Fic: A Problem Shared is a Wedding Out of Control
Title: A Problem Shared is a Wedding Out of Control
Author: tawg
Word count: ~5,750
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Sam/Castiel (background Chuck/Becky and John/Ellen, mentions of past Castiel/Uriel)
Notes: This fic follows on from the events of Nothing is Fair in Love and Tea Parties.
Summary: Sam survived meeting Castiel's family, but he's not so sure he'll make it through Castiel meeting the Winchester-Harvelle clan without dying of embarrassment. Sadly, that's the least of his problems with a wedding to plan and two families (plus friends and foes) joining forces in getting Sam and Cas to walk down the aisle.
Meeting the Winchesters had been every bit as painful as Sam had been expecting, starting with the seven hour flight delay due to weather conditions. He’d hoped that returning to the family home would be a kind of restful experience, showing Castiel the places he had grown up and the people he loved.
Then Dean had answered the door wearing a straw hat, and had hollered over his shoulder, “Hey Paw! Them city folks done turned up!”
“Whaderyer standin’ there for, boy?” John had hollered back from the kitchen. “Show ‘em on in so wez can git some varmint cookin’ on the grill!”
Ellen had stuck her head out of the kitchen, winked at Sam, and added “Welcome home, y’all.” And then, right on cue, Jo had slid down the banister dressed like Daisy Duke, screaming “Yee haw!” at the top of her lungs.
Sam stood corrected. He hated all of these people.
*
Despite Sam and Castiel’s complete agreement that the wedding could wait for a good few years, their families started making arrangements almost immediately.
“The church your mother and I got married in just finished getting renovated,” John said as he passed the potato salad. “Got a new stained glass window in.”
“Becky really had her heart set on their- on this place they know, on the beach,” Sam replied weakly.
“Both options are inconvenient,” Castiel said with his usual complete lack of tact, “as homosexual unions are not recognised in either state.” He looked up at Sam with a perplexed look on his face. “Explain ‘bacon salad’ to me again?”
“Alright then,” Ellen had said, setting a giant plate of cooked meat on the picnic table. “Wedding in New York it is. Been a while since we been on holiday anyway.”
“I got school holidays in two months,” Jo had chipped in. She turned her stare on Sam and Cas. “You best hope New York doesn’t change its mind before then.”
Dean had snorted. “If it does, we’ll just ship them to Vegas. Anyone can get married in Vegas.”
Sam rolled his eyes at his brother. “It won’t be legal there either.”
Dean had given Sam a very pointed look. “How long have you two been together? You don’t need anything legal to make it legit. You two are in love and all that shit, and if a state doesn’t recognise it, that’s its problem.” Dean then constructed the meatiest burger he possibly could, to atone for the discussion of feelings he had committed.
Castiel had looked up at Sam, his lips twitching slightly, and said “I like your family.”
“They’re not as... enthusiastic as yours,” Sam had countered, spooning some bacon salad onto Castiel’s plate, just so Dean wouldn’t eat the whole bowl and make himself sick.
“Yes,” Castiel replied. “That’s why I like them.”
*
The pace picked up when their respective families started Skyping one another.
“How did you even get their account names?” Sam had asked Dean (on the good, old-fashioned landline, as Castiel attempted to moderate a conference call on Sam’s laptop).
“Some chick called Becky buzzed Dad while he was playing WOW or whatever with Bobby, and started gushing about how wonderful you are, how handsome you are, how she was so, SO glad to have met you. At first Dad thought she was competition for Cas, but then he realised she was his mom.”
“Step-mom,” Sam automatically corrected.
“Whatever. Wait, is she hot?”
Sam would have hung up on Dean, but that would have obliged him to take part in the spine-chilling conversation about colour themes. “This is getting crazy.”
*
It got crazier. Castiel eventually invested in a wireless headset, so he could move about the kitchen freely, Sam’s laptop on the bench top, and Sam tethered to it with his own headset.
(They had tried just using the speakers and yelling so the built-in mic could pick up their voices, but being free to move around meant being free to rest their heads together in exasperation, free to tilt their heads just so and press their lips together, to kiss long and slow and deep, for Castiel’s fingers to dig into Sam’s strong back, for Sam’s fingers to grip Castiel’s soft, wonderful, dark hair, for Castiel to press Sam up against the refrigerator and grind against him. That part had been awesome. The awkward silence when they remembered the video conference they were still apparently a part of? Less awesome. Gabriel catcalling them with complete glee and his characteristic absence of shame? Definitely lacking in awesome.)
So they wore headsets, and refrained from doing more than bump shoulders when they were both required to peer at an image or website. Castiel had initially prepared dinner during these conversations, enjoying the emotional outlet of chopping vegetables as he explained that Times Square just wasn’t a viable location for the ceremony. It had, however, swiftly ballooned into outright comfort-baking. Sam was up to his eyeballs in macaroons. He had started taking them into work and mailing them to old college friends. (Not a bad plan, by the way. “Hi, I’m getting gay married sometime soon, have some cookies!” If Dean hadn’t already been completely behind the idea of Sam getting hitched, the cookie campaign would have sold him on it.)
“You really need to be thinking about churches,” Becky said one day.
“Neither Sam nor I have been inside one for years.”
“I know, but they just look so pretty.”
“Any church doesn’t want to gay marry you, you just let me know,” John contributed, all mid-western protectiveness. “We’ll have some words with them.”
Sam sighed. “Dad, you don’t need to have words with anyone. We were just thinking, you know, a civil union, some papers to sign, and then cake.”
“You should serve the cake while you’re signing stuff,” Dean said, his mouth full of... Sam thought it was Cheerios, but he didn’t want to peer too closely.
“He’s right,” Gabriel chimed in. “The signing stuff is the most boring bit. You should just go from the ‘speak now’, to ‘here’s your cake, bitches’.”
“Yeah, that’s an awesome idea.” Dean was getting enthused about the ‘instant cake’ option. He and Gabriel started discussing the merits of doing the cake before the ceremony so all of the guests would have something to distract them from those uncomfortable pews and the mind-numbing boringness of “watching Sam and Our Cas gaze at one another and have feelings and crap”.
“I like your style,” Dean said. Sam muted the pair of them.
“Maybe you could get a priest to perform a civil union?” Becky suggested. “You know, for the look of things.”
“The church is still pretty against the whole gay thing,” Ellen chipped in, an arm slung around John’s shoulders as she sat beside him on the couch.
“Oh, we have a few connections,” Becky replied airily. “I’m sure we could find someone willing to bend the rules, just for the occasion.”
“Sure,” Castiel replied, and Sam took a step back at the amount to sarcasm in his fiancée’s voice. “Maybe I’ll just ask Brother Uriel?”
The Milton’s all went silent, until Anna let out a strangled noise and apparently punched her webcam.
Dean broke the silence as eloquently as ever. “What the fuck is a Uriel?”
*
Cas had exes. Sam knew that. Sam had them too. They were a part of life, really. To be expected. And Castiel had told Sam about his last boyfriend before Sam, and how that had ended with him unceremoniously dumping Cas one New Year’s Eve instead of giving him the traditional kiss at midnight, and how he’d gone into training for the priesthood the next day. Castiel had told the tale with his usual detachment, as if it were something that had happened long ago that still bemused him. Castiel had forgiven Uriel, and in his usual, logical manner had pointed out that he were merely sorry that it hadn’t happened sooner, as it would have saved Uriel much distress, and Castiel could have spent New Year’s in bed, reading.
It took Sam much longer to find out that the rest of the Milton clan did not share Castiel’s views. And Dean had to tell him about the domestic fire in the immediate vicinity of Uriel’s car that none of the Milton brothers had known anything about, what with them all having been busy preparing to leave the state for unrelated reasons the following morning. (Sam was pretty confident that was just a smoke screen. He made a note to make sure that Anna and open flames be kept away from one another at all times during the wedding.)
Castiel only had one photo album, a slim one that hadn’t cost much, with a handful of photos - Chuck and Becky’s wedding, Gabriel and Anna apparently scarring people with karaoke, a set of school photographs where Michael, Luc, Gabriel, and Castiel all had black eyes or split lips (“Anna had been fretting about her photograph,” Castiel had explained. “Our assistance in solving the problem of her hairstyle at the time was not appreciated”). So Sam only had a handful of glimpses at the people in Castiel’s life - mainly white, mainly his family, mainly loud and boisterous.
Brother Uriel was the exact antithesis of every one of Castiel’s friends and family that Sam had met. His skin was dark, his face was stern, and he looked more solid than the old church he met them in front of. Image the kind of black, gay priest Jersey would produce, the kind that could possibly have mob connections and a previous career in boxing. That was Uriel. Why had Sam agreed to come along for this? Oh, right, because Castiel had asked him. Sam apparently had no sense of self-preservation where Cas was involved.
“There are members of the priesthood who are open to alternative lifestyles,” Uriel said, his voice a deep rumble that had Sam checking the sky for storm clouds. “Some who indulge in their openness quite freely.” Uriel looked up at the church and Castiel followed his gaze. Sam tried not to fidget. “I know a man who would be happy to conduct the ceremony,” he said at last. “He is... I am sure he will be acceptable.” Uriel handed Castiel a card, and as their fingers brushed Sam wondered how Cas and Uriel had been able to do anything without Uriel crushing Cas completely. But then, Gabriel had asked Sam a similar question. Apparently Cas had a type.
“It was,” Uriel paused for a long moment, “nice to meet you, Samuel.”
Sam smiled weakly at Uriel. “The pleasure was all mine.”
*
Sam did eventually ask Castiel about his time with Uriel. Castiel had given Sam a long, penetrating look. “Are you jealous?” he finally asked.
“No,” Sam replied. The corner of Castiel’s mouth twitched. “I’m not!” Sam had insisted. The crazy monkey sex they had when they got back to their apartment? That was completely unrelated to meeting Castiel’s incredibly scary ex.
Lying naked, and sweaty, and with that peaceful look of content that Sam loved putting on Castiel’s face, Cas said, “I like you when you’re jealous.”
“I am not jealous,” Sam replied, straddling Castiel’s waist and poking him in the chest. “I’m the one you’re living with, I’m the one you’re marrying, and I’m the one about to screw your brains out. Again.”
Castiel gave Sam a rare grin. “I really like it.”
*
“Who’s going to be in your wedding party?” Ellen asked, bustling around her own kitchen. “If you need Dean in a suit we’re gonna have to get working on that immediately, and Jo is already picking out heels.”
“I’d better be,” Gabriel said, constructing a monstrosity of a dessert in his kitchen. From what Sam could tell, he was using Marshmallow Fluff to glue cupcakes together in a funnel, and then filling it with soft serve ice cream. Gabriel had a soft serve ice cream machine in his kitchen. “If I’m not you need to start making it up to me right now. Do you how hard I’ve been practicing not wearing any pants?”
“We’re not having a naked wedding, Gabriel.”
“You’ll warm up to the idea.”
Castiel, safely out of webcam view, held up two fingers - two people each. “Well,” Sam fielded. “We only have one sister each, so Anna and Jo can be bridesmaids, if they want I mean. We’d really, really love that but if they want to sit it out-” Sam’s rambling was cut off as Ellen relayed they news, and Jo’s out of character squeal of excitement burst eardrums across the county. “Okay,” Sam said. “Cool. And I’ve only got one brother, so Dean is in.”
Castiel had a ‘deer in the headlights, asked to do quadratic equations’ expression on his face well before Luc asked in a lazy drawl, “So, Cassie, who will your groomsman be?”
“Michael would not be a wise choice,” Castiel said slowly, trading carefully. “He won’t be available for fittings, and the like. Which leaves...”
“Hey, Luci,” Gabriel yelled across the conference call (despite them currently sharing an apartment), “I’ll arm wrestle you for it!”
Sam and Castiel both crossed their fingers.
*
Anton Crowley was drinking scotch and playing cards when Sam and Cas went to meet with him. As they were laden down with charcoal swatches for suits and a rainbow of greens for the ties and dresses, he identified them easily as they stood hesitantly in the hallway, and gave them a smile that was a little too amused. “So, you’re the gay kids who want a priest to perform a not at all religious wedding?”
Sam and Cas exchanged looks, and nodded.
“Deal,” Crowley said, raising his glass to them. “Glad that’s sorted - you’ll need all the free time you’ve just gained throwing away that disgusting green.”
Sam looked down at the material samples in Castiel’s arms. Green would bring out Anna’s hair, and Dean’s eyes, and Gabriel wore green a lot anyway, and Jo looked good in anything. “What? Why?”
Crowley gave Sam a disappointed look. “You’re marrying a boy with blue eyes, and you let someone talk you into a green colour theme?”
Sam gaped at Crowley, and then turned to Cas. Oh god, the priest was right. Sam could pull the dark green off, but Cas...
“Alright,” Crowley said, standing up and stretching. “I’m only doing this because I like you and I don’t want my eyeballs to self-immolate on the day as a result of your blundering efforts.” He nodded at his poker partner. “Boys, meet Balthazar.”
A blond man with dark eyes, and a lazy smile turned to look at them. Sam had the horrible feeling they were about to be eaten alive.
*
The phone was ringing when they got back to the apartment. Castiel had his Bluetooth headset on, the one that made him look a little bit like a spy, and he was e-mailing Balthazar pictures of the wedding party on Sam’s smart phone as he disappeared into the study at the back of the apartment that Sam had come to think of as Castiel’s cave. That left Sam to answer the phone. He was pretty confident he could handle that task.
“She bought a park,” a male voice said as soon as Sam picked up the receiver. “This is Chuck, by the way.”
“What?”
“Central Park. Apparently they don’t allow chairs and rugs and things. Damages the grass. So she bought part of it.”
“... What?”
“Oh, and Summer’s almost over. When’s the date?”
“Um.”
“Is that-? Sam, hi! It’s Becky! You’ll never guess what I did!”
Sam felt a little dizzy. “You bought a park?”
“Chuck, have you been exaggerating again? Pft, no. I bought part of a park. It’s like a mini-park. A parklet. I thought it would just speed everything up, and then you’ll always have your own special place, and I figured it would be best since we’ll be flying over to see you soon.”
“You will?”
“Of course! I want to be able to help out with all of those last minute things, and we’ll have to meet your family. Have you sent invitations out yet? I’m good at licking envelopes.”
“We don’t have a date yet,” Sam said weakly.
“Well, you’ll just have to pick one! It’ll be a few weeks before the paperwork goes through, but-”
Castiel wandered back into the kitchen, barefoot and smiling. “I think we have the flower situation under control,” he said.
Sam pressed the phone against his chest. “Your mom bought us Central Park.” The smile fell from Castiel’s face, and Sam felt so incredibly guilty. “But don’t worry,” he added hastily. “I’ll take care of it.”
Castiel gave Sam a doubtful look, so Sam grinned eerily at him until he retreated back into his cave.
*
Sam had no idea what anyone in Castiel’s family did. Chuck had something to do with television in Vancouver and spent most of the year doing his best impersonation of a hermit. Gabriel had explained his father as being “Kind of like God, but with more money.” Becky wrote novels, but Castiel refused to tell Sam what they were about.
Michael was in the navy. Anna had been in training for the air force, but had ruined her knee in an academy softball match. She went on to teach self-defence for a while, and somehow that eventually led to her owning an incredibly successful mixed martial arts academy. (Sam could have lived without knowing that Castiel’s slightly overprotective big sister could kill him five times before he hit the ground. That knowledge was probably directly related to the mild case of crippling fear Sam felt whenever Castiel looked annoyed at him.)
Luc was “between jobs”. He was apparently very, very good at marketing and had held a rather respectable position until it had been discovered that he was not quite so good at embezzling. “Of course, none of us believe he was guilty,” Castiel had told Sam in a voice that had communicated that, yes, they all knew Luc was a guilty as sin. But he was family and Sam could identify with that mentality of ‘love the sinner, not the sin’.
Gabriel told everyone something different. The first time Sam had met him, he’d been a spy. After that, a taste-tester at a cotton candy factory.
Cas... Sam wasn’t even entirely sure what Castiel did. He worked in the UN building (and while he essentially worked for the UN he wasn’t actually employed by them, a piece of contracting that made Sam boggle), making sure that things got to the right people. He’d been sick with the swine flu the previous year and by his second day off people were calling their flat and asking how they were supposed to cope without him.
(Castiel had occasionally shown annoyance at Sam’s inability to remember his job title. Sam had pointedly asked Cas to explain Sam’s job in twenty-five words or less. “You’re like Lionel Hutz,” Castiel had replied. “Only not as senior.” Sam had tried to smother a laugh by pressing his nose against the join of Castiel’s shoulder and neck, and hadn’t done a very successful job.)
*
Two days later, Sam mentioned casually to Castiel over breakfast that they would be getting married in Central Park, in the first week of Autumn.
Castiel rolled his eyes, and used the last of the jam without apology. Sam was on needles all day, wondering of Cas could still respect him now that he’d shown himself incapable of dealing with an enthusiastic woman in her late thirties. Would Cas ever be able to respect him again? Which part of his anatomy would Anna remove first? Would Becky now just do whatever the hell she wanted? She tended to do that anyway, but now Sam had let her...
When he got home that afternoon, there was a new jar of jam, and a naked Castiel, and after they’d used up half of the jam Sam realised that they were going to be alright.
(He also reflected that Cas and Gabe may have had a few traits in common, and then made the mistake of replying to Castiel’s breathy question “What are you thinking about?” with “Your brother”. When Castiel came, moaning Dean’s name, Sam gave him a dirty look. But he had to admit, he’d started it.)
*
“What you need to understand about weddings,” Balthazar explained carefully as he tossed vetoed wedding invitation design after design over his shoulder, “is that the only reason the planning doesn’t end in homicide is because finding a new partner to walk down the aisle with would just be too much work. You can have a perfect wedding, or you can enjoy your wedding. Pick one.”
That question had seemed like a no-brainer.
“Excellent. Now stay out of my way and do what you’re told.”
And while that should have been the most irritating thing in the world, it was... nice. The questions about what exact shade of satin the bridesmaids shoes needed to be? Got forwarded to Balthazar. The caterers? Balthazar asked what they wanted for the reception dinner and took it from there. The dilemma of a traditional three-tier wedding cake, or one of those cupcake arrangements that the three wedding magazines in the flat swore were trendy? Balthazar called them idiots and ordered them out of the apartment.
The wedding stuff was manageable. It was just all of the other details they had to deal with. The calls and texts and e-mails at all times of the day, asking when flights should be booked and what the weather would be like and how long everyone should stay.
The last thing Sam wanted to do was deal with Gabriel when he blew through New York for three days on business (Sam had asked what he was doing in town, and Gabriel had told him he was attending a training seminar on electric chair maintenance, and laughed. Sam figured it wasn’t important).
But, on the upside, spending time in bakeries with Gabriel meant not spending time dealing with everyone and everything wedding related. Gabriel didn’t even bring the wedding up, instead pumping Sam for embarrassing stories about Castiel and talking about sports (he knew a lot about beach volleyball).
But, eventually, he sighed, and frowned at Sam. Sam’s wedding senses pinged, and he prepared to flee.
“I just don’t know what to get you,” Gabriel said at last.
“What?”
“Wedding present. You two have your own place, so you’re already set up. Everyone else is taking care of wedding things as their presents, and if I try to butt in on that I’m going to lose a limb, I swear. And I’ve never known what to get Cas for his birthday. That’s why he has so many awful ties, because he doesn’t have the sense not to wear what I give him.”
That did explain a lot.
“So, what do you want?”
What Sam wanted was for the wedding to go away. No, that was wrong. He wanted all of the mess to go away, for his apartment to be free of invitation samples and catering quotes, for him to be able to check his e-mail without being ambushed by a million family members wanting to help, and helping anyway, and making a mess of things.
God, half of them were planning on camping out at the apartment. He would never get away from this mess... And then Sam had a brilliant idea. He leaned over the table, and Gabriel mimicked the motion.
“Think you can follow some very specific, honeymoon related instructions?”
Gabriel’s eyes sparkled. “What did you have in mind?”
*
It was three days before the wedding, Balthazar had apparently moved into their living room, and there was a knock on the door painfully early. Sam answered it in his boxers and a Stanford U t-shirt. There was a blonde woman in an impeccable skirt-jacket combination and large dark glasses on the other side. She looked Sam up and down.
“Cute,” she said at last. She shouldered past him into the apartment, and called out in a loud, clipped voice. “Cassie-honey. Sorry to come unannounced, but I only just found out.” She turned to smile at Sam, and he was reminded of the times he’d gone to the aquarium with his Dad and Dean, and they’d spent hours watching the sharks.
Castiel had shoved himself into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that was ironed, and considering neither of them were caffeinated yet Sam felt his alarm bells stretch sluggishly and start to think about moving. “Hello, mother,” he said.
Sam waited for the alarm bells to go off, but they simply shrugged, pointed out that he was meant to be on holiday, and it was barely seven a.m. Sam pushed Castiel’s birth-mother back out into the hallway, and slammed the door in her face. “Come back after breakfast,” he yelled.
Castiel was frowning at Sam. “That was very rude.”
“You want me to invite her back in? Or do you want to go to bed and snuggle.”
“Snuggling doesn’t solve problems, Sam. It merely delays them.”
Sam stepped up to Castiel and wrapped his arms around his narrow shoulders, resting his chin against the top of Castiel’s head. “Maybe you should think of it as putting problems into quarantine until professionals who are trained to deal with them can be called in to assess the situation.”
“There’s not a person alive who can deal with my mother,” Cas moaned.
“Good,” Sam said, tightening his arms around his fiancé’s waist. “That means we can snuggle for all eternity.
“I don’t think that’s how anything works,” Castiel mumbled into Sam’s chest.
Balthazar, apparently awake and not enthused by this development, threw a shoe at them. They went back to bed.
*
“Why is she even here?” Anna moaned. Castiel had called her at the hotel and informed her there was a small hitch. She had come with a basket of whole fruits and some very sharp knives. She maintained that the two were connected, but Sam was very glad that he wasn’t the ‘small hitch’.
“Apparently she just found out,” Castiel replied over his morning coffee.
“I bet it was the notice Becky put in the paper,” Anna said with a sigh. “We told her it didn’t need a whole page, but she’d just found the sweetest photo of you two.” She smiled at Sam, a completely sweet smile that would put someone who didn’t know her better entirely at ease. “You hardly looked scared at all.”
“Tell her she can’t come,” Balthazar said, scratching his fingers through his bed hair. For a moment it looked as though he and Castiel were competing for the wildest hairstyle. “I am not redoing those seating arrangements.”
“Do you want her there?” Sam asked Cas. There was a long pause, and then Castiel gave the smallest of head shakes. “Right, okay. No big deal. It’s our wedding, right?”
“Right,” Castiel said, but he didn’t sound particularly hopeful.
*
Castiel rarely talked about his mother. She had been a beautiful, intelligent woman who had pumped out five children in seven years. Once she was done giving birth, she packed up and left. Occasionally there was a card, or a visit. Given the bitterness in Castiel’s voice as he’d listed the few times he’d seen his mother, Sam guessed that he had once been keen to know her, and had become jaded and bitter by her lack of interest.
So Michael had looked after them, Luc had sulked, Anna had grown up quickly to try and fill that motherly role, Gabriel had never really understood why suddenly everyone was so sad, and Castiel didn’t have any memories of her at all before her first visit when he was six.
“Why’d she leave?” Sam had asked, his arms around Castiel in the dark warmth of Sam’s bedroom, when they had been together for nearly a year.
Castiel had sounded perfectly level when he replied, as if he had come to accept the fact a long, long time ago. “We just weren’t what she wanted.”
Sam had wrapped his arms a little more tightly about his boyfriend, and wondered how someone so crazy could have contributed to making someone as wonderful as Castiel. Castiel had smiled at Sam as if he could read his mind, a fond twitch of lips, and they hadn’t spoken of her again.
*
The grand plan was to simply not give Evelyn the chance to ask permission to come to her son’s wedding. (Or, as was more likely, to talk loudly about going until wills crumbled around her.)
Castiel’s mother was back after breakfast, but phone calls had been made and Sam was able to see the Milton machine in process. Anna looped her arm through her mothers, and exclaimed, “You must help me find the right earrings for the wedding! It can be a gift for all of those birthdays you missed.”
Then Luc had been at the apartment at two when the women finally returned to whisk his mother off for coffee and a “Good old catch up, one free spirit to another”, with his arm wrapped around her fine shoulders and a hand at her elbow.
Gabriel had apparently intercepted them, talked loudly enough to drown out her own protestations that she really must see to Castiel and had then spilled his drink down her dress. “Just like old times, right ma?” he’d said with a grin.
She made it to the apartment for a fourth time, just as Sam and Cas were doing one another’s ties. “Evelyn,” Chuck said with a wide, uncertain smile. “You’re just in time to join us for dinner.”
And she did, seated down one end of the table with Chuck at the head and Becky sitting opposite her (in typical Becky fashion, she hadn’t noticed any tension, and was chattering away about how precious the Milton children were, calling Castiel’s mom “Evie” and winking at her like they were old friends). Then were Lucifer and Anna, with a date each (people Sam had never seen before in his life) by their sides, then Gabriel and an old high school friend he’d run into who was incredibly perplexed by the experience, and kept fidgeting in his hooded jumper and torn jeans. Sam and Cas were safely right down the end of the table, playing footsies and pretending they had plenty to talk about. They even managed to sneak off without anyone drawing attention to them.
“Two days to go,” Sam said, as he and Cas walked back to their apartment, holding hands.
“Two days until this becomes your life,” Castiel replied dully.
Sam squeezed Castiel’s hand. “Hey, you’ll have to put up with my family, too.”
“I’ll take bacon salad over my mother any day.”
Sam laughed. “Funny, Dean has the same opinion.”
*
And then the Winchester clan touched down, and family friends started rolling in, and as far as Sam was concerned, the population of New York had doubled. The day was filled with the wedding rehearsal, John and Bobby fidgeting in their suits, and Dean shooting smiles at Anna despite Sam’s warnings. Gabriel had won the fight to be Castiel’s best man, and was getting on famously with everyone under the sun. Nobody would rehearse their reception dinner speeches out with Sam and Castiel in the room, which had Sam worried, but apparently Castiel was used to such secrecy from his family.
“Is anyone going to say anything embarrassing?” Sam asked Ellen when he got the chance.
She’d given him a fond look, her mouth quirking as she tried to fight a smile. “Honey, I’d’ve thought you’d’ve known the answer to that by now.” Sam had pulled a face, and Ellen leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “We all love you Sam. Just remember that while your blood is up there making a fool of you.”
“Thanks, Ellen. Real helpful.”
And then the day was ending, and it was time for jeans and t-shirts, and “your last night as a single man, Sammy.”
“Dean, I haven’t been single for years.”
“Well I’m not going back in time for you, so get your party face on and let’s do this thing.”
*
For Sam’s bucks’ night, Dean had taken Sam, their father, Bobby, and Ash to the dimmest strip club with the bendiest girls he could find.
“Dude, you have noticed that I’m gay, right? I mean, I’m marrying a guy.”
“Yeah Sammy, but you’re the only one, and you need to take one for the team, understand? We’ll watch some Bette Midler movie or whatever later.”
Bobby and Ash had gotten into a very heated argument about which Bette Midler movie best represented her range, and managed to involve each and every one of the dancers in their debate. It got them thrown out of the establishment.
Ash had come to the rescue with “I know a place that stocks the best beers.”
They ended up in Germanic Club celebrating the twenty-first birthday of some girl called Dominque who kept screaming “I’m legal! Woo!” every twenty minutes, which eventually managed to pour ice on even Dean’s libido. But Ash was right, the beer was good.
(As for Castiel’s last night as an unmarried man... He had taken one look at his brothers’ wolfish grins, decided that survival was more important than masculinity, and asked Becky if she would mind organising his hens’ night. “I believe both a buck’s party and a hen’s night are traditional,” he’d said. And then Becky had hugged him and cried. Apparently they’d spent the evening making sweet’n’salty popcorn and watching Golden Girls. Sam was green with envy.)
*
The last day before the wedding was spent nursing hangovers, realising it was too late to worry about anything, and so Sam and Cas spent most of the day cleaning their apartment.
“No cold feet?” Sam asked as they climbed into bed. Castiel wriggled closer, and pressed his icy toes against the muscle of Sam’s calf, making him yelp. “That’s not what I meant!” he protested, but Castiel was climbing over him, straddling his waist and pressing cold hands and feet against the expanse of Sam’s warm skin. They wrestled, and did their best to keep their laughter down, and eventually Castiel was toasty warm against Sam’s skin. They fell asleep happy and content.
Author: tawg
Word count: ~5,750
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Sam/Castiel (background Chuck/Becky and John/Ellen, mentions of past Castiel/Uriel)
Notes: This fic follows on from the events of Nothing is Fair in Love and Tea Parties.
Summary: Sam survived meeting Castiel's family, but he's not so sure he'll make it through Castiel meeting the Winchester-Harvelle clan without dying of embarrassment. Sadly, that's the least of his problems with a wedding to plan and two families (plus friends and foes) joining forces in getting Sam and Cas to walk down the aisle.
Meeting the Winchesters had been every bit as painful as Sam had been expecting, starting with the seven hour flight delay due to weather conditions. He’d hoped that returning to the family home would be a kind of restful experience, showing Castiel the places he had grown up and the people he loved.
Then Dean had answered the door wearing a straw hat, and had hollered over his shoulder, “Hey Paw! Them city folks done turned up!”
“Whaderyer standin’ there for, boy?” John had hollered back from the kitchen. “Show ‘em on in so wez can git some varmint cookin’ on the grill!”
Ellen had stuck her head out of the kitchen, winked at Sam, and added “Welcome home, y’all.” And then, right on cue, Jo had slid down the banister dressed like Daisy Duke, screaming “Yee haw!” at the top of her lungs.
Sam stood corrected. He hated all of these people.
*
Despite Sam and Castiel’s complete agreement that the wedding could wait for a good few years, their families started making arrangements almost immediately.
“The church your mother and I got married in just finished getting renovated,” John said as he passed the potato salad. “Got a new stained glass window in.”
“Becky really had her heart set on their- on this place they know, on the beach,” Sam replied weakly.
“Both options are inconvenient,” Castiel said with his usual complete lack of tact, “as homosexual unions are not recognised in either state.” He looked up at Sam with a perplexed look on his face. “Explain ‘bacon salad’ to me again?”
“Alright then,” Ellen had said, setting a giant plate of cooked meat on the picnic table. “Wedding in New York it is. Been a while since we been on holiday anyway.”
“I got school holidays in two months,” Jo had chipped in. She turned her stare on Sam and Cas. “You best hope New York doesn’t change its mind before then.”
Dean had snorted. “If it does, we’ll just ship them to Vegas. Anyone can get married in Vegas.”
Sam rolled his eyes at his brother. “It won’t be legal there either.”
Dean had given Sam a very pointed look. “How long have you two been together? You don’t need anything legal to make it legit. You two are in love and all that shit, and if a state doesn’t recognise it, that’s its problem.” Dean then constructed the meatiest burger he possibly could, to atone for the discussion of feelings he had committed.
Castiel had looked up at Sam, his lips twitching slightly, and said “I like your family.”
“They’re not as... enthusiastic as yours,” Sam had countered, spooning some bacon salad onto Castiel’s plate, just so Dean wouldn’t eat the whole bowl and make himself sick.
“Yes,” Castiel replied. “That’s why I like them.”
*
The pace picked up when their respective families started Skyping one another.
“How did you even get their account names?” Sam had asked Dean (on the good, old-fashioned landline, as Castiel attempted to moderate a conference call on Sam’s laptop).
“Some chick called Becky buzzed Dad while he was playing WOW or whatever with Bobby, and started gushing about how wonderful you are, how handsome you are, how she was so, SO glad to have met you. At first Dad thought she was competition for Cas, but then he realised she was his mom.”
“Step-mom,” Sam automatically corrected.
“Whatever. Wait, is she hot?”
Sam would have hung up on Dean, but that would have obliged him to take part in the spine-chilling conversation about colour themes. “This is getting crazy.”
*
It got crazier. Castiel eventually invested in a wireless headset, so he could move about the kitchen freely, Sam’s laptop on the bench top, and Sam tethered to it with his own headset.
(They had tried just using the speakers and yelling so the built-in mic could pick up their voices, but being free to move around meant being free to rest their heads together in exasperation, free to tilt their heads just so and press their lips together, to kiss long and slow and deep, for Castiel’s fingers to dig into Sam’s strong back, for Sam’s fingers to grip Castiel’s soft, wonderful, dark hair, for Castiel to press Sam up against the refrigerator and grind against him. That part had been awesome. The awkward silence when they remembered the video conference they were still apparently a part of? Less awesome. Gabriel catcalling them with complete glee and his characteristic absence of shame? Definitely lacking in awesome.)
So they wore headsets, and refrained from doing more than bump shoulders when they were both required to peer at an image or website. Castiel had initially prepared dinner during these conversations, enjoying the emotional outlet of chopping vegetables as he explained that Times Square just wasn’t a viable location for the ceremony. It had, however, swiftly ballooned into outright comfort-baking. Sam was up to his eyeballs in macaroons. He had started taking them into work and mailing them to old college friends. (Not a bad plan, by the way. “Hi, I’m getting gay married sometime soon, have some cookies!” If Dean hadn’t already been completely behind the idea of Sam getting hitched, the cookie campaign would have sold him on it.)
“You really need to be thinking about churches,” Becky said one day.
“Neither Sam nor I have been inside one for years.”
“I know, but they just look so pretty.”
“Any church doesn’t want to gay marry you, you just let me know,” John contributed, all mid-western protectiveness. “We’ll have some words with them.”
Sam sighed. “Dad, you don’t need to have words with anyone. We were just thinking, you know, a civil union, some papers to sign, and then cake.”
“You should serve the cake while you’re signing stuff,” Dean said, his mouth full of... Sam thought it was Cheerios, but he didn’t want to peer too closely.
“He’s right,” Gabriel chimed in. “The signing stuff is the most boring bit. You should just go from the ‘speak now’, to ‘here’s your cake, bitches’.”
“Yeah, that’s an awesome idea.” Dean was getting enthused about the ‘instant cake’ option. He and Gabriel started discussing the merits of doing the cake before the ceremony so all of the guests would have something to distract them from those uncomfortable pews and the mind-numbing boringness of “watching Sam and Our Cas gaze at one another and have feelings and crap”.
“I like your style,” Dean said. Sam muted the pair of them.
“Maybe you could get a priest to perform a civil union?” Becky suggested. “You know, for the look of things.”
“The church is still pretty against the whole gay thing,” Ellen chipped in, an arm slung around John’s shoulders as she sat beside him on the couch.
“Oh, we have a few connections,” Becky replied airily. “I’m sure we could find someone willing to bend the rules, just for the occasion.”
“Sure,” Castiel replied, and Sam took a step back at the amount to sarcasm in his fiancée’s voice. “Maybe I’ll just ask Brother Uriel?”
The Milton’s all went silent, until Anna let out a strangled noise and apparently punched her webcam.
Dean broke the silence as eloquently as ever. “What the fuck is a Uriel?”
*
Cas had exes. Sam knew that. Sam had them too. They were a part of life, really. To be expected. And Castiel had told Sam about his last boyfriend before Sam, and how that had ended with him unceremoniously dumping Cas one New Year’s Eve instead of giving him the traditional kiss at midnight, and how he’d gone into training for the priesthood the next day. Castiel had told the tale with his usual detachment, as if it were something that had happened long ago that still bemused him. Castiel had forgiven Uriel, and in his usual, logical manner had pointed out that he were merely sorry that it hadn’t happened sooner, as it would have saved Uriel much distress, and Castiel could have spent New Year’s in bed, reading.
It took Sam much longer to find out that the rest of the Milton clan did not share Castiel’s views. And Dean had to tell him about the domestic fire in the immediate vicinity of Uriel’s car that none of the Milton brothers had known anything about, what with them all having been busy preparing to leave the state for unrelated reasons the following morning. (Sam was pretty confident that was just a smoke screen. He made a note to make sure that Anna and open flames be kept away from one another at all times during the wedding.)
Castiel only had one photo album, a slim one that hadn’t cost much, with a handful of photos - Chuck and Becky’s wedding, Gabriel and Anna apparently scarring people with karaoke, a set of school photographs where Michael, Luc, Gabriel, and Castiel all had black eyes or split lips (“Anna had been fretting about her photograph,” Castiel had explained. “Our assistance in solving the problem of her hairstyle at the time was not appreciated”). So Sam only had a handful of glimpses at the people in Castiel’s life - mainly white, mainly his family, mainly loud and boisterous.
Brother Uriel was the exact antithesis of every one of Castiel’s friends and family that Sam had met. His skin was dark, his face was stern, and he looked more solid than the old church he met them in front of. Image the kind of black, gay priest Jersey would produce, the kind that could possibly have mob connections and a previous career in boxing. That was Uriel. Why had Sam agreed to come along for this? Oh, right, because Castiel had asked him. Sam apparently had no sense of self-preservation where Cas was involved.
“There are members of the priesthood who are open to alternative lifestyles,” Uriel said, his voice a deep rumble that had Sam checking the sky for storm clouds. “Some who indulge in their openness quite freely.” Uriel looked up at the church and Castiel followed his gaze. Sam tried not to fidget. “I know a man who would be happy to conduct the ceremony,” he said at last. “He is... I am sure he will be acceptable.” Uriel handed Castiel a card, and as their fingers brushed Sam wondered how Cas and Uriel had been able to do anything without Uriel crushing Cas completely. But then, Gabriel had asked Sam a similar question. Apparently Cas had a type.
“It was,” Uriel paused for a long moment, “nice to meet you, Samuel.”
Sam smiled weakly at Uriel. “The pleasure was all mine.”
*
Sam did eventually ask Castiel about his time with Uriel. Castiel had given Sam a long, penetrating look. “Are you jealous?” he finally asked.
“No,” Sam replied. The corner of Castiel’s mouth twitched. “I’m not!” Sam had insisted. The crazy monkey sex they had when they got back to their apartment? That was completely unrelated to meeting Castiel’s incredibly scary ex.
Lying naked, and sweaty, and with that peaceful look of content that Sam loved putting on Castiel’s face, Cas said, “I like you when you’re jealous.”
“I am not jealous,” Sam replied, straddling Castiel’s waist and poking him in the chest. “I’m the one you’re living with, I’m the one you’re marrying, and I’m the one about to screw your brains out. Again.”
Castiel gave Sam a rare grin. “I really like it.”
*
“Who’s going to be in your wedding party?” Ellen asked, bustling around her own kitchen. “If you need Dean in a suit we’re gonna have to get working on that immediately, and Jo is already picking out heels.”
“I’d better be,” Gabriel said, constructing a monstrosity of a dessert in his kitchen. From what Sam could tell, he was using Marshmallow Fluff to glue cupcakes together in a funnel, and then filling it with soft serve ice cream. Gabriel had a soft serve ice cream machine in his kitchen. “If I’m not you need to start making it up to me right now. Do you how hard I’ve been practicing not wearing any pants?”
“We’re not having a naked wedding, Gabriel.”
“You’ll warm up to the idea.”
Castiel, safely out of webcam view, held up two fingers - two people each. “Well,” Sam fielded. “We only have one sister each, so Anna and Jo can be bridesmaids, if they want I mean. We’d really, really love that but if they want to sit it out-” Sam’s rambling was cut off as Ellen relayed they news, and Jo’s out of character squeal of excitement burst eardrums across the county. “Okay,” Sam said. “Cool. And I’ve only got one brother, so Dean is in.”
Castiel had a ‘deer in the headlights, asked to do quadratic equations’ expression on his face well before Luc asked in a lazy drawl, “So, Cassie, who will your groomsman be?”
“Michael would not be a wise choice,” Castiel said slowly, trading carefully. “He won’t be available for fittings, and the like. Which leaves...”
“Hey, Luci,” Gabriel yelled across the conference call (despite them currently sharing an apartment), “I’ll arm wrestle you for it!”
Sam and Castiel both crossed their fingers.
*
Anton Crowley was drinking scotch and playing cards when Sam and Cas went to meet with him. As they were laden down with charcoal swatches for suits and a rainbow of greens for the ties and dresses, he identified them easily as they stood hesitantly in the hallway, and gave them a smile that was a little too amused. “So, you’re the gay kids who want a priest to perform a not at all religious wedding?”
Sam and Cas exchanged looks, and nodded.
“Deal,” Crowley said, raising his glass to them. “Glad that’s sorted - you’ll need all the free time you’ve just gained throwing away that disgusting green.”
Sam looked down at the material samples in Castiel’s arms. Green would bring out Anna’s hair, and Dean’s eyes, and Gabriel wore green a lot anyway, and Jo looked good in anything. “What? Why?”
Crowley gave Sam a disappointed look. “You’re marrying a boy with blue eyes, and you let someone talk you into a green colour theme?”
Sam gaped at Crowley, and then turned to Cas. Oh god, the priest was right. Sam could pull the dark green off, but Cas...
“Alright,” Crowley said, standing up and stretching. “I’m only doing this because I like you and I don’t want my eyeballs to self-immolate on the day as a result of your blundering efforts.” He nodded at his poker partner. “Boys, meet Balthazar.”
A blond man with dark eyes, and a lazy smile turned to look at them. Sam had the horrible feeling they were about to be eaten alive.
*
The phone was ringing when they got back to the apartment. Castiel had his Bluetooth headset on, the one that made him look a little bit like a spy, and he was e-mailing Balthazar pictures of the wedding party on Sam’s smart phone as he disappeared into the study at the back of the apartment that Sam had come to think of as Castiel’s cave. That left Sam to answer the phone. He was pretty confident he could handle that task.
“She bought a park,” a male voice said as soon as Sam picked up the receiver. “This is Chuck, by the way.”
“What?”
“Central Park. Apparently they don’t allow chairs and rugs and things. Damages the grass. So she bought part of it.”
“... What?”
“Oh, and Summer’s almost over. When’s the date?”
“Um.”
“Is that-? Sam, hi! It’s Becky! You’ll never guess what I did!”
Sam felt a little dizzy. “You bought a park?”
“Chuck, have you been exaggerating again? Pft, no. I bought part of a park. It’s like a mini-park. A parklet. I thought it would just speed everything up, and then you’ll always have your own special place, and I figured it would be best since we’ll be flying over to see you soon.”
“You will?”
“Of course! I want to be able to help out with all of those last minute things, and we’ll have to meet your family. Have you sent invitations out yet? I’m good at licking envelopes.”
“We don’t have a date yet,” Sam said weakly.
“Well, you’ll just have to pick one! It’ll be a few weeks before the paperwork goes through, but-”
Castiel wandered back into the kitchen, barefoot and smiling. “I think we have the flower situation under control,” he said.
Sam pressed the phone against his chest. “Your mom bought us Central Park.” The smile fell from Castiel’s face, and Sam felt so incredibly guilty. “But don’t worry,” he added hastily. “I’ll take care of it.”
Castiel gave Sam a doubtful look, so Sam grinned eerily at him until he retreated back into his cave.
*
Sam had no idea what anyone in Castiel’s family did. Chuck had something to do with television in Vancouver and spent most of the year doing his best impersonation of a hermit. Gabriel had explained his father as being “Kind of like God, but with more money.” Becky wrote novels, but Castiel refused to tell Sam what they were about.
Michael was in the navy. Anna had been in training for the air force, but had ruined her knee in an academy softball match. She went on to teach self-defence for a while, and somehow that eventually led to her owning an incredibly successful mixed martial arts academy. (Sam could have lived without knowing that Castiel’s slightly overprotective big sister could kill him five times before he hit the ground. That knowledge was probably directly related to the mild case of crippling fear Sam felt whenever Castiel looked annoyed at him.)
Luc was “between jobs”. He was apparently very, very good at marketing and had held a rather respectable position until it had been discovered that he was not quite so good at embezzling. “Of course, none of us believe he was guilty,” Castiel had told Sam in a voice that had communicated that, yes, they all knew Luc was a guilty as sin. But he was family and Sam could identify with that mentality of ‘love the sinner, not the sin’.
Gabriel told everyone something different. The first time Sam had met him, he’d been a spy. After that, a taste-tester at a cotton candy factory.
Cas... Sam wasn’t even entirely sure what Castiel did. He worked in the UN building (and while he essentially worked for the UN he wasn’t actually employed by them, a piece of contracting that made Sam boggle), making sure that things got to the right people. He’d been sick with the swine flu the previous year and by his second day off people were calling their flat and asking how they were supposed to cope without him.
(Castiel had occasionally shown annoyance at Sam’s inability to remember his job title. Sam had pointedly asked Cas to explain Sam’s job in twenty-five words or less. “You’re like Lionel Hutz,” Castiel had replied. “Only not as senior.” Sam had tried to smother a laugh by pressing his nose against the join of Castiel’s shoulder and neck, and hadn’t done a very successful job.)
*
Two days later, Sam mentioned casually to Castiel over breakfast that they would be getting married in Central Park, in the first week of Autumn.
Castiel rolled his eyes, and used the last of the jam without apology. Sam was on needles all day, wondering of Cas could still respect him now that he’d shown himself incapable of dealing with an enthusiastic woman in her late thirties. Would Cas ever be able to respect him again? Which part of his anatomy would Anna remove first? Would Becky now just do whatever the hell she wanted? She tended to do that anyway, but now Sam had let her...
When he got home that afternoon, there was a new jar of jam, and a naked Castiel, and after they’d used up half of the jam Sam realised that they were going to be alright.
(He also reflected that Cas and Gabe may have had a few traits in common, and then made the mistake of replying to Castiel’s breathy question “What are you thinking about?” with “Your brother”. When Castiel came, moaning Dean’s name, Sam gave him a dirty look. But he had to admit, he’d started it.)
*
“What you need to understand about weddings,” Balthazar explained carefully as he tossed vetoed wedding invitation design after design over his shoulder, “is that the only reason the planning doesn’t end in homicide is because finding a new partner to walk down the aisle with would just be too much work. You can have a perfect wedding, or you can enjoy your wedding. Pick one.”
That question had seemed like a no-brainer.
“Excellent. Now stay out of my way and do what you’re told.”
And while that should have been the most irritating thing in the world, it was... nice. The questions about what exact shade of satin the bridesmaids shoes needed to be? Got forwarded to Balthazar. The caterers? Balthazar asked what they wanted for the reception dinner and took it from there. The dilemma of a traditional three-tier wedding cake, or one of those cupcake arrangements that the three wedding magazines in the flat swore were trendy? Balthazar called them idiots and ordered them out of the apartment.
The wedding stuff was manageable. It was just all of the other details they had to deal with. The calls and texts and e-mails at all times of the day, asking when flights should be booked and what the weather would be like and how long everyone should stay.
The last thing Sam wanted to do was deal with Gabriel when he blew through New York for three days on business (Sam had asked what he was doing in town, and Gabriel had told him he was attending a training seminar on electric chair maintenance, and laughed. Sam figured it wasn’t important).
But, on the upside, spending time in bakeries with Gabriel meant not spending time dealing with everyone and everything wedding related. Gabriel didn’t even bring the wedding up, instead pumping Sam for embarrassing stories about Castiel and talking about sports (he knew a lot about beach volleyball).
But, eventually, he sighed, and frowned at Sam. Sam’s wedding senses pinged, and he prepared to flee.
“I just don’t know what to get you,” Gabriel said at last.
“What?”
“Wedding present. You two have your own place, so you’re already set up. Everyone else is taking care of wedding things as their presents, and if I try to butt in on that I’m going to lose a limb, I swear. And I’ve never known what to get Cas for his birthday. That’s why he has so many awful ties, because he doesn’t have the sense not to wear what I give him.”
That did explain a lot.
“So, what do you want?”
What Sam wanted was for the wedding to go away. No, that was wrong. He wanted all of the mess to go away, for his apartment to be free of invitation samples and catering quotes, for him to be able to check his e-mail without being ambushed by a million family members wanting to help, and helping anyway, and making a mess of things.
God, half of them were planning on camping out at the apartment. He would never get away from this mess... And then Sam had a brilliant idea. He leaned over the table, and Gabriel mimicked the motion.
“Think you can follow some very specific, honeymoon related instructions?”
Gabriel’s eyes sparkled. “What did you have in mind?”
*
It was three days before the wedding, Balthazar had apparently moved into their living room, and there was a knock on the door painfully early. Sam answered it in his boxers and a Stanford U t-shirt. There was a blonde woman in an impeccable skirt-jacket combination and large dark glasses on the other side. She looked Sam up and down.
“Cute,” she said at last. She shouldered past him into the apartment, and called out in a loud, clipped voice. “Cassie-honey. Sorry to come unannounced, but I only just found out.” She turned to smile at Sam, and he was reminded of the times he’d gone to the aquarium with his Dad and Dean, and they’d spent hours watching the sharks.
Castiel had shoved himself into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that was ironed, and considering neither of them were caffeinated yet Sam felt his alarm bells stretch sluggishly and start to think about moving. “Hello, mother,” he said.
Sam waited for the alarm bells to go off, but they simply shrugged, pointed out that he was meant to be on holiday, and it was barely seven a.m. Sam pushed Castiel’s birth-mother back out into the hallway, and slammed the door in her face. “Come back after breakfast,” he yelled.
Castiel was frowning at Sam. “That was very rude.”
“You want me to invite her back in? Or do you want to go to bed and snuggle.”
“Snuggling doesn’t solve problems, Sam. It merely delays them.”
Sam stepped up to Castiel and wrapped his arms around his narrow shoulders, resting his chin against the top of Castiel’s head. “Maybe you should think of it as putting problems into quarantine until professionals who are trained to deal with them can be called in to assess the situation.”
“There’s not a person alive who can deal with my mother,” Cas moaned.
“Good,” Sam said, tightening his arms around his fiancé’s waist. “That means we can snuggle for all eternity.
“I don’t think that’s how anything works,” Castiel mumbled into Sam’s chest.
Balthazar, apparently awake and not enthused by this development, threw a shoe at them. They went back to bed.
*
“Why is she even here?” Anna moaned. Castiel had called her at the hotel and informed her there was a small hitch. She had come with a basket of whole fruits and some very sharp knives. She maintained that the two were connected, but Sam was very glad that he wasn’t the ‘small hitch’.
“Apparently she just found out,” Castiel replied over his morning coffee.
“I bet it was the notice Becky put in the paper,” Anna said with a sigh. “We told her it didn’t need a whole page, but she’d just found the sweetest photo of you two.” She smiled at Sam, a completely sweet smile that would put someone who didn’t know her better entirely at ease. “You hardly looked scared at all.”
“Tell her she can’t come,” Balthazar said, scratching his fingers through his bed hair. For a moment it looked as though he and Castiel were competing for the wildest hairstyle. “I am not redoing those seating arrangements.”
“Do you want her there?” Sam asked Cas. There was a long pause, and then Castiel gave the smallest of head shakes. “Right, okay. No big deal. It’s our wedding, right?”
“Right,” Castiel said, but he didn’t sound particularly hopeful.
*
Castiel rarely talked about his mother. She had been a beautiful, intelligent woman who had pumped out five children in seven years. Once she was done giving birth, she packed up and left. Occasionally there was a card, or a visit. Given the bitterness in Castiel’s voice as he’d listed the few times he’d seen his mother, Sam guessed that he had once been keen to know her, and had become jaded and bitter by her lack of interest.
So Michael had looked after them, Luc had sulked, Anna had grown up quickly to try and fill that motherly role, Gabriel had never really understood why suddenly everyone was so sad, and Castiel didn’t have any memories of her at all before her first visit when he was six.
“Why’d she leave?” Sam had asked, his arms around Castiel in the dark warmth of Sam’s bedroom, when they had been together for nearly a year.
Castiel had sounded perfectly level when he replied, as if he had come to accept the fact a long, long time ago. “We just weren’t what she wanted.”
Sam had wrapped his arms a little more tightly about his boyfriend, and wondered how someone so crazy could have contributed to making someone as wonderful as Castiel. Castiel had smiled at Sam as if he could read his mind, a fond twitch of lips, and they hadn’t spoken of her again.
*
The grand plan was to simply not give Evelyn the chance to ask permission to come to her son’s wedding. (Or, as was more likely, to talk loudly about going until wills crumbled around her.)
Castiel’s mother was back after breakfast, but phone calls had been made and Sam was able to see the Milton machine in process. Anna looped her arm through her mothers, and exclaimed, “You must help me find the right earrings for the wedding! It can be a gift for all of those birthdays you missed.”
Then Luc had been at the apartment at two when the women finally returned to whisk his mother off for coffee and a “Good old catch up, one free spirit to another”, with his arm wrapped around her fine shoulders and a hand at her elbow.
Gabriel had apparently intercepted them, talked loudly enough to drown out her own protestations that she really must see to Castiel and had then spilled his drink down her dress. “Just like old times, right ma?” he’d said with a grin.
She made it to the apartment for a fourth time, just as Sam and Cas were doing one another’s ties. “Evelyn,” Chuck said with a wide, uncertain smile. “You’re just in time to join us for dinner.”
And she did, seated down one end of the table with Chuck at the head and Becky sitting opposite her (in typical Becky fashion, she hadn’t noticed any tension, and was chattering away about how precious the Milton children were, calling Castiel’s mom “Evie” and winking at her like they were old friends). Then were Lucifer and Anna, with a date each (people Sam had never seen before in his life) by their sides, then Gabriel and an old high school friend he’d run into who was incredibly perplexed by the experience, and kept fidgeting in his hooded jumper and torn jeans. Sam and Cas were safely right down the end of the table, playing footsies and pretending they had plenty to talk about. They even managed to sneak off without anyone drawing attention to them.
“Two days to go,” Sam said, as he and Cas walked back to their apartment, holding hands.
“Two days until this becomes your life,” Castiel replied dully.
Sam squeezed Castiel’s hand. “Hey, you’ll have to put up with my family, too.”
“I’ll take bacon salad over my mother any day.”
Sam laughed. “Funny, Dean has the same opinion.”
*
And then the Winchester clan touched down, and family friends started rolling in, and as far as Sam was concerned, the population of New York had doubled. The day was filled with the wedding rehearsal, John and Bobby fidgeting in their suits, and Dean shooting smiles at Anna despite Sam’s warnings. Gabriel had won the fight to be Castiel’s best man, and was getting on famously with everyone under the sun. Nobody would rehearse their reception dinner speeches out with Sam and Castiel in the room, which had Sam worried, but apparently Castiel was used to such secrecy from his family.
“Is anyone going to say anything embarrassing?” Sam asked Ellen when he got the chance.
She’d given him a fond look, her mouth quirking as she tried to fight a smile. “Honey, I’d’ve thought you’d’ve known the answer to that by now.” Sam had pulled a face, and Ellen leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “We all love you Sam. Just remember that while your blood is up there making a fool of you.”
“Thanks, Ellen. Real helpful.”
And then the day was ending, and it was time for jeans and t-shirts, and “your last night as a single man, Sammy.”
“Dean, I haven’t been single for years.”
“Well I’m not going back in time for you, so get your party face on and let’s do this thing.”
*
For Sam’s bucks’ night, Dean had taken Sam, their father, Bobby, and Ash to the dimmest strip club with the bendiest girls he could find.
“Dude, you have noticed that I’m gay, right? I mean, I’m marrying a guy.”
“Yeah Sammy, but you’re the only one, and you need to take one for the team, understand? We’ll watch some Bette Midler movie or whatever later.”
Bobby and Ash had gotten into a very heated argument about which Bette Midler movie best represented her range, and managed to involve each and every one of the dancers in their debate. It got them thrown out of the establishment.
Ash had come to the rescue with “I know a place that stocks the best beers.”
They ended up in Germanic Club celebrating the twenty-first birthday of some girl called Dominque who kept screaming “I’m legal! Woo!” every twenty minutes, which eventually managed to pour ice on even Dean’s libido. But Ash was right, the beer was good.
(As for Castiel’s last night as an unmarried man... He had taken one look at his brothers’ wolfish grins, decided that survival was more important than masculinity, and asked Becky if she would mind organising his hens’ night. “I believe both a buck’s party and a hen’s night are traditional,” he’d said. And then Becky had hugged him and cried. Apparently they’d spent the evening making sweet’n’salty popcorn and watching Golden Girls. Sam was green with envy.)
*
The last day before the wedding was spent nursing hangovers, realising it was too late to worry about anything, and so Sam and Cas spent most of the day cleaning their apartment.
“No cold feet?” Sam asked as they climbed into bed. Castiel wriggled closer, and pressed his icy toes against the muscle of Sam’s calf, making him yelp. “That’s not what I meant!” he protested, but Castiel was climbing over him, straddling his waist and pressing cold hands and feet against the expanse of Sam’s warm skin. They wrestled, and did their best to keep their laughter down, and eventually Castiel was toasty warm against Sam’s skin. They fell asleep happy and content.