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A devil wasn’t just a good Halloween costume, it was sexy . Red eyeliner? Come on. Dean wasn’t going home alone tonight, so help him god.
As someone who was certifiably obsessed with Halloween, Dean always went all out. But as a devil the potential was unprecedented. The horns. The red leather. Red fishnet gloves. What Dean had put together was enough to put grown men on their knees, if he said so himself. And he did say so himself. At least twelve times.
He was on a high for the first half hour of the party, a vodka soda perpetually in his hand as people showered him with compliments about his costume. He was leaning against the bar with his (not really) vampiric brother Sam when the first tragedy struck.
“You must be with the angel, right?” A girl with short red hair in a unicorn onesie poked at the red collar around Dean’s neck.
Dean blinked, swatting her hand away. “The what?”
“The angel!” She giggled. “He’s got wings and everything. The devil is a hotter look, though. You made the right choice. Strange though,” she rambled, sipping an electric-looking drink. “I saw him with the girl in the slutty dove costume. I thought they were together.”
After Dean got over the fact that a slutty dove costume existed on the same planet as him, he shook his head. “Oh, I don’t know him. He must be with the bird.”
“You’re funny!” Wow, this girl was wasted. “What’s your name anyway?”
Dean ducked away from the unicorn, grabbing Sam. He dragged his brother into a corner of the club.
“We have to go to a different party.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Someone’s wearing an angel costume.”
“So?”
“ So some chick just thought we were together !”
Sam snorted. “Bet he’s not as over the top as you.”
That was likely true. Dean spent two weeks picking out the perfect horns. His eyeliner was Gucci, for fuck’s sake.
Still, he huffed. “This is a disaster. He has a slutty dove.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means the night is ruined , Sam.” Dean was dumbfounded by his brother’s naivete.
“Well, I’m having fun here,” Sam shrugged. “If you wanna go, you can. But I’m staying.”
Dean groaned, and Sam smirked because he knew. He knew Dean wouldn’t go off on his own. What fun was that?
They dispersed back into the chaos and Dean kept an eye out for this aforementioned angel, but he was nowhere to be found.
He approached the Unicorn again. Her electric-blue drink was now a bright shade of purple. Dean tapped her shoulder. “Hey! My Little Pony!”
She faced him.
“The guy,” he started. The words tasted horrendous on his tongue. “The angel you thought I was with. Where is he?”
“Oh!” She stood on her tiptoes, looking around the space. Her eyes darted from the bar tap to the dance floor, but when her heels touched the ground again, she was frowning in Dean’s direction. “Huh! I’m not sure! That’s weird. You should be able to see the wings over the crowd. I forget his name, but he’s in my religious theory class. He comes every year since his Dad owns the club. Everyone knows him.”
Dean stared. “Everyone?”
She nodded, the plush horn bobbing on the hood of her onesie. “Ever since he and Gabriel showed up last year as Batman and Robin, they’ve been on everyone’s radar.”
Dean took a chug of the drink in his hand. It burned on the way down. “God, the gossip . That’s so middle school.”
Unicorn raised her eyebrows. “You’re the one asking about him.”
Dean glared at this horned embodiment of sixth-grade glitter and pushed past her to find someone actually worth his time. Definitely not the smart guy in an angel costume. Definitely not.
Somehow, though, everyone who saw him was making the same claim as the unicorn. The comments never stopped.
“ You must be with the angel! I saw your boyfriend by the punch bowl.”
Dean’s ‘boyfriend’ was not, in fact, by the punch bowl.
“You and your boyfriend have to head over to the bar across town. There’s a couple’s costume contest. You’re a shoo-in!”
Asking Sam to leave again was a hopeless fool’s errand, but Dean only moderately disproved of the sentiment.
“Wow! You two even have matching fishnet gloves! That’s so dope!”
They were intended to be a solo idea, and Dean suddenly wanted to shove them down his throat.
Every attractive man or woman that he spoke to was disappointingly supportive of his quote-unquote “relationship” with this other guy. If he was being honest, the acceptance of the world would’ve been delightful in almost any other context. Like if he was actually dating this academically inclined, handsome (probably) angel. But he wasn’t and, after striking out with five gorgeous people in a row, Dean was frustrated. His one-sided feud with this angel was verging on personal.
But he wouldn’t leave without his brother (wouldn’t dare ), and Sam was having a great time talking to some red haired girl in a witch costume. So, he was stuck. Dean supposed that Halloween just wasn’t going to be kind to him this year.
He sat at the bar for a while, sipping a martini that the bartender called a ‘Spooky Bomb’ and letting the fuzzy feeling soften him. Dean watched as Sam took the witch to the dance floor, and he chuckled to himself.
Well, good for Sam. Dean wouldn’t begrudge him happiness.
Dean scanned the dance floor. Maybe there was a guy blind enough to let Dean be the first biblical entity that he saw. Instead, Dean’s eyes fell on a short, brunette girl with feathers adorning her dress (if you can even call it that) and tiny white wings strapped to her back.
A slutty dove.
If the unicorn hadn’t mentioned it earlier, Dean wouldn’t have believed his eyes.
He looked to the person she was dancing with, expecting a costume that parallelled his own. Instead, he startled.
Iron Man?
Many years had passed since Dean had seen that movie, but even in his tipsy haze he was almost certain that Iron Man did not have a dove sidekick, nor was he an angel in any capacity.
Dean pondered for about two seconds before he put the pieces together and winced. Apparently, the angel was having as shit a night as he was.
At least Sam and the witch were having fun.
God, he needed a break.
He angled his way around the dancers and stepped outside the club.
The cool October air should’ve been jarring, but it refreshed him instead. This was the reset that Dean needed. A break to focus on getting his fucking shit together (What the hell was wrong with him tonight?). The first thing he saw, though, were huge wings.
The angel was right in front of him.
He was hunched over, seated on the bus stop’s bench. A halo headband occupied the seat next to him, his head was in his hands, and his white fishnet gloves were pressed into his eyes. His gorgeous white wings were hugging around his whole torso.
If Dean had one more drink in him, he probably would’ve told the guy off for ruining his night. If Dean had one less drink in him, he probably would have ignored him.
Instead, he chuckled.
“So,” Dean jogged to the bench, pushing the headband over and sitting. “Did you hear? We’ve got the best couples’ costume in this whole bitch.”
The angel lifted his head to look at Dean and… oh.
Oh.
Well.
The pirate was crying—crying big, soppy, dripping tears onto the linen of his pants. Somehow, even though Dean decided not to be an asshole, he felt like such an asshole. This guy—the jerk Dean had been building up all night—was a gorgeous brunet man with blue eyes and perfect skin who was crying on a bench.
“Oh, um…” Dean swallowed. He took off his horns and fixed his hair. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to, like…” He motioned over the angel. “Yeah. Sorry.”
To Dean’s astonishment, the angel chuckled. His laugh was as sad and dark and deep as the cold air, but it was real. Genuine. He rubbed the tears from his eyes and looked Dean up and down. “So, you’re who everyone’s been telling me about?”
“The one and only,” Dean shrugged, tried to turn on the charm that always gets him in trouble.
“I like your eyeliner,” Angel rubbed his face again. “I almost wore eyeliner.”
“Shame you didn’t,” Dean dropped his eyes to the street. A smushed candy had been tragically driven over.
Before he could hold a moment of silence for it, Angel spoke again. “I’m Cas.”
“Dean,” he told him. “Or Dean, the devil.”
Angel, ‘Cas’ Dean now knew, laughed again. It didn’t sound quite as sad this time.
“What’re you doing out here?” Dean asked. “What happened to that girl covered in feathers?”
The melancholy in Cas’s laugh returned. He kicked a rock off the sidewalk with his white shoe and it tumbled over the chocolate bar. “Evidently, girls don’t like it when their date is assumed to be gay by an entire club,” Cas looked at Dean for emphasis. “She said this is what she gets for dating a queer guy.”
For only half a second, a million alarms went off in Dean’s head. This gorgeous man was, dare he said, attracted to men? Were… were the Halloween gods on his side after all?
Then, the part of him that’s not the worst person in the world felt a different emotion: fury. He wanted to walk into the club again and scream in the face of that (lord help him) slutty dove. He could threaten her with the plastic red pitchfork strapped to his hip. It was a good plan. Foolproof.
But when Cas kicked another pebble and wiped his eyes, Dean decided to stay put. “Well, fuck her, first of all.” Dean crossed his arms. “It’s not your fault you have good taste in costumes and the people in that club have good taste in who you should be hanging out with tonight.”
“Is…” Cas looked at him, eyebrows raised, face blotchy. “Is that an invite?”
“From one gay to another gay,” Dean slipped in, locking Cas’s eyes. “There’s always an invite.”
Cas’s eyes visibly widened, but he gulped (yes, Dean actually made him gulp ) and shrugged. “Who am I to disobey a King’s orders? Even from hell.”
And Dean, well… Dean was in deep now, out there burning alive without a fire extinguisher like the fucking devil he is.
He tried not to let Cas’s choice of words waver him and decided to stand instead. “Let’s give the people what they want.” He extended a hand to Cas. “What do you say?”
Smiling, Cas leapt to his feet and, before Dean could process it, he was being led back into the club holding Cas’s hand. The fabric of their fishnet gloves intertwined together, and Dean vaguely wondered if this night was turning into the product of a fever dream.
Half the room erupted into chaos the second they stepped through the doors. Hand in hand with an almost-stranger, Dean heard cheers over the bass reverberation of the music. Sam and that witch had snagged a corner booth in the back left, and Sam was glancing around the dancefloor to smirk in Dean’s direction. Dean pretended that Sam’s mom-at-a-dance-recital-like existence wasn’t completely mortifying.
Cas squeezed Dean’s hand, though, and looked at him like he was Christmas morning. Dean vaguely remembered thinking it was too soon to feel Christmas, but the sudden light in this guy’s eyes didn’t match any Halloween horrors.
The homophobic pile of skin and feathers that Cas had arrived with scoffed, ass still against Iron Man in the center of the dance floor.
With her eyes locked on Cas until the last second, she spun on her heel and locked lips with the man behind her.
And oh. Wow. That was a low blow.
Dean looked at Cas and, for a second, that Christmas light was completely gone. Blacked out. The cheering of people around them, the booming of the music, the sloshing of drinks—it all felt like a low hum under the shadow of Cas’s eyes.
Dean felt an innate need to brighten them again, and got an idea in half a blink. He grabbed Cas’s arm and spun him in his direction.
Cas stumbled, confused. His voice was half-hollow. He looked pale, but curious. “What?”
“You wanna?” He squeezed Cas’s arm, eyes offering as they flickered to Cas’s lips. They were really pink, like… the color of flower petals or something. (What the fuck is wrong with Dean tonight. Jesus). “For the crowd?”
Dean watched the dove pry herself off Iron Man and smile smugly at Cas. Cas looked back at Dean, and Dean saw the way he flashed—the split decision, the flicker of light coming back to his eyes.
Then, he crashed his lips on Dean’s.
And, oh, if Dean thought he saw light in Cas’s eyes, it didn’t compare in fraction to the way it felt on his lips. Seriously, Cas was metaphysical. He was lightning sparking. Cas’s hands were on his cheeks, but he wasn’t sure if the heat all over his face was from that or the blood rushing to varying places in his body.
Dean grabbed frantically at Cas’s linen shirt (good God, a linen shirt? How the hell is that sexy?) and felt himself tug Cas closer. He didn’t realize people were cheering again until his and Cas’s faces were three inches apart.
Cas let out a staggered exhale. His eyes were all blown out and staring at Dean like he was a star. The light was back, and Dean was positive he was going to collapse underneath it.
“Someone told me about this thing,” Cas squeezed Dean’s shoulders. “The Roadhouse. It’s a bar on the other side of town by the university. They’re having a couples costume contest. The prize is a thousand dollars.”
“I heard about it, too,” Dean couldn’t believe he was able to recall anything other than the fluffy feeling in his chest. Cas’s eyes were still blown out. “Someone said we’re a shoo-in.”
The light in Cas’s eyes was an ignited fire now. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Dean inhaled to say yes, yes, absolutely yes , when his brain remembered he was a person with responsibilities and people he had to answer to.
“Sam.”
“What?”
“My brother.” Dear God. “My little brother, Sam. He’s here. I can’t leave without him and I don’t know if he’ll wanna go.”
Dean expected this enigma of a man to shrug and leave. Instead, though, he knit his brow, thinking. “We’ll drag him.”
“Huh?”
“We’ll drag him.”
And, well. “Sure. Fuck it.”
__________
Dean couldn’t tell if Sam agreed to switch locations because he thought the two actually stood a chance at this contest, or because his witch friend was kind enough to join them. Either way, Dean was glad to be standing on a (strangely sticky?) stage with his hand in Cas’s again.
There were fifteen couples standing with them—Shrek and Fiona, a pair of pirates, Jack Skellington and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas , the list went on. The costumes were sensational. These people must have spent ages planning and executing their outfits for this contest. Dean could only imagine the frustration they would feel if they knew that Cas and Dean, who met an hour ago and coordinated absolutely nothing, got the loudest cheer in the first round. According to the host, the other competitors needed some serious luck.
Five couples were eliminated in the first round and, quite honestly, they deserved it. Cat and mouse ears aren’t costumes. They’re accessories.
Rounds continued, though, and more and more people were removed from the stage. Another five couples, then another three until Cas and Dean were standing with two other people on that stage: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Kimye.
Halloween is quite the holiday.
The host, a lanky man dressed as a werewolf of all things, walked up to Kim. “Mrs. Kardashian-West, how you feelin’?”
She grabbed the microphone, smiling. Her voice was almost too similar to Kim’s. “Amazing! This is incredible.”
The audience clapped, and so did Cas and Dean.
The host moved the mic to Kanye West. “Yeezy, sir? Anything to say to your adoring public?”
This Kanye West was smiling bigger than the actual Kanye West had ever smiled in his life. “Yeah, man, this is sick. I can’t believe we’re this close.”
The werewolf turned to Dean and Cas. “And you two? Which side’s winning on my shoulder tonight? Good or bad?”
Cas grinned, “Bad, if I’m lucky.”
Dean choked. The audience laughed and whooped loud enough to vibrate the ground. Or maybe that was Dean’s brain dropping to his feet. He couldn’t tell.
The host took the mic again, turning to the audience. “Okay, people! Moment of truth! Make some noise for Kim and Kanye!”
The applause rang loud and jarring throughout the crowd. Cas and Dean looked at each other with grim expressions. The odds of them beating that… They were slim.
“Okay, okay,” the werewolf hushed the crowd. “Now make some noise for-”
He didn’t even get to finish. The audience boomed throughout the Roadhouse. The volume was so deafening that Dean and Cas actually jumped in surprise. Everyone was cheering with their hands in the air—even previous opponents from the contest.
Dean met eyes with Sam across the bar, who was jumping up and down and clapping with the witch from earlier.
The werewolf host motioned to Cas and Dean. “Ladies and gentlemen, our winners!”
Dean scoffed out a laugh, unable to believe their divine, god-like luck. Dean cheered, grabbing Cas around his waist and spinning him in the air. The wings got in the way and the tip of Dean’s pitchfork definitely pushed into Cas’s side, but it was the biggest Dean had smiled all night.
When they detached from each other, their eyes lingered for a second longer than they needed to before the host touched Dean’s shoulder. Their minds jolted back into the bar.
“So, gentlemen,” The host was grinning at them, werewolf fangs and all. “What’re you gonna do with your cash prize?”
Cas took the mic and looked at Dean, eyes so bright they were blinding. He beamed out a smile. “I’m thinking we could go on a hell of a date.”
Dean felt what was left of his chest turn upside down, and his face heated as the audience boomed again. Cas tilted the mic to Dean’s lips.
Dean at him. “Sounds good to me.”
Cas pressed his lips against Dean’s again, but it wasn’t for the crowd this time. Even on the stage, surrounded by dozens of strangers cheering for them, they did it for each other.