sam a narrow glare, the kind that could kill a person by slowly lasering away at their flesh and burning through muscle and eating, slowly slowly slowly through their bone.
“So,” Becky says brightly, “more cake, Sam?” She piles three different kinds of cake on Sam’s plate before he can answer. Castiel takes his seat by Sam’s side, waits until his step-mother isn’t looking, and redistributes several slices onto one of his brothers’ plates (Sam has only just met the Miltons, and keeps getting them all confused).
“Do you love him back?” the be-caked brother asks. “Because it’s fine if you don’t. Heaps of people are getting married these days for the tax benefits. And if you’re getting some mad gay sex out of it-” Sam chokes slightly on a mouthful of Earl Grey tea “-all the better.”
“Thank you, Gabriel,” Cas says, his tone dry as a desert. “Your support is appreciated.”
“Our Castiel says you’re a lawyer,” Becky says. She seems to have the gift of selective hearing when it comes to her step-children (“Don’t worry,” Cas will tell him later, “you’ll learn it with time”). “What’s it like going to court? Is it like Judge Judy?”
“Not really,” Sam replies. “I’m on the defence team at the moment, and it’s mainly research and stuff. I’m not the lead lawyer or anything.”
Becky frowns, her bright face crumpling in and her mouth a perfect, semi-circle frown. “Well, that’s not right. Not a boy with your obvious talent.” How Sam has displayed anything other than fear during this most stressful of afternoon teas is beyond him. “We’ll have to make sure you get upgraded or promoted or however that works, isn’t that right, dear?”
Chuck - and Sam will never understand how someone named Chuck, who married a Becky, could possibly produce kids with the names that are surrounding him - looks up from the coconut ice he’s slowly crumbling into piles of coloured sugar. “Um, yes?”
“Oh, that’ll look so good on the headlines, won’t it? Junior Vice Chief Justice of the Supreme Court-” Sam opens his mouth to explain that nothing works that way but Castiel catches his eye, and shakes his head slightly, “-Samuel Milton.”
Castiel doesn’t choke on his tea, but his eyelids do lower in what is his very mild and moderate take on a look of extreme pain.
“That’s a point,” Anna says, once again wielding her cake fork and Sam has to lean back out of range of its deadly arc. “Who’s taking whose name?”
“Forget names,” Gabriel says, his mouth full of what Sam thinks might be a lamington. “Who’s taking who will be information enough. Because let’s face it, Cas can bake and Sam is wearing a pastel shirt. Blushing brides all ‘round!”
Sam wonders if Gabriel has been drinking. Later Castiel will shamefacedly assure him that, no, he’s always like that.
“Sorry I’m late,” calls a smooth voice, and the eldest of the Miltons grabs a chair from a nearby table and slings it between Sam and Anna’s seats. Sam is incredibly grateful for all of seven seconds. Then the last brother is sitting down, and leaning close into Sam’s space, inhaling deeply. “Mmm,” he purrs. “Don’t you smell good. Is that the cologne Cassie got you?” He inhales again. “It smells like... birthday, three years ago.”
“Hello, Luc,” Cas says dully.
“Very impressive,” Gabriel says as he tries to dissolve a sixth sugar cube into his tea. “Now tell us what kind of underpants he’s wearing.”
Luc pulls back to peer under the table, and Sam presses his knees together, and leans towards Castiel. “Oh, Cassie,” Luc says, sighing dramatically. “Why didn’t you tell us he was so handsome?” He reaches out to brush a lock of hair out of Sam’s eyes, and stares at him for more than a little bit too long. “And did I hear lawyer? Oh, he’s far too good for you.”
“Is that why you popped the question?” Gabriel asks. “Trying to tie him down before he gets bored? That’s the Milton spirit!” Gabriel cheerfully slaps Castiel on the back, and nearly knocks Cas into the delicate flower arrangement of orchids and daises. “You know, I know a guy who knows a stripper who does a bang up wedding. She makes her tassels go in two different directions while you exchange vows.”
Chuck is writing on the tablecloth as he absently replies, “Cas said they were going to wait a while before worrying about the ceremony.”
The table goes still, and Cas takes the opportunity to signal the waiter for more tiny sandwiches.
Sam rocks back in his seat to avoid serious maiming from Anna’s cake fork, and Becky has turned the saddest of eyes onto Sam.
“What, you’re not ready to commit, is that it? Are you just playing Cas until you find something better? Because I swear to god-”
“Anna, language,” Chuck admonishes without looking up from the tablecloth.
“Oh, honey,” Becky says to Cas. “I was so hoping you’d have a Spring wedding. We have the house down on the coast and you could get married barefoot on the beach.” Becky eyes mist over. “You’d both look so handsome in white suits.”
Sam looks at Cas, unable to hide the panic on his face. “White suits?”
Gabriel looks at his little brother and smirks. “What’s wrong, Cassie? Not a blushing virgin anymore?”
Anna’s fork harpoons Sam’s sleeve to the table. “It had better have been magical. If you went and defiled my-”
Anna’s words trail into the background as Luc rests his palm over the top of Sam’s hand before Sam can free it from the cutlery assault. “Well,” Luc says, leaning in close again, “now that you’re not going anywhere, why don’t you tell me more about yourself?” His fingers draw a lazy circle on the back of Sam’s hand. “I’d really like to,” his eyes flick from Sam’s face down to his chest, and loiter there like teens about to commit an act of vandalism, “get under that firm skin of yours.”
Sam inhales a loud, shuddery breath, and tries not to freak out.
Gabriel’s voice pierces through Sam’s attempt at calm. “I think you should have a nude wedding, make it easy to pick the hotties in the wedding party. Besides me, I mean. You got any hot siblings, Sam? And hey, it’ll make your big ceremonial smooch all the more interesting. Show to everyone that you’re really into it, if you know what I mean.” Gabriel wiggles his eyebrows far more suggestively than should be allowed in a public venue, and Sam officially starts hyperventilating.
“So,” Becky says, having been placated by whatever Castiel had assured her about their eventual wedding. “How long until you two adopt? Or were you going to use a surrogate? Because I’m getting older-” She isn’t. Becky is barely a handful of years older than Luc, “-and I want some grandchildren. Oh,” she croons. “Your babies will be so cute.”
Sam is stunned, like a fish that has been hauled up on the docks and is seeing a very large club heading right for its eyes as it gasps those pathetic, last breaths. From a great distance, he can hear his own voice saying, “I think I want Cas to meet my family before we start talking about starting one of our own.”
Castiel assures him later that there was no long, endless silence at the table. Sam can only attribute that part of his memory to the phenomenon of time slowing down that people experience when they realise that they are about to die.
“What do you mean Our Cas hasn’t met your family?”
“Are you ASHAMED of him?! Give me your fork, Luc, I’ll show him ashamed!”
“Well now, Sammy, is that some uncertainty I see in your eyes? Because I’ve been told that I can be certain enough for two people.”
Chuck looks up from the table cloth then. “Stop,” he says. And everyone stops.
“Thank you, father,” Castiel says. He takes a slow sip of his own tea. “Our lives have not afforded the opportunity for travel, as you are already aware. Also, due to our different backgrounds, I suspect that Sam has been concerned that the meeting would be traumatic for me.”
Gabriel barks out a laugh, a follows it up with a string of amused chuckles. “Oh, kiddo,” he says at last. “You think anything could be more traumatic than growing up with this?”
“I like Sam,” Chuck contributes idly, not tearing his attention away from the novel he is apparently writing on the hotel linen.
“I like Sam, too,” Castiel replies, reaching over and pulling Anna’s fork out of the table. Luc moves his hand out of his little brother’s way, and Sam isn’t sure which action his is more grateful for.
“Anthony,” Becky says happily. “You should name your first-born Anthony. Calypso, if it’s a girl.”
Sam looks at his soon-to-be-step-mother-in-law and smiles weakly. “We just got fish,” he tells her. “Kids are a long way off.”
“Are the fish named?”
“... no?”
“Anthony,” Becky says again, that happy smile back on her face. “And Calypso.”
“So, Samuel,” Cas murmurs into Sam’s ear, taking a moment to appreciate the way it makes Sam shiver. “When do I get to meet your family?”
“As soon as I never have to see yours again.”
Castiel pulls back, and gives Sam a small, sedate smile - and suddenly Castiel makes so much more sense to Sam. He’s always loved him, but now he understands, just a little - and says, “Just be glad Michael isn’t here.”
“That’s right,” Gabriel says, slapping the table. He pauses to take the tray of tiny sandwiches from their waiter and sets it in front of him, handing the waiter his dirty plate. “You’ll have to come back when he’s on shore leave. You don’t have any plans for Thanksgiving, do you?”
Sam locks eyes with Cas, and sees the small smile at his lips. Yeah, he thinks, he can learn to handle this. And then Castiel turns to his brother, his hand slipping down to rest on Sam’s thigh. “I’m sure we’ll have plans,” he says.
“Ones that you’ll realise at the last minute?” Gabriel prompts. “They’re the best kind.”
Becky turns to Anna. “Oh, do you think they’ll elope?”
Sam folds his hand over Castiel’s smaller one. “I think we’re in love,” he says, and it takes a moment for him to realise he said it out loud. He looks up at Castiel’s family, so loud and daunting, and he can see traces of his own family in the protectiveness, in the pride in their eyes. “And we’ll get married when we get married.”
Castiel kisses him on the cheek, and Sam turns his face into the touch. Over the warmth of their moment, he can vaguely hear Chuck ordering Anna to put the teapot down.