Work Text:
Dean, inherently, is not a romantic. When someone struggles to even show and receive basic affection, it certainly doesn’t set them up to be the romcom love interest of your dreams.
Castiel, inherently, is a romantic. Maybe not in the traditional flowers and wine and dine way, but being an angel means that Cas loves in a bigger-scale than Dean is capable of processing.
Cas can say that Dean is the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on and it actually hold weight, because Cas has seen just a little bit of everything since the beginning of time.
It’s a little big to chew on, even now, but Dean isn’t Dean without an impossible desire to tackle obstacles.
He loves Cas, wants to give him that too big to chew on romance, and maybe that’s what leads him to stuffing a small black box in his coat pocket before leaving with him to go anywhere for the last three months.
Castiel has only been back from the empty for five months and technically they’ve only been together for four of those months, but any reason that typical couples have for taking it slow really holds no weight for them. They’ve been best friends for nearly twelve years now, they live together, and are quite literally raising a child together.
The point of it is, Dean’s pretty certain that no matter the capacity, he will be living the rest of his life with him.
Hence him swallowing down his own self-proclaimed allergy to “chick flick moments” and asking Sam to help him go ring shopping. It ended up with his absolute man child of a brother sobbing all over his favorite flannel and Dean might have shed a few tears when he was sure he couldn’t see.
He’s not sure what’s different about tonight, but he knows that tonight is the night. Hell, maybe even The Night, with a capital T and N.
So when Dean leans over to Sam while in the line to the Ferris wheel and mutters, “Distract Cas for me real quick,” even his brother knows what’s going on.
When he walks away he barely hears the tail end of Sam going, “Oh God, Dean? Seriously? Okay, okay.”
He quickly leans over to talk to the attendant and as discreetly as he can possibly manage asks if there’s any way they could stop his cart for a few minutes at the top so he can propose to his boyfriend. The teen who had been running the machine with more metal than skin in their face had perked up like a dog when you say treat and promises to do just that.
He makes his way back over to Cas, Sam, Jack, and Eileen with an air of nonchalance about him. When he distracts Cas with a quick arm around his hip and a kiss to his forehead, he shoots Sam a wink over the angel’s head.
You would think Sam was the one getting proposed to by the way his eyes immediately lit up.
The line moves, Cas and Dean have to practically sit on top of each other to fit into the cyan seat. The Ferris wheel is one of the smaller ones, but it lights up in flashing neon rainbows in ways that’s awe-inspiring in the night sky.
Dean has his arm on the back of the seat, wrapped around Cas in a tight squeeze. As always, the other man is right up in Dean’s personal space, head tucked under his chin. Cas’s arm is slung over Dean’s lap, hand tucked between his jacket and his shirt, dangerously close to the pocket holding the ring box.
They go higher up and Dean can feel his heart hammering in his chest, he can back out, he knows he can, but if not now then when?
They come to a shaky stop at the top and Cas lets out an awed sort of sound, his head perking up enough so that he can look at the entire carnival from a better perspective.
“Sweetheart?” Dean’s calling of Cas’s pet name earns him big blue eyes staring back at him. He quirks his head and Dean knows he has all of his attention in that moment.
“You know I’m not good at the feelings shit. I’ve never been any good at letting myself have what I want or showing other people what I want, but lately there’s been this persistent want of mine that I just can’t ignore.” He takes a shaky breath, the words fall out of him so quickly he can barely process how much he’s saying. He doesn’t know how long the attendant will be able to keep them there, he needs to hurry up, he knows this.
He just can’t stop.
“Beloved?” Cas asks, clearly tipped off that something is going on. His furrowed brows indicate he still doesn’t know exactly what that may be.
Dean soldiers on, “I want to bicker and drive Sam and Jack so insane that when we’re old they’re just anticipating the moment we keel over and die so they don’t have to hear our shit anymore,” His voice is a shaking, soft thing, “I want to try to be slick when I get jealous by tucking my hand in your back pocket even though we both know exactly what’s going on. I want you to kiss my knuckles and call me beloved until I forget a time when you used to call me Dean. I want so much with you Cas and I want it forever.”
“I want that too.” Cas says softly. His face lights up purple, then green, then blue.
Dean reaches into his pocket and that’s the exact moment it registers on Cas’s face, eyes beginning to fill with tears and bottom lip trembling.
He nearly fumbles the box as a burst of love hits him so squarely in the chest he can’t breathe. He doesn’t, thankfully, and holds out the little box.
“Cas, will you marry me?” He pops the top open. It’s a relatively simple ring, silver with carvings like ivy lining it.
“Of course I will.” Cas nearly sobs, folding in to press back into Dean. His face finds the curve of his neck and Dean brings up a hand to hold the back of Cas’s neck, pressing kisses all over his face where he can reach.
He tries to not get too lost in the moment, lest he drop the ring, but when Cas finally gives him a shaking hand for Dean to slide the ring on he lets himself feel the entire moment.
He knows it’s been far longer than a few minutes and he makes a conscious choice to slip the attendant some money for letting them stay up there that long. They kiss and mumble sweet words to one another for another ten minutes before they see the swarm of workers at the base of the wheel.
The Ferris wheel had gotten stuck, the attendant had never intended for them to stay at the top that long.
The proposal ends with them having to sit there for another twenty minutes, but Dean is still riding on a high when they finally all make it down the the ground.
“So?” Sam asks, basically vibrating with excitement.
It only takes Dean grabbing Cas’s hand and pressing a kiss to the metal that sits there for their family to erupt into cheers.