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“Weird choice.”
Cas looked at his surroundings and tended to agree. An afternoon wedding in a field of lively green grass laced with flowers everywhere – flowers stemming from the ground, flower arrangements at the center of every table, flowers wrapped around hair pins handed to the guests – all to the backdrop of a liquid orange sunset on February fourteenth.
It was, by all means, a weird choice.
Dean picked up a flowered pin from the reception table, examining it with narrowed eyes before tossing it back onto the table. “Lesbians.”
Cas slapped his arm as the bride waddled through the flowerbeds towards them.
“You came,” Charlie grinned and wrapped her arms around the both of them, at the same time, making their shoulders bump. Her red hair stood out against the white of her dress.
“We did,” said Dean. “Despite the timing. Do you know how many Valentine’s dates this wedding is squashing? There could be dozens of unborn children that will never be conceived today thanks to you.”
“I like to feel like the top of people’s priorities,” said Charlie. “Except, Gilda’s parents flew in for this and we had to adjust to their schedule.” She paused and narrowed her eyes at Dean. “What date did you give up for this? You haven’t had a date since overalls were in style.”
“No date.” He said this a bit too fast. He made up for it by insistently not looking in Cas’ or her direction. “No me. Other. Other people.”
Charlie glanced at Cas. “Sure.”
She drifted away to greet the guests, and Dean pulled Cas in the direction of the food. It was tiny and placed in the center of large white plates.
He was mid-bite into a grape-sized piece of sushi when he caught Cas waving at someone awkwardly. He followed Cas’ gaze and saw his own parents waving back from the chair area (fools – there was no food there). Dean supplied a quick wave of his own and ducked through the guests in the other direction, tugging Cas by the sleeve.
“They’re nice,” Cas noted, an amused quirk to his lips at Dean’s escape.
“Yup,” Dean said over a mouthful of tiny sushi.
“Are we not going to go and say hello?”
“It’s enough for them to know I couldn’t get anyone to go with me to a wedding on Valentine’s Day from afar,” said Dean. “No need to walk over and discuss it.”
“Hey,” Cas pointed at himself, affronted.
“Right,” Dean snorted. “Roommates totally count as dates at an actual adult people wedding. It's not lame at all.”
Cas muttered something and poured himself a glass of whiskey from a nondescript bottle on a nearby table. He took a long sip and put the glass down with a grimace. “This is apple juice.”
Dean leaned against the table and nodded at an old woman Charlie was greeting. “Who wears a bright pantsuit to a wedding?”
“With a purple feathered hat.” Cas pursed his lips into a smile.
“She’s rocking that hat,” said Dean and picked up a glass of apple juice. His eyes shifted onto a man in his thirties who, judging by body language, seemed to be related to Old Feather Hat. “Look at this guy. His clothes are so tight. Like he’s wearing his Bar Mitzvah suit.”
Cas assessed the man. “You couldn’t fit one tiny sushi in his pants.”
Dean choked on his juice.
“What? It would squish,” Cas said, sounding naïve, but Dean could tell he was trying to be funny. He had his I’m a little shit smile, small and hard to look away from.
He opened his mouth again, but Dean elbowed him and pushed himself upright from the table, clearing his throat. A couple was walking towards them which Dean recognized vaguely as family friends but couldn’t place exactly, wearing matching “I am going to talk to you now and you just have to deal with it” smiles.
“Congratulations,” said the man, and the woman slipped an envelope into Cas’ hand.
“Um.” Cas eyed the envelope. Then he eyed Dean. Dean squinted his eyes slightly in a confused expression he doubted anyone other than Cas knew to recognize. “Thanks?”
“So, how is it?” asked the woman, looking between them expectantly.
“…Fine?” said Dean after a short, perplexed silence.
“Wonderful,” she smiled warmly, and left with her partner. Cas watched them walk away, leaning closer to Dean.
“Dean?”
“Mhm,” Dean said without taking his eyes off the couple.
“What are they congratulating us for?”
“…I don’t know,” said Dean.
“We need to find out.”
“How? We can't just ask them ‘for what?’ when they say congratulations.”
Cas shook his head and opened the envelope clutched in his hand.
Dean almost dropped his juice.
There were 200 dollars in it.
“Did she think I’m the bride?” Cas looked down at his suit in confusion. Only the shirt was white.
“Should we… give it back?”
But there was no time. Another middle aged woman was already parting with the person she’d been talking to and waddling on platform heels towards them.
“Congratulations, sweethearts,” she said as she arrived and handed them a bag containing a cardboard box. Cas and Dean exchanged glances.
“Thank you,” Cas took the bag carefully. “Um… what for?”
The lady shook her head slightly. “Excuse me?”
“What is this for, if you don’t mind?”
“The wedding,” she said, as if the answer was obvious.
“This isn’t our wedding,” said Cas.
“Sorry?”
“This is a lesbian wedding,” Dean contributed. “It’s what happens when two women love each other very much.”
“It can be a confusing concept for the elderly,” Cas said apologetically, and Dean wanted to kick him for that last word.
The woman, who didn’t look older than 50, seemed a tad offended. “No, I know, honey. This is for you guys’ wedding.” She turned to Dean. “Your folks said you two finally got together and settled down.”
They stared at her.
“Finally?” Dean stammered.
“…Together?” Cas added weakly.
She smiled at them with a good amount of confusion. “Oh, the ceremony is beginning.”
She was right.
She left, and Cas started following, but Dean pulled him back.
“Let's open it.” He gestured at the box. Inside was a blue glass bowl.
“We got a bowl,” Dean’s eyes widened as Cas’ narrowed.
“It’s incredibly ugly.”
“I know! It'll fit right into our living room.”
Now carrying an unsettlingly hideous bowl and the even more unsettling information provided alongside it, they shuffled with the rest of the guests towards the rows of chairs parted by a white aisle. It was crowded, and Dean grabbed Cas’ hand as he shouldered their way through the crowd and slipped into a seat on the third row. He glanced at Cas, who nodded slightly, and then turned to the person sitting on his other side.
“Hey, mom.”
“Oh, hi, sweetie,” she turned around to him. John looked over her shoulder.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hi, dad.”
“Hello,” Cas leaned forward to be able to see them past Dean. John put his hand up in greeting.
“Cas, honey.” Mary’s eyes skipped from his face to the bagful of bowl in his lap. “So, um, Dean, honey, I have this app on my phone that I can’t get to work-”
“Why are people giving Cas and me wedding presents?” Dean cut in.
“Cas and I,” his mother and Cas corrected at the same time, and Dean shot Cas his nastiest look before looking back at Mary.
“Why do people think we’re married?” he demanded.
She looked at him blankly. “Huh?”
“Yeah, right.” Dean stared her down with his best don’t bullshit me look. The kind you give your kids when you know they threw their broccoli beneath the table while no one was looking.
Two rows down, someone shushed, and the ceremony began. Dean’s parents turned away to look as the brides walked down the aisle. John’s knee bobbed up and down nervously. Dean bumped his knee against his mother’s and glared at her deliberately when she turned to him.
“We may have,” she whispered unwillingly as the minister started talking, “told people you were dating, and they misunderstood us.”
“What?” Dean turned to Cas, but he looked just as horrified. “We are not dating.”
A man from the second row turned back to glare at him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grumbled at him. “Beautiful ceremony, glowing brides and whatnot, we all know how it goes. Listen,” he turned back to his mother. “I don’t understand how you can accidentally tell someone that a person got married.”
“When they didn’t,” Cas helped.
“When they didn’t,” Dean clarified.
His father whispered something, and Mary shook her head. They started to whisper-argue.
“Do you mind?” Dean hissed at them.
“Do you mind?” the man from the second row hissed at him to the sound of you can kiss each other and music starting up slowly as the brides did their thing.
John nudged Mary, and she fidgeted uncomfortably. “There may have been a bet,” she said, “Going around in our friends circle. About whose child will get married first. And we, uh, may have just won.”
"We thought it would be harmless,” John whispered over her shoulder. “Since you guys are already dating."
Dean stared at him in disbelief. “We are not dating.”
“No matter,” Mary placed a hand on his knee. “No harm done, right?”
“Yes harm done,” Dean protested, eloquently. “A lot of harm done.”
“To what?” Mary asked, genuinely taken aback. Has it not occurred to her that this might have actual consequences on his life?
“My dignity, for a start,” said Dean.
“Hey,” Cas protested. And then someone shushed them again, and when Dean looked up to see who did, it was Charlie, with a ring halfway through being placed on her finger.
“It’s ridiculous,” Dean said once the ceremony had ended, angrily munching on a breadstick. He and Cas found a place to sit around a table that was as far away from Dean's parents as they could possibly manage (which was not very far). “What were they thinking?”
“It’s only for one night.” Cas sent a nervous glance two tables over, at Dean’s parents. “Just let it go.”
“Really?” Dean looked at him. “You want to pretend to be married in front of everyone we know here just to avoid confronting them?”
“It’s a bit too late to avoid confronting them,” Cas muttered under his breath.
“You’re the one who told me to do it,” Dean muttered back.
The look in Cas’ eyes shifted into something careful. “It’s nice to know that they accept you as you are.”
“Accept me as I am?” Dean wheezed. “They took lying to all their friends over people thinking I’m single at a wedding.”
He took another breadstick and chewed it with a bit more force than necessary. Cas glanced around them. It wasn’t quite dinnertime yet, and a lot of the guests were walking towards the dancefloor.
“Not pretend,” said Cas. “Just keep our heads down and try to avoid a scene.”
Dean turned to him slowly, putting the stick down.
“Or… we could pretend.”
“What?”
Dean lowered his voice. “Pretend we’re married. Gain the respect of my parents’ friends for starting a family. Take their money. Take their gifts. Then return their gifts for store credit.”
“What you’re suggesting is fraud.”
“Why? We could be married. They don’t know.” He said that while looking directly into Cas’ eye, which was a little too much for both of them.
“Dean, you’re suggesting the only scenario where the illegal option would be not having a gay marriage.”
“Exactly. It’s totally in line with the agenda.”
Cas’ eyes narrowed at him. “The agenda?”
“Be gay. Do crime. Are you going to turn your back on your people?”
Cas rolled his eyes. But it was Dean’s idea, so they went with it.
They always did.
And so they spent the rest of the afternoon walking around at a distance from each other that made their hands brush together constantly and was way shorter than the distance they usually kept between them (which was just short of so close that their hands brushed together). And whenever someone approached, Dean made a show of leaning his arm on Cas’ shoulder, which was not a wholly unfamiliar touch as he did that quite often, but had made sure to not accidentally do it anywhere public up until now.
“It was beautiful,” he said when people asked, leaning into Cas, feeling the warmth of his body against the chilly afternoon and the disapproving scowl he sent the sky. “On a cliff that overlooked the ocean. My parents cried so much we ran out of tissues.”
Cas kicked his shin. Their audience sighed with content and pressed envelope after envelope and one ornamental glass pear into their hands.
“Too much?” Dean asked once their patrons dispersed.
“’My parents cried so much we ran out of tissues’?” Cas raised an eyebrow. “I’d say.”
“I meant the pear.” Dean waved a hand in his face dismissively. “You have no sense of humor.” He glanced at Cas, then did a double take and brought his hand to the base of Cas’ throat.
Cas tensed at the touch. “What are you doing?”
“Your tie’s twisted.” Dean fiddled with it, and Cas tipped his chin up rigidly.
Too close, Dean thought. Got it.
He wasn’t sure where this was coming from. They were roommates. They’d seen each other naked. They shared food. They’d tried to braid each other’s hair while drunk on Flaming Gorillas. Fixing a tie was pretty basic stuff compared to all those.
He was about to pull his hand away, when someone behind him crooned, “You make a lovely couple.” He snatched his hand away from Cas and turned around.
“Yes,” Cas said after a beat of silence. “We are… a couple.”
“Thank you,” Dean offered a more appropriate reply. A very old bald man looked up at them, leaning on a cane.
“Getting used to married life?” He asked, slowly, the way very old people do.
“Yep,” said Dean. Cas picked up a glass of something that, this time, definitely had alcohol in it, and sulked into it. “Moved in together. Rent costs a lot these days, if you were wondering.”
Cas sent him a sideways look, but it wasn’t like he was lying.
“But it’s worth it, isn’t it?” he hooked his arm around Cas’.
“Yes,” said Cas. “When you don’t leave the toilet seat up.”
“Hey now.” Dean looked at him.
“You asked,” Cas said, and sipped his drink.
The old man chuckled. “Men, huh?” he said, which Dean found vaguely offensive in several ways.
“It’s better than the smoke alarm going off twice a day because you don’t know how to cook,” Dean shot back.
“I’ve lost count of what you leave on the floor more often,” said Cas in return. “Empty candy wrappers or underwear.”
Dean gasped and let go of his arm. “That is it, mister. You are sleeping on the couch tonight.”
Cas raised the glass to his lips and bit back a smile.
“Right,” said the old man. “So how’s the sex?”
Cas choked on his drink.
“The, uh- the what?”
“Not ‘cause of the gay thing. Just, you know, marriage tends to suffocate those things slowly until they die.”
“Nice thing to say at a wedding,” Cas said under his breath.
“Is that my mom waving at us?” Dean said and dragged Cas away before the man could demand an answer to his question.
“People are so rude,” Cas said when the man was out of earshot.
Afternoon became evening as they made conversation with a few more old people, and Dean felt Cas become tenser and quieter beside him with every interaction.
“Can we talk?” He said eventually, after he’d made a hilarious ball pit joke and Cas didn’t even look at him.
“Haven’t we been?” asked Cas.
“I mean in private.”
They found a quiet corner behind a tree. Dean shuffled his feet. Now that he’d put himself on the spot he didn’t know where to begin.
“Are we cool?” he asked.
Cas’ eyebrows furrowed. “Not really. We’re spending Valentine’s Day scamming old people. We could probably do a bit better.”
Dean swallowed down the urge to roll his eyes. “Dude.” But if Cas was joking about it, he couldn’t be that upset. That gave him some confidence. “You just seemed sort of upset.”
“Oh.” Cas looked into his eyes, really looked, as if he hadn’t expected Dean to notice that. “It’s… it’s nothing.”
“Cas.” Someone walked past them on her way to the toilets, and Dean leaned in and lowered his voice. “It’s gonna be really hard to bullshit me.”
Cas appraised him silently. Deciding whether to trust him. He should shut up and let him do it.
He couldn’t.
“If the pretending to be married thing makes you uncomfortable, we don’t need to keep doing it.”
Cas took one short, determined breath. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
…Okay.
“Okay,” said Dean.
Cas plucked a leaf from a nearby branch and folded it neatly as if it were a piece of paper. This intricate work of folding into two required all of his eye contact. “I may have, eh, certain feelings.”
“About marriage…?”
Cas stared at the leaf. “About you.”
“Are these positive feelings, or-?”
Cas’ eyes cut to his, and the fierce blue of them shut Dean up.
“I was perfectly fine not exploring them and leaving things as they were. But all this pretending just showed me all the things I couldn't have and made it clear to me how badly I wanted them.”
Dean looked at him, confused. He almost wanted to smile. “What do you mean, can't have?”
Cas’ eyebrows twitched into a brief frown. “I don't understand.”
“Cas, I’ve put myself out there, like, a hundred times. You just never… picked me up.”
“I,” Cas shifted his weight on the grass. “I think I would have noticed.”
“You've spent Christmas with my family every year for the past five years.”
“As a friend,” said Cas slowly. …Right?
He replayed the past afternoon in his head. Dean leaning close in concentration, fixing his tie. Dean making jokes only he would pick up on. Dean touching him every time they talked to someone.
All friends stuff. And here Dean was, looking at him as if he were supposed to understand something more from that.
“I give you all the cookie dough in the Ben & Jerry’s,” Dean argued desperately.
“Because you're a good friend,” Cas reasoned.
“You're my plus-one at a wedding.”
“That doesn't necessarily mean any-”
“On Valentine’s Day,” Dean interrupted him.
“Oh.” ...Oh.
“I’m not saying something has to happen,” said Dean. “I’m just saying, like, if the only problem you have with us having the kind of relationship my great aunt betty kissed me on the mouth and slipped me two fifties for is that you can't have it, then that's... not a problem.”
Cas’ eyes shifted to a spot behind him. “I think Charlie wants to talk to you. She’s waving us over.”
“Really? That’s what you have to say to that?”
Still not looking at him – “It looks urgent.”
If a person could roll their eyes loudly, that’s what Dean was doing right now.
Cas waited at the exit.
It was mostly a cobblestone pathway that led from the field to the parking lot, and there was a big corkscrew board placed on an easel which displayed polaroid photos taken during the wedding. He searched for familiar faces in the pictures while Dean was saying goodbye to his parents.
There wasn’t a picture of them, but there were a couple with them in the background. One was taken when the afternoon sun had still lit the field – the two of them by a drinks table in the distance, Dean leaning against it, his head thrown back, laughing at something Cas had said. The other one was more in focus. He was just behind the brides as they shared a truly photogenic fairytale-esque kiss. Dean wasn’t in the frame, but by the look on photo-Cas’ face, he knew that's who he’d been looking at. The gentle touch to his cold eyes. The softened lines of his naturally-serious face. Something about the quality of his gaze, as though it were three-dimensional, the photo capturing the most nuanced shades devotion in his eyes. He’d never seen this look on himself. Felt it, sure. Every morning when Dean came out of his room topless. But he’d never seen it from the side.
Well.
It's fine.
He didn’t need this.
He spotted Dean walking towards him and dropped the notion.
“Easiest four hundred dollars, ugly bowl and ornamental pear I’ve ever made,” he said when he reached Cas. “We ready?”
“That bowl is not entering our apartment,” Cas said. “We’re throwing it out the window once we get to the highway.”
They walked to Dean’s car.
“Hey.” Cas stopped Dean before he walked around to the driver’s seat. Dean turned to look at him.
“I'm not sure where we stand,” said Cas.
“Well,” said Dean, and his expression was pleasant enough, but Cas could swear there was an edge to his tone. “I was the last person who spoke before we got cut off, so it's your turn.”
“That's not how conversations work.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Alright. Well." Cas cleared his throat, and shuffled his feet, and Dean’s chest pounded with violent heartbeats and a glimmer of hope.
And then Cas spoke.
“I’d rather not find out.”
Oh. “…Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just not sure it’s worth it.”
Dean looked stunned for a moment, but then he recovered. “You're right,” he said. “You’re right.” And tried to mean it. “We're good together. We're good at being roommates. We're good at being friends.”
“Right,” said Cas.
“We don't need the relationship stuff in order to be good at us,” Dean continued. He didn’t sound deflated. They were both imagining that. “The fighting, you know, and the drama, and the whole hot and sweaty making out stuff... going on dates, waking up next to each other... That’s way too complicated...” He trailed off when he saw the way Cas was looking at him. “What?”
Cas’ eyes skipped to his lips. “Kiss me.” He said it breathless.
Dean frowned. “What?”
“I don't want you like best friends want each other.” Cas’ fingers trailed up his shirt and curled around the collar.
“Um,” said Dean. “Ouch?”
Cas leaned in and looked him in the eye, leaving him to make the choice.
He wanted to find out.
He laced his fingers through Cas’ hair and kissed him.
And it was worth it.
“We’re keeping the bowl,” he said when they broke off, breathless.
“Not happening,” said Cas.
“It is happening. Get used to it.”
“Fine. Then we throw the pear. It’s either the bowl or the pear.”
“Cas, the pear goes in the bowl.”
“Fine,” Cas muttered as they got into the car.
They didn’t keep the pear.
Sometimes we don’t get to keep the things we want. But that’s alright.
As long as we trade them for store credit.