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JUNE 2002
Dean’s car whips around the corner, tires squealing on the pavement. There’s a crowd gathered on the sidewalks in front of him, some spilling out into the street, but they quickly move aside as he blares through.
Pulling to a stop, Officer Winchester straightens his visor and exits his beloved police car.
Harvelle’s waiting for him.
“He’s over there,” she says, gesturing. “Bossman says we need one to protect the crowd from him, and one to protect him from the crowd.”
“It’s Captain, Joanna,” Dean says, stepping past her onto the sidewalk. “Not ‘bossman.’”
Because they’re both swept up in the crowd now, Harvelle can’t stick her tongue out at him like she probably wants to. She settles for a glare before following him.
Somehow, even with all the protesters, signs, and general confusion of the Boston Commons, he’s able to find the guy quite easily. The large crowd of enraged protesters surrounding him, yelling obscenities, probably helps.
“What’s he doing at a anti-war rally?” Dean asks incredulously. “In the middle of an anti-war rally?”
Jo shrugs, shouldering her way past a burly pair of men who stepped in her path. “Balls of steel, I guess?”
The protester looks to be around Dean’s age, maybe a few year older. He’s got a few days worth of scruff, threadbare clothes, the most indescribable case of bedhead Dean’s ever seen, and a sign that reads, IF YOU’RE ANTI-WAR YOU’RE PRO-TERRORIST. It gets like, a F- in creativity from Dean’s eyes, but all the same—in the middle of a peaceful demonstration in the Boston Commons, it might as well be a drop of blood to a shark, or a cape to a bull. People are understandably not thrilled.
There’s a small circle of grass surrounding the lone protester, so Jo and Dean wend their way to that empty space. Dean makes eye contact with the man and the strangest expression crosses his face—a little embarrassed, a little apologetic.
Which makes no sense. Protesters are nothing if not completely convinced of their rightness.
Dean wheels around and faces the crowd, putting one hand on his hip just for extra deterrence. They seem rightfully pissed off to have their demonstration crashed, but no one seems too upset (at least now that Dean’s looking around with the warning eye of the law). Jo goes to stand next to the protester, who is standing silently by his sign, patiently taking the abuse from the crowd. His shoulders seem to sag a little, maybe in relief, now that the two are flanking him.
“Hey, officer!” A man pushes his way to the front of the crowd. “You gonna arrest that guy?”
Dean looks over his shoulder at the guy, who is placidly watching the proceedings.
“Everyone’s entitled to freedom of speech,” Dean shrugs. “You’d all do best to just ignore him.”
The man shakes his head, and starts singing “This Land Is Your Land” loudly as he walks away.
This goes on for about fifteen minutes. The crowd swells or peters away, the man stands by his sign, avoiding everyone’s gaze, and Jo is staring at the guy with outright bemusement.
Around noon, a few things happen at once. A large group of college students are closing in, despite Dean’s loud warnings to back off—they want to debate the protester, are even more pissed off that he’s ignoring them, checking his watch. The man nods to himself after he checks the time, and suddenly reaches into his pocket.
Dean half-turns from the crowd.
“Jo—”
Jo is already reaching for her taser, but the man is faster. His hand whips out with—a can of soup.
“Dude, seriously?” Jo says. She sounds annoyed.
The man gives her an apologetic grimace, reaches into his pocket again, and brings out an army-style can opener. The crowd quiets down a little, like he’s a street corner magician. After an hour of inactivity, even Dean wants to know what he’ll do now.
He pockets the can opener, squares his shoulders, and walks back a few paces from Jo.
“Uh,” the man says, his voice deep and hoarse. He clears his throat. “Um, the blood of patriots!”
Dean can only watch in disbelief as he hurls the contents of the can towards Jo and the crowd behind her. There’s a moment of stunned silence as tomato soup splats down over their heads. Then, a roar of rage.
Dean runs forward and pushes back the angriest of the lot, voice raised in warning.
Behind him, Jo has a knee in the guy’s back, handcuffing him as she spits out his Miranda Rights. Her blonde hair is drenched in chunky soup.
“Asshole, do you understand these rights as they’ve been read to you?” Jo improvises.
“Yes,” the man says penitently. “I’m sorry.”
Jo only huffs a sound of annoyance and drags the guy up by his handcuffed hands. “Nice statement piece,” she says. “Gets you a free ride in the back of a cop car.”
The man submissively follows her. As he passes Dean, their eyes meet for a split second, and Dean can only stare. There’s the slightest trace of a smirk there—which is all manners of hot—and a good-humored look in his eyes. Like this is what he wanted to happen.
**
The next day, there’s a column in the newspaper about Castiel Milton getting arrested at peace rally at the Boston Commons. Dean reads it in the break room.
Turns out Castiel Milton is the son of one of the wealthiest families in Boston. His brother, Michael, is the richer-than-God owner of Milton Contracting—which is making absolute bank, supplying the military in the midst of their occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Michael Milton has a blurb released from his secretary, saying by no means does his family or his business actually support the war which is funding his business. To show his good intentions, he’s donating over one million dollars to the Red Cross, and an undisclosed sum to support veterans, as well.
Dean reads over the short article more times than he needs to. There’s no mention of Castiel again—his job, whether he has an apology. If, in a show of support, he had been trying to help his brother’s business in any way, he had actually failed.
Dean feels like he’s missing something.
**
SEPTEMBER 2002
Dean’s still a little sore from the day before. There was the annual football scrimmage between the District police and fire departments, all supposedly in good fun—not to mention to raise money for charity—but Dean has the bruises to prove otherwise.
It doesn’t help that Sammy, family rebel, had chosen to make a statement about his decision to buck three generations of Winchesters going into Boston PD by pretty much viciously planting Dean into the mud like he was a daisy. Even though it was a game of flag football. Dean was all in for a good sibling rivalry match but Jesus, Sammy could have had a lighter touch.
So even with the consolation prize of three rounds of beer bought by an apologetic fireman named Sam “Bitch” Winchester, Dean was still feeling a little bit out of it.
Oh, well. The job calls.
He and Victor are sent over to the victory rally of Jody Mills, the city’s first female mayor. The crowd turnout is great, and there’s the smugness, as always, of Boston being the “first” in the nation for absolutely anything (Tea Party, anyone?)—but of course there always has to be someone who disagrees. Apparently there’s some sort of heckler who’s causing trouble there. Dean and Victor are going mostly to make sure that the heckler isn’t dumped into the harbor, too.
“Big deal, you didn’t vote for Mills and she got elected anyways,” Victor grumbles. “You really need to have a protest over it?” Victor hates jobs like this. He says he didn’t get into the police force to be “glorified crowd control”—which Dean isn’t exactly bonkers about, either, but there are worse things. Chained to the desk kind of things. Paperwork kind of things.
Dean shrugs. “Apparently he just really, really wanted Crowley to win.”
Wrong. Or, maybe, a little wrong. Because the large sign that someone’s waving at the back of the crowd, over everyone’s heads, has nothing to do with the opposing candidate. No, it reads WOMEN SHOULD BE WINDEXING THE GLASS CEILING, NOT BREAKING IT.
“Oh, hell,” Victor says. “He’s so gonna get his testicles ripped off.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “What a fuckin’ idiot—”
They backtrack behind the crowd, Jody Mills’ victory speech echoing tinnily around them. The crowd is loud back here, both from cheering and from enjoying the pleasant sport of insult.
“Mommy leave you as a kid, huh?” Someone’s yelling to the sign bearer. Dean slips through two people and is finally facing the protester—
“You?” Dean says. “Seriously?”
Castiel Milton shrugs.
Victor marches right up to him, smirking a little, and takes up station right next to him. “You have a death wish. Or you’re a really kinky son of a bitch who wants women to line up and take turns aiming at your pecker.”
Dean holds Castiel’s eyes for a moment longer. He hasn’t seen the guy in months, although he’s pretty sure he heard Jo mention that Milton was arrested after picketing outside of an animal rights convention in August. Guy has a lot of feelings, okay?
Dean wheels around and faces the slavering crowd. “Nothing to see here,” he says valiantly. “Come on, get back to the speechmaking.”
Most do, with some nasty looks at Castiel. Dean shifts from foot to foot, looking around him, looking back at Milton. He’s resolutely holding his sign and squinting off across the lawn. As if sensing Dean’s gaze, his eyes flick over to him for a moment. There’s a slow, liquid second while he seems to look completely up and down Dean’s uniform. There’s a quirk of approval on the man’s lips, and Dean’s staring again.
It’s criminally stupid that a man could be attracted to Dean, and Dean could be attracted to a man, and they are kept apart mostly by the fact that Dean’s on duty and the guy’s a colossal dick. Oh, well.
Jody Mills’ speech wraps up in the next half hour, and the loitering crowd, with nothing better to do, is swelling around Castiel again, hurling taunts. Castiel bears it all with a martyred expression. Then his watch beeps.
Dean’s close enough to hear it, but he’s currently trying to talk down a seriously pissed off PhD student who would like to fulfill Victor’s prophecy of Milton getting kicked in the nuts.
“Listen,” he says. “I totally agree that he deserves it. But I don’t want to arrest you. Please, don’t give him the satisfaction, or me the paperwork.”
With a final dark look, she turns away and elbows her way through the crowd, and then Dean remembers about Castiel. He turns around just in time to see Victor, as well as some in the crowd behind him, get drenched with a face-full of water.
“Those are, um, the tears of babies left at home by their mothers!” Castiel says. He has a bottle of water in each hand and a resigned expression. Victor has Castiel in the grass, one arm twisted up behind him, within a second flat.
“Did he really just say, those are the tears of babies left at home by their mother?” Someone says to Dean.
He runs a hand down his face. “Yeah. You know, he really did.”
**
Castiel was silent and serious all the way to the police station, ignoring Victor’s gripes. He got marched in, booked again—apparently the sixth time in five months—and sent to a holding cell. Dean has the honor of uncuffing him, standing close enough behind him that he can see the tremor in Castiel’s shoulders when he breathes across the back of his neck.
“Trying to make a habit out of meeting like this?”
“Something like that,” Castiel says. Dean notices that the side of his right hand is dark with ink, like he writes so much that he permanently has a smudge there. He files that away for future reference.
“Into your master suite,” he says, gesturing to the small cell. Castiel steps in with dignity.
“His family always sends their lawyer to bail him out,” Victor says, sharing his findings with Dean in the locker room as he changes his damp shirt. “Apparently, they also find ways around it going on his permanent record. What a piece of shit.”
Dean can understand Victor’s frustration. For Dean himself, he never got off easy. Actually, having a dad who was a cop pretty much guaranteed he never got easy, lest Dean not learn how to be tough and Dad’s colleagues whispered about nepotism. It was annoying to see this Castiel Milton get off the hook thanks to family connections, but Dean’s seen a lot worse, too, in his seven years as a cop.
Dean’s still at the station when the family lawyer comes for Milton. It’s mostly a fluke—he’s out front talking to Nancy about planning a surprise party for Jo—so that’s why he sees Milton, pocketing his newly reclaimed wallet and phone, and slumped next to a tall, heavy man who’s whispering furiously in his ear.
“Your mother has asked repeatedly for you to show a little more discretion—” The man is saying. Castiel is slumped next to him, looking like he’d rather be back in the cell. His eye catches Dean’s and he looks startled, then embarrassed, by Dean’s attention to his lecture.
Dean lifts a hand in a half wave, smiling broadly, and Castiel looks away, scowling.
The next day, there’s an article in the paper about Castiel Milton getting arrested at the victory rally. Naomi Milton, his mother, is apparently a vocal proponent for One Million Moms, among other things—she recently released an essay reiterating her belief that women are best suited to the domestic role, the importance of respecting tradition. In the face of her son’s actions, though, she’s backpedaling in the hopes that they won’t reflect on her. She’s pledging upwards of $500,000 yearly to go towards womens’ scholarships in math, sciences or poli-sci at Castiel’s alma mater, Boston College.
Dean smiles as he reads over the article. He thinks he might be catching on.
**
FEBRUARY 2003
There are many places Dean would rather be right now, and here is not one of them.
Today was supposed to be his day off. He was planning on going to lunch with Sam and his fiancée, Jess, truth be told. And then he gets the bad luck of getting called in because apparently there’s not a single other fuckin’ police officer in all of Boston.
There’s a rally in front of the Moakley Court House today. Massachusetts is the first state to try to pass a same-sex marriage law, and there has been vocal demonstrations by both sides. Today, a pride festival in the lawn.
His trepidation is already mounting as to just who he’ll find that apparently is a danger to himself.
Outside the courthouse is packed with people. Dean looks around—people singing, waving signs, selling stickers and shirts. A small girl runs up to him, looks him up and down, and puts a sticker to the only place she can reach, against his shin—ALL LOVE IS EQUAL. A mom follows, ferrying the daughter away and apologizing. Dean just smiles.
“It’s fine,” he says. He’s not sure it is. His role is supposed to be neutral observer, which he’s normally able to enforce. It’s hard to do at an event that’s so pertinent to himself.
If the late Commissioner John Winchester saw him with this sticker, he’d probably suspend him indefinitely. The thought makes him smile.
And yet, in between the camaraderie of people singing and laughing and mingling, there’s an undercurrent of tension coming from the far corner of the lawn. There, a crowd rings a man holding a sign that says, GAY IS NOT OKAY . It’s not the worst sign that Dean has ever seen condemning gay marriage, but he’s struck by Castiel Milton’s face. His jaw is tight and aggrieved, and he’s looking off over the crowd with a narrow expression. He looks like it physically hurts him to be standing there.
“Oh, God, not this guy again,” someone behind Dean says. “He’s the worst.”
“Did you hear what he did outside the climate change convention?”
Dean never does hear what Castiel Milton did outside the pro-green rally to get himself arrested. He clears a path until he’s standing next to the protester in question.
“I see you’ve been keeping yourself busy,” he says.
Castiel barely acknowledges him, frowning off to the side.
“But seriously, I don’t know when my back-up’s coming. You wanna move somewhere else with less…everything?”
“I want to be where everyone can see me,” Cas says dourly. “You didn’t happen to see any camera crews, did you?”
“Uh, no,” Dean says.
The crowd backs off a little now that Castiel’s got a police presence. Most are happy to celebrate and mingle, but there’s still anger that Milton’s crashing the place with his sign.
“So, what’s the big showstopper this time? I don’t even want to know what symbolic bodily fluid you’ll be dousing me with.”
Castiel doesn’t answer, just rolls his shoulders. Dean notices that, even for February, Castiel is wearing nothing but a light jacket, no gloves. His fingers are red.
Which, he thinks, is a little weird. Inheriting millions of dollars might let you afford a winter jacket and some mittens. But hey, the guy has already shown he’s not the most normal person ever.
Dean shifts on his feet next to him. Most are giving Castiel a wide berth, but he’s attracting enough attention that, yes, Dean can see a man with a camera over his shoulder coming their way. It will work for their news piece, showing Castiel campaigning all by himself—a lone voice of dissent in a crowd of thousands.
“So, this stunt is going to get what, exactly, funded? ACLU? Human Rights Campaign?”
Castiel turns and gives him a surprised look. His mouth is slightly parted; a breath of white air filling the air between them.
“How—”
“So this is how you rebel against the fam, huh? Making them part with their dollars?”
Castiel delicately puts down his sign and turns to Dean. The camera man is still approaching, but Castiel only gives him a cursory glance. He’s looking down at his hand as he carefully curls it into a fist.
“Officer, I’m very sorry about this,” he says.
Then he decks Dean in the face.
“What the fuck,” Dean says thickly. His jaw stings from the impact. The crowd collectively gasps an “oooh,” people pressing forward to watch the action.
Castiel stares at Dean. “You can arrest me now,” he said.
“Why the hell did you just punch me, man?”
“I—” Castiel says. His jaw works for a moment. He seems unsure what to do—Dean’s not making a move towards him. “Are you not going to—?” He turns back to the cameraman, who shrugs at him. Castiel’s eyes then focus, thoughtfully, on the camera itself.
The next thing Dean knows, there’s a tall, cold body pressed against him and a pair of lips on his.
“Erguh?” He says eloquently. He starts to jerk back and he feels freezing fingers pressing into his neck, a tongue gliding over the roof of his mouth. Wow—no, wait, shit.
Castiel suddenly disengages himself.
“You were supposed to arrest me,” he says breathlessly. Victor suddenly appears, finally, and launches himself through the crowd and has Castiel in a horse collar, bearing him down into the hard turf.
“Does that count as assault?” Someone mutters. Dean wipes his mouth, still staring at Castiel.
“I don’t know, maybe not if he liked it—hey, Officer, did you like it?”
Dean’s not sure. He’s not sure if he was supposed to or not.
**
The kiss makes it on the nightly news. Castiel Milton is quickly identified, and the clip is creatively segmented. They edited out the punch, choosing instead to show Castiel throwing himself at a dazed-looking Dean, who stands there like an idiot, hands hovering over Castiel’s back, while Milton sucks his face off.
Interestingly, the arrest isn’t shown either. Dean gets a few calls of congratulations before he turns his phone off.
Meanwhile, Castiel’s being charged with assaulting an officer, twice. The bail was set at five thousand dollars—mostly, Jo quips, to keep everyone else on the streets from thinking that they, too, can have tongue sex with Dean and get away with it.
It’s all a bit of a laugh at the station until the Milton lawyer finally shows up to see Castiel around eight that night, and leaves within five minutes afterwards—no Castiel in tow. Word gets out that the Milton family refuses to bail him.
“Good,” Victor says. “About time the punk learns a lesson.”
While it’s funny to hear a thirty-year-old man get called a “punk” by Victor, Dean finds himself worried for Castiel Milton. He can’t help it. So he drifts away when he has a chance, and makes his way down to the cell where they’re holding Milton. He seems very forlorn there, sitting in an otherwise unoccupied block.
“Hey, man,” Dean says winningly. “Uh, how’s it going?”
Castiel takes a long moment to raise his head. “Oh. Hello. I’m sorry again about punching you.”
Dean leans against the bars. “And what about for kissing me?”
Even in the semi-dark, he can make out Castiel’s blush. “I—I think I lost my head. I was trying to get myself arrested, and that seemed the best way.”
“Huh,” Dean says. “So, mom and dad sick of your antics?”
“Something like that.” Castiel looks away darkly. “Apparently I’ve really done it this time.”
Dean watches him for a long moment. “So, explain something to me. Why not just donate money right to these causes, instead of getting yourself arrested and having your parents pay everyone off to keep the family name clean?”
“Irony, maybe,” Castiel says. “If you’re not aware, my family is the Boston equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church, although there’s absolutely no doubt of their convictions in this case. However, they’re also all in business and politics. They actually do care when the black sheep says or does something that brings their awful moral opinions to light.”
He lets out a long sigh and looks away. “Also, because I don’t have millions of dollars to pay forward, and they do. It’s the best thing I could come up with.”
“How have they not managed to catch on yet?” Dean wonders aloud.
“Oh, they did a while ago,” Castiel says dispassionately. “But money doesn’t really matter to them. What does matter, though, is their son kissing another man on television for the world to see. Therefore—” he gestures to the cell around him.
“Tough luck, man,” Dean says. “A whole night in the slammer. It’s almost like living amongst us plebs.”
Castiel looks down at his fingers and lets out one hollow laugh. Then he turns his back and slides into the cot. “I think I’m going to go to sleep now.”
“Dude, come on—”
“Officer Winchester.”
“Dean,” he says cockily.
“Officer Dean, I just chose to come out to my family after thirty years by kissing another man on national television. I’ve been disowned, I don’t even have fifty dollars in my bank account, let alone five thousand, and since I can’t pay bail, I’m told I’ll probably have to serve a minimum requirement of seven months. If you don’t mind, I’d really like to be left alone right now.”
Dean stares at Castiel’s slumped shoulders, feeling the smile slide right off his face. Ouch. He’s not sure if he’s ever felt like such a dick.
“O-oh,” he says. Castiel doesn’t respond, and after a long moment Dean walks away.
He returns about an hour later, bearing a grease-stained paper bag, two milkshakes, and the key to the holding cell. Castiel sits up, rubbing his eyes, as Dean comes in.
“Hope you like burgers,” Dean says. “And strawberry milkshakes. Also, dangerous criminal that you are, I hope I can trust the safety of my person in this small, enclosed space with you.”
Castiel gives a long blink. Dean thinks he could fall in love with Castiel’s crumpled face, his rumpled confusion. Instead of saying that, he chooses to share the bag with Castiel, letting him reach in and pull out a burger.
They sit on the cot together, side by side, chewing burgers in companionable silence.
“So, Cas,” Dean says, pausing to suck on his milkshake. “Not even fifty dollars to your name?”
Castiel nods, studying his burger. “I finally came into my own a few years ago. Decided to do what I wanted to for the first time in my life; go into writing. That was, obviously, without my parents’ support, so I’m also doing it without their money.”
“And no one else to bail you out?”
“And no one else to bail me out,” Castiel agrees morosely. “My fellow starving artists don’t exactly have five thousand dollars laying around.”
“Dude,” Dean says. “You’re really something else. A one-man brigade to right wrongs, end injustice, make sure that bad peoples’ money can fund good things. Jesus.”
Castiel gives him a close look, like he thinks Dean’s making fun of him. “The only card I had was my name. That’s something not a lot of other people have.”
Dean bumps his shoulder. “It’s a good name.”
Castiel smiles at him, a big smile that makes lines crease by his eyes. Dean’s staring again—at this point, he thinks he’ll never be able to help it.
“So,” Dean says, and coughs. “So there might be a way I could, um, work something out. Get your charges dropped.”
“Officer Dean—”
“Hey, no more protests from you. You won’t have to owe me. Nothing in return, I promise.”
Castiel nods, eyes intent.
“But, you know,” Dean says, lifting a shoulder. “If you wanted to, like, meet up again sometime, I wouldn’t be completely—”
He’s a bit more prepared for Castiel this time. He’s warm and soft and sweet and his lips taste like strawberry milkshake. Dean pushes him back on the cot, pulls his collar down, and learns the divots of his collarbone while Castiel sighs, content.
**
MAY 2004
Dean’s spent enough boring afternoons in the Moakley Court House, and for once he’s glad he knows the layout.
He and and Cas find an abandoned bathroom on the empty basement level, undecorated except for the length of mirrors lining both walls over the sinks, and finally go to town on each other.
Cas has been eyeing Dean since he saw him in his formal uniform, and although Cas always looks appealing, there’s something to be said for seeing him in a waistcoat and a silvery-blue tie. Dean would try to appreciate the view more, but they have limited time, and Castiel has his tongue down his throat, so priorities, and all.
Dean rips Castiel’s belt open, and somehow manages to one-handedly undo his zipper while he presses him backward against the wall. He tries to pull away to tell Castiel of this accomplishment, but Castiel takes that exact moment to plunge his hand down the front of Dean’s uniform, effectively silencing him.
They rut together against the mirror, Dean holding them both in his fist while Cas grips his hips and groans filthy things into his ear—what exactly he wants to do with Dean and his uniform when they get home, how many times, and on how many surfaces. Dean makes some incoherent noises of agreement, struck dumb by Cas’s low promises reverberating against his neck.
The feel of Cas sliding alongside him, in the tight slick squeeze of his fist, is exquisite. He adjusts his grip, rubbing his thumb just right along Cas, and as expected the other man’s knees give out, sagging forward into Dean with a gasp.
“Officer,” Cas says, breathless, shaking. Dean looks into the mirror over Cas’s shoulder, sees his back reflected in the other mirror, and Cas’s face—mouth parted, hair electrified.
He comes into his cupped hand with Castiel plastered against his front, hearing him panting against his shoulder, his fingers digging in tight at Dean’s hips as Cas follows, whining, jerking forward.
“Fuck,” Dean says, laughing. “We sure do know how to commemorate important occasions.”
“Yes,” Cas says, supremely put together, even now. Dean reaches past him to grab paper towels and they wipe each other off. Cas tucks Dean in with infinite care, straightening the folds of his uniform.
“How we looking?” Dean says. Cas looks in the mirror critically—their flushed faces, their wild hair. He makes an attempt to flatten it.
“Never mind,” Dean says. “Given the day, after all, everyone will expect it to be a newlywed glow.”
Cas turns to look at him and holds out his hand—his left hand, the gold band snug around his finger. Dean takes it. They walk together, nonchalant, out of the basement area, upstairs, and then finally out the front court steps—there’s a crowd of thousands out there, a rally of screaming people. Boston has turned out in droves today, celebrating becoming the first state to legalize gay marriage.
As Dean and Cas cross the threshold, the cheers start up again. Cas is grinning unabashedly, his after-sex flush becoming even brighter under the scrutiny. They stop at the top of the steps, and Dean draws Cas back in, kissing him fully on the mouth.
Something hard hits him in the back of the head—Sam, throwing handfuls of rice like they’re softballs—and there’s a fucking whirlwind of confetti and petals floating over the crowd. Dean will look at the pictures later. Right now, he only has eyes for Cas.
“Anything worth protesting, Mister Winchester?” He whispers to Cas. Cas gives him a warm look and pats his chest.
“Nothing at all,” he says. Dean’s more than happy with that.
**