Chapter Text
Sam kept his head down. There was no point in engaging with any of these people. He couldn’t stop them from taking his picture, but he was not about to make anything easier or more interesting. He hated that one of the hundreds of thoughts skittering through his mind was wasted on wondering how his hair looked. He shouldn’t care, but he did. It was nearly impossible not to care at least a little. These people made their money criticizing everything about him, and the thing everyone seemed to comment on the most was his hair.
The suit would probably be a point of interest as well, he realized with a bit of a cringe. Why had he let Castiel buy him this suit? It wasn’t necessary. His old suits were good enough. It didn’t affect Sam’s work one way or another which designer he was wearing, and now he was sure one of these photographers or their editors would be able to tell at a glance that this suit was Italian and expensive. Very expensive. More than Sam’s brother made in a month expensive. Maybe two months.
Were the shoes too expensive too? He didn’t even know. They had also been a gift from Castiel, so probably.
“I’ve waited three years to dress you like a real lawyer. Maybe I went a little overboard, but so what? You deserve to look nice! This new job is exciting! I want to celebrate! Besides, all the people you will be working with will be wearing this sort of thing. You need to dress the part.”
Dress the part. Sam sighed. It felt more like costuming a role. He loved the new suit and shoes, and he said so. “I just don’t want anyone thinking…you know…that I’m taking advantage of my relationship with you.”
Castiel had straightened his collar and smiled up at him. “You look like a wolf. I’m loving it.” Then he sighed too, and shook his head. “Sam, you can’t worry about what other people might think every time we spend some money. You have to relax. You’re a junior partner in a Manhattan law firm, Sam. You will be expected to dress and act a certain way.”
“I’m a junior partner at a small San Francisco firm owned by a Manhattan law firm,” he corrected.
His fiancé shrugged and kissed his cheek. “Same thing.”
“It’s not,” he mumbled, but Castiel never listened. He took hold of the man’s hands, silver rings and tattoos and all. “Just promise me you won’t keep doing this, okay? Buying me stupidly expensive things I don’t need?”
“There are ties I ordered.”
“Cas!”
“It’s not my fault! They are going to look so amazing on that gorgeous throat of yours.”
“Cas-“
“And a watch. Two watches. But you can’t be upset about that. A corporate attorney needs a watch.”
Sam threw his hands up. “How much did you spend?”
Castiel was busy staring at his throat. “Hm?”
“Don’t play!” He took Castiel’s hand again as it tried to wander. “Hey! How much?”
“An Orientstar Classic Skeleton. I don’t know much about watches, Sam, but it’s really gorgeous. The other is a gold Grand Seiko-“
“Castiel!”
The blue eyes looked up in innocence.
“How much?”
“The whole thing? Over all? Grand Seiko Snowflake. Is what I was going to say. It’s classier than the other. The Orientstar is like an everyday work watch, and the Grand Seiko is a meeting with new clients watch. The Snowflake’s a springdrive, Sam. It’s so smooth! You know how some lawyers charge by the hour and good ones charge by the minute?”
“Six minute increments,” Sam ground out between his teeth. “What does that have to do with-“
“When your clients get a look at this watch, they’ll know your time is even more valuable than that.”
“How much, Castiel?”
“Did I not say?”
“You’re working very hard to not say. And as you just pointed out, I bill by the minute and get bored easily. Spit it out.”
Castiel gave him a smile, but also turned on his widest, bluest-eyed stare. “A few thousand.”
Sam looked at him with cold suspicion.
“Per watch.” He stepped back and quickly continued. “Look, Sam, you can’t blame me. You need some of these things to make a good impression with the partners and their clients. You’re just starting out, Sam, and I want to be sure you have everything you need! We won’t keep doing it! It’s a one time expenditure! An investment in your career!”
The attorney turned and put his hand on the wall to steady himself. His breathing was a little shallow.
“Sam?”
“Give me…a number…” he growled between breaths.
His fiancé frowned up at him. “Sam? Please don’t be upset. Listen, give me a minute to think, okay? I wasn’t so careless that I didn’t pay attention to what I was spending. I don’t do that. I’ll give you a number.”
Sam nodded impatiently, even as his breath was growing ever more shallow.
“The suit, the shirts, the shoes…both watches…”
Sam’s eyes closed.
“Do I count the ties too?”
The man felt his knees abandoning him, and he sank to the floor. His breath was nearly gone, and he was gasping in tiny gulps at a time in vain.
Castiel dropped down beside him. “Breathe, baby! Breathe! Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry. Breathe. I’ll write it all out for you, okay? And I promise never to do it again, not-not like this. I wanted to surprise you, and I went overboard, and…I’m so sorry!”
Sam squeezed his eyes closed, and tried to focus on Castiel’s voice instead of his words, which, in spite of the artist’s best intentions, were just making everything seem worse. Slowly, he was able to blink, and slowly, his breath began to return to him.
Castiel was still talking when Sam tuned back in. “See? You deserve to have nice-“
A spark of anger cauterized the panic immediately. “Stop. Stop right there. I deserve to have nice things? Is that what you were about to-Just stop.”
His angel looked as though he had been slapped across the face. He had been sitting on his heels, but now he rocked back to sit hard on the floor. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Just stop!” Sam struggled to find his feet, and fought through the lightheaded feeling to stumble into the living room.
Castiel followed behind him. “Sam?”
“How much do you spend on your clothes?”
His lover stared at him. “Why does that matter?”
Sam shrugged, and dropped onto the couch. He would rather be standing. He had always preferred the advantage of his height in arguments, though he had never thought of it while arguing with Castiel before today. But he was also worried he might fall if he did not sit. “I never really stopped to think of it before. But how much does something like what you wear to an opening cost? One of those leather and metal things you find; what’s it cost?”
“It depends on what it is!” Castiel cried.
Sam could see he was becoming angry now too. There was probably a better, more calm way to have this discussion. But his oxygen-deprived brain was not supplying him with one. “Those boots. The ones you’re wearing right now. How much are they?”
“I don’t remember,” Castiel growled.
“God, Cas!” he shouted breathlessly. “You do! You throw money around just like your brothers! How did I never see it before?”
Quiet anger simmered in Castiel’s eyes. “I don’t think you know them well enough to say that,” he hissed. “And apparently you don’t know me well enough either, after all this time.”
Sam’s heart wrenched at the tone in his lover’s voice. “Cas, I just mean-“
“I know what you mean. But these things, that suit and everything else, they’re a gift. Because I’m so proud of what you’ve achieved, Sam. Do you think Dean didn’t go a little overboard when he bought you that briefcase when you passed your bar?”
He flinched.
“Of course he did! He could have gotten a nice enough one for forty dollars. Do you think he didn’t spend two hundred? Or more?”
Sam leaned his elbows onto his knees and stared at the ground. He wasn’t sure if he was about to hyperventilate again or throw up, but one of the two was probably imminent. “I didn’t think of…”
“How is that any different? It’s at a different scale and that is all. Dean dropped four or five times as much as he needed to on that briefcase, because he was so proud of you that he couldn’t stand it. Because you’re worth four or five times more than any other guy out there passing his bar exam!”
He lifted his eyes to try to glower at Castiel. “I’m not worth more than anybody else.”
“Of course you are!” Castiel exploded. “Because you’re ours! Because you’re the one we love! And this matters to you! You worked hard for this, and it’s all we can do to contribute. We cheer you on, we give you support. I make you sleep and Dean makes you eat. And when it’s done, we fight over who gets to buy you your traditional law school graduation gift.”
Sam swallowed hard. “You fought about that?”
Castiel sighed, and sat on the coffee table in front of him, and took his hands. “No. He said he wanted to, in that growly bear voice, and I backed down. He’s scary.”
He surprised himself by barking out a laugh. “You’re not afraid of anything.”
“I might be afraid of Dean.”
“You punched him four minutes into meeting him.”
“I might have. That was years ago. I don’t remember now.”
Sam smiled weakly. “That was the day you asked me if I wanted to get married.”
“To me,” Castiel clarified.
He couldn’t help laughing again. “Why do you do that?” he demanded. “You always specify that it’s you I want to marry!”
Castiel shrugged, and gave him a small smile. “You might want to get married. Maybe you don’t care so much who it’s to. There are people like that. Who just get married because they want to be married.”
“And am I like those people?”
Blue eyes stared into his for a moment, then Castiel huffed a laugh. “I don’t know. You’re kind of a family man sort of guy. Maybe you would have married Gabe if he had just asked in time.”
Sam’s brow lifted. “Take that back.”
“I’m just saying. I never really thought I would get married. Ever. I always knew that if I wanted that, I would be looking at a bunch of snobby rich women Michael picked out for me. I imagined it once.”
The anger and frustration and panic had all bled out of him, and Sam let himself sink back onto the couch, one hand pulling Castiel’s with him.
The man settled beside him happily. “I went through a non-rebellious phase,” he confessed.
Sam burst into laughter. “You know, most kids-“
“I’m aware,” his lover said dryly. “But I was rebellious most of my childhood, most of my teen years, and on through…well, now.”
He chuckled, and put his arm around his lover.
“But there was a time, before I met you, when I didn’t really know what I wanted. That’s a lie. I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t know if it was worth everything I would have to give up to have. And I thought, you know, maybe I could play the game. Others do it. You know?”
Sam held him closer. “You mean some gay men marry women.”
“Right. And some rich gay men marry rich women, because that’s what their families want. I don’t know what my dad wants, Sam. He doesn’t care about any of us, as far as I can see. But back then, it crossed my mind that…that he had gone to Michael’s wedding.”
“And so you thought…”
Castiel shrugged beneath Sam’s arm. “Kind of a stupid reason to get married. But one night, while thinking about it all, I opened up a bottle of wine, and just started researching.”
Sam looked down at him. “Researching? Researching what?”
Castiel snorted bitterly. “Everything. You know there are whole websites, whole communities out there, dedicated to helping gay men go through with heterosexual marriages? Everyone has a different reason for it. But it’s all right there, how to live the lie.”
“That’s awful!”
“I guess it’s the best some of them can do, when they don’t feel like they can live according to their hearts. So halfway through the bottle, I started researching women.”
He turned to stare at the top of Castiel’s head.
His lover had felt his muscles stiffen. “Yeah,” he laughed. “Turned the Social Registry into my own personal dating profiles. Used the blue book as a black book, just like Michael did. Just like Naomi did. They picked each other out of the lists of families, and so I could do the same.”
“God, Cas!”
“Easier than it would have been a generation ago,” he mused. “Even the oldest families have social media now. I scanned through registry profiles till I found eligible women, then looked them up and started assessing the potential of each one.”
Sam sat up and put his elbows back onto his knees. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Castiel sat up too, and patted his arm. “I was. Between the first and second bottle, and at least once after.”
“God, Cas, how could you stand to…”
“I wasn’t looking for evidence of the size of their inheritances, like Mike. If they were among the families, it was good enough for the Arch family. What I was trying to find was a woman who might be careless enough to let it slip in social media, just a hint would be enough, that maybe a man wasn’t really what she wanted.”
Sam turned his face to blink at him. “You…you went hunting for a lesbian. In the freaking Social Registry.”
Castiel laughed sadly. “We exist everywhere, you know.”
“God.”
“I wasn’t going to ruin some woman’s life by marrying her. I didn’t have it in me to make some woman miserable. But if I could find some woman willing to make herself miserable…maybe we could reach an understanding.”
“God, Cas!”
“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Castiel snapped suddenly. He leaned away, and shook his head, and Sam couldn’t be sure what that expression on his face was. “My whole life, God was Carver Arch. Even when he could be bothered to be in the same house as the rest of us, he couldn’t be bothered to speak to us. Sometimes I could get him to teach me about money, and I learned it all so well because it was the only way I could get him to talk to me at all. Mike and Luke were too busy competing for his attention, but I hung on every word he tossed me. I was the puppy that followed him around, while they were barking at one another, and so I was the one who was thrown scraps now and then. My mother was gone long before she actually died. I was raised by babysitters and tutors, like a fucking prince, and my brothers were always squaring off between themselves. If I wanted any kind of relationship, it had to be with God. So while I rebelled with my clothes and my hair and my music and my attitude in every other way, I was always silent when God was in the house, just in case he might want to speak.”
Sam stared at him. Certainly, bits of the story had come out before, over the years, but not like this. Castiel had only ever spoken of his father as either an absent non-entity or in admiring and respectful tones as a shrewd businessman and effective philanthropist. This bitterness was new.
“Anyway, the point is, the one and only time I ever considered getting married, I spent a wine-soaked weekend trolling the internet for women who hated themselves as much as I hated me. So we could live miserably ever after with the blessings of our families. And maybe God would show up to grace us all with his presence, before disappearing again.”
The room was silent for a long time, before Castiel took a deep breath and stood again.
“So anyway, you didn’t answer me.”
Sam did not look up. “I want to get married to you, Cas.”
His lover was nodding at him in his periphery. “Any idea on…when that might happen? Because…because you’ve said that for over three years now. And I believe you when you say it, but I can’t help starting to feel like maybe you don’t still believe it when you say it.”
He turned then, with a deep frown. “What? No! Cas, I just wanted to finish law school!”
Castiel continued to nod, but did not meet his eyes. “First, it was that you wanted to get into a good law school. Which you did. Then finish it. Which you did. Then pass your bar. Which…you know…you did. And then you wanted to get hired into a good firm. Which…now you have.”
Sam’s mouth was dry suddenly. He took a deep breath just to be sure he could. “I just want some time to settle in, you know? It’s not going to be an easy ride, Cas. A lot of really long hours, and a long time getting to know the partners and establishing myself with the clientele, and…”
The look on Castiel’s face reminded him of when the man had too much to drink and claimed the ceiling and floor were spinning. “Right. And that…that could take a while.”
“Just a while! It’s just a lot going on right now, you know? And you have a lot going on too!”
Castiel’s face seemed to darken. His voice was very deep and very quiet when he spoke. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t pretend like I wouldn’t drop anything at any moment to marry you. Don’t act like there’s been a moment since I met you that I wouldn’t have dropped everything to marry you. Don’t act like I haven’t just been waiting for you to say the word.”
Sam shook his head, and stood on those damn weak knees. “No. No, I’m sorry. I know, you’re right. I don’t know why I keep dragging my feet, Cas. I keep putting it off, and I don’t know why.”
Castiel still did not meet his eyes, and he looked as though he might be sick. “Maybe I know. Maybe you just don’t want to. Maybe you’re just still holding off to be sure I’m what you want. And maybe…maybe if you’re still doing that after this long, maybe I’m just not. Maybe after all this time, you want to get married, but you’re realizing…not to me.”
He grabbed hold of Castiel’s arms and tried to make him look him in the eye. “Cas, no! I’m sorry, angel! Okay? That’s not what this is!”
But tears were already swimming in a blue gaze. “And maybe that’s why you worry so much about money. Because some part of you knows this isn’t going to last much longer, and you’ve always hated the idea of owing me money, and you think that if you finally admit that you don’t want to marry me, that-“
“No! Cas, stop. Look at me. No, please,” he pleaded when the blue eyes closed in a flinch. “Please.”
His lover peeked out at him through dark lashes burdened with tears.
“Let’s do it, okay? It’s silly not to just do it. The longer we put it off, the more irrational I get and the more insecure you get, and there’s no reason for it. It’s not fair to you, and it’s all more stress for me, and-and, Cas, let’s just pick a date. Okay? Tonight. We’ll grab a calendar and order dinner in, and we will just pick a date and make plans.”
It was Castiel’s turn to have difficulty breathing. His tears dropped with a hard sob. “You mean that? You’re not just…just saying that because…”
Sam laughed. Excitement overwhelmed him all of the sudden, and flushed out all the anxiety with relief. “Yeah. No, yeah! Let’s just do it!” He caught Castiel’s gaze and looked into it with a wide open heart. “There’s no reason not to. Okay?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He threw his arms around his lover. “This is the right thing, Cas. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“I would have waited forever, Sam. I just…God, I was just getting so scared.”
“Nothing to be scared of. I love you, angel.”
He loved the way the man still shivered a little when he heard the pet name. “I love you, Sam.”
Now, two months later, Sam was hurrying through a street in Manhattan, with his head down, in a too expensive suit, to a car which would take him to meet with the wedding planner, and he could hear a photographer shouting to him.
“Mr. Winchester! There’s talk of a pre-nup! Is there a pre-nup, Mr. Winchester?”
Sam slammed the car door closed behind him and murmured to the driver to get him away from this place as quickly as possible.