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He almost doesn’t hear it above the chaos, the cheering crowd and the staccato bursts of the fireworks themselves. Sammy doesn’t notice it at all – he’s got his head tilted back, grinning at the sky, totally relaxed for once. Dean doesn’t like leaving his side even for a second, but he’s also been taking care of Sam for long enough to know that sound, and he can’t shrug it off. That’s not just plain crying, that’s terror.
So Dean follows the sound, looking back over his shoulder to check on Sam every couple seconds. He ends up at a bush, kneeling down, peering at a kid that’s tucked himself back in the branches, bawling.
“Hey,” Dean says.
The kid stiffens and looks, if anything, more terrified when he meets Dean’s eyes.
“Shh, no, it’s okay,” Dean says. “Where’s your family, kid?”
The boy leans forward out of the bush and points silently. The group he’s pointing to is large, overflowing with excited kids setting off their own fireworks, chasing each other with sparklers and throwing snappers at each other’s feet. The adults are reclining on camping chairs and generally ignoring them.
Dean hears the whistling of another round of fireworks going up behind him, and the kid cringes and scoots back into the bush. Dean glances over his shoulder to where Sammy’s sitting, over at the kid’s family, and back down at the boy. He sighs. He’s already getting nervous not being at Sam’s side in this crowd, but he can’t just abandon the kid now.
“C'mon,” he says, reaching out a hand. “Come sit with me n’ my brother.”
The kid stares up at him with wide eyes. Dean keeps his hand out and gives him his best everything’s-gonna-be-okay smile.
There’s a loud bang somewhere nearby – some idiots have obviously brought some illegal fireworks out – and the kid gasps loudly and practically leaps into Dean’s arms.
This isn’t exactly what he was going for. He rolls with it, though, rubbing the kid’s back soothingly and murmuring reassuring words into his fluffy hair. He’s small, but not as small as he looked cowering in the bush. He can’t be too much younger than Sammy, really.
When the kid’s stopped shaking so hard, Dean pulls back to look at him.
“Come on,” he says again. “Come sit with us.”
The boy nods finally. Dean leads him back through the crowd as he clings tightly to Dean’s hand. When Dean looks back, none of the kid’s family seem to have noticed he’s gone.
Assholes.
Sam looks up with a wide smile as they walk over.
There’s another loud bang, and the boy’s clinging to Dean’s chest again, whimpering.
Dean coaxes him down to sitting without letting go of him. When the boy calms down again, sniffling, he turns to look at Sam curiously.
“Hi! My name’s Sam. What’s yours?” Sam smiles again, softer this time, reassuringly.
The boy mumbles something, and both Dean and Sam lean in to hear better.
“Castiel,” he repeats hoarsely.
“You don’t like loud noises, huh?” Sam says with a frown. “Don’t worry, nothing’s gonna hurt you. Dean’s really good at protecting people.”
Sam reaches into the bag beside him and pulls out a cookie, handing it out to Castiel. Castiel’s face lights up and he grabs it, biting into it eagerly. His whole body relaxes as he chews.
“These make me very happy,” he sighs when he’s finished. Sam laughs and gives him another.
Dean shouldn’t feel so protective of this kid already. It’s very much not his problem. But someone has to care, right? His family obviously doesn’t. He’s apparently never even learned not to go wandering off with strangers or not to take food from them.
And now you’ve taught him to do both, idiot, Dean thinks with a sigh. Well, what was he supposed to do? Let him hide under a bush all night, terrified and alone?
Sam has him talking now, in between the bursts of fireworks. Dean can’t hear what they’re saying, but Castiel has calmed down considerably and while he still jumps and presses into Dean at each loud noise, he’s not panicking anymore.
They sit there for the rest of the show, Castiel snuggled up next to Dean and chatting with Sam, and Dean can’t shake the weird sense that this is right. That Castiel belongs here with them. Can’t help the swell of affection he feels for both of them when he looks over to see them blinking sleepily and beginning to yawn.
“Okay, guys,” he says. “Looks like it’s all over. Time to go. Cas, let’s get you back to your family.”
And even now, when Castiel shows up flanked by two complete strangers, nobody in his family seems to care. They don’t even look up from packing up their stuff. Dean feels like punching someone.
He’s just about made up his mind to wade in and start yelling at someone when a pair of thin arms wraps around him and Castiel is squeezing him in a tight hug.
“Thank you,” he mumbles when he pulls back. He stares at Dean for a moment, then nods to himself. He stretches up on his toes and kisses Dean firmly on the cheek.
Dean blinks in surprise. By the time he’s processed what just happened, Castiel has said goodbye to Sam and disappeared into the crowd of children.
The whole walk home, Sam can’t stop talking about him. Castiel is the same age as Sam – 8 – and will be going to the same school as Sam in the fall. He’s got six siblings, about a dozen cousins, and no friends.
“I told him we could be friends,” Sam says. His face falls suddenly. “But I guess we can’t really be friends if I don’t even know where he lives.”
“You’ll run into him at school,” Dean says, nudging him with his shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
“Yeah. And maybe he can come over sometimes,” Sam says, brightening again. “I can show him my books, and maybe he’ll play Mario Kart with us!”
When they get home, Dad’s still passed out on the couch, with what might be an entire 12-pack of beer cans scattered at his feet. He’ll never even know they were gone.
Sam’s exhausted from all the excitement and falls asleep easily. Dean, though, lays awake for a long time on his side of the room, thinking about lonely, scared little Castiel. He can’t put a finger on why he’s made such an impression on Dean already. They barely even spoke to each other, really – Sam’s the one he talked to. But he can’t get over the feeling that something important has happened to them all tonight.
When he finally falls asleep, he dreams of fireworks.
- - -
It feels a little wrong, coming back here without Sam, but he couldn’t get away from work to make the flight out. And anyway, Dean’s not sure he’d have the courage to go through with this with Sam there watching.
Cas still isn’t a big fan of loud noises, and none of them are especially patriotic, but the Fourth of July has stayed a special day for all of them all these years.
“It looks so much smaller than I remembered,” Cas says with a sigh.
“What, the field?” Dean says, looking around.
“No,” Cas chuckles. “My hiding spot.”
The bush is still there. It’s amazing enough that they’re still holding the annual fireworks show here after fifteen years, that nobody’s bought the land up and put a Wal-Mart on it, but that this one little bush has survived all this time…
Dean’s gonna go ahead and take that as a good sign.
“So that means that we were sitting right…over here,” Dean says, throwing the blanket out over the grass.
There’s not much of a crowd this year, but there are still plenty of kids running around throwing snappers at each other’s feet, and the nostalgia is almost overwhelming for a minute.
The sky’s just getting dark when the first fireworks shoot up into the air.
He’s planned the timing, the speech, how he should be sitting – had it all scripted perfectly. And now it’s all flown out of his head, and all he has is a pounding heart and sweaty hands.
He looks over at Cas as the fireworks burst, watching the sparks of color reflect in his wide eyes. A sudden surge of love hits him so hard he can barely breathe.
Fuck perfect timing. He can’t wait another second. He’s waited so long already.
He pulls the box out of his coat pocket with trembling hands.
“Cas?” he says, willing his voice not to shake.
Cas looks over at him to answer – and his jaw drops open in shock.
Dean’s not exactly sure how to take that.
He’s forgotten every careful word he’s rehearsed for weeks. All he can manage to get out, the only thing that feels right, is, “I love you, Cas.”
Cas just blinks at him.
“Cas, I…” Dean swallows hard. “Will you…”
There’s a loud bang somewhere nearby in the crowd, and once again Dean has a sudden warm armful of Cas.
“Yes,” Cas says, pressing wild kisses all over Dean’s face. “Yes, yes, Dean, yes!”
Then Dean’s kissing back, and the words aren’t important anymore.
“I knew it already, you know,” Cas says after they’ve slipped the ring onto his finger.
“Knew what? When?”
“Here,” Cas says. “Right before I kissed you that night. I knew I was going to marry you someday.”
And maybe that’s what Dean felt too, that night, that feeling he could never quite pin down.
Whatever it was, they’re here now, together, sitting side by side under the fireworks again, and it feels just as right and perfect as it did all those years ago.