200. “Please pretend to be my girlfriend/boyfriend.”
Anon, I am so sorry this took so long. Hope it’s worth it. <3
hs!au, jock!Cas and nerd!Dean, minor homophobia
Dean’s phone starts to ring halfway through the season premiere of Dr. Sexy, and under normal circumstances, that would be more than enough reason for him to ignore everything to do with his phone until the hour is up. Despite that rule, though, his curiosity is piqued by the fact that someone is calling him, which isn’t something that anyone but his family does.
And then he sees the contact filling his screen, and Dr. Sexy gets paused.
“Hey, uh, what’s up, Cas?” He winces as soon as the words are out—can he really not even keep his cool long enough to answer the damn phone? Sure, he’s already sort of awkward around Cas, and sure, this is the first time his relatively-new-ish friend has called him, but that’s no excuse.
“Dean,” Cas says, and even though he normally manages to make Dean’s name sound intense, there’s a different sort of pressure behind it right now, which is enough to have Dean sitting up straighter on the couch. “I need to ask a favor of you. Are you busy?”
Dean eyes his paused program. “Not really. What’s up? What do you need?”
Cas takes an audible breath in, then says all in a rush, “Please pretend to be my boyfriend.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Dean isn’t sure if the swooping in his stomach is happiness or mortification. This can’t really be happening. Right?
“Cas, I...”
“Please, Dean,” Cas hurriedly interrupts. “I’ll do anything. Whatever it takes. I’ll owe you. I’ll bake you a pie every weekend between now and graduation. Anything.”
“This isn’t, uh.” Dean clears his throat, and nervously adjusts the way his glasses rest on the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t some kind of prank the football team put you up to, is it?”
Because while Dean doesn’t want to believe that that’s the case, he can’t ignore the fact that that’s a possibility. His friendship with Cas is already unusual, and not favorable by most of Cas’ friends—the words ‘jock’ and ‘nerd’ don’t often go together, despite how much Cas clearly doesn’t understand the typical decorum of high school cliques. Cas is on the football team and the soccer team, and plays varsity for both. Dean, by contrast, is the kid who’s friends with half of his teachers and vying for the title of valedictorian.
In short, they don’t mesh. And football players are dicks.
On the other end of the line, Cas is too quiet. Dean only notices it belatedly, and when he does, his stomach sinks. “...Cas?”
He’s listening so intently that he thinks he hears Cas lick his lips. “Dean. Do you really think so little of me?”
Dean flinches. “No, I—I don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t think you would do that, I’m just—” He inhales shakily. Cas is silent. “Why do you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?”
Cas’ answering sigh crackles over the speaker. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re questioning this,” is the first thing he says. “I shouldn’t make you feel bad about it. Sorry. I’m asking you to do this because I’ve gotten myself into a mess.”
“What kind of mess?”
“The kind where I accidentally came out to half of my relatives.” Cas sounds wry as he says it, and casual, as if the fact that he came out isn’t at all meant to be the point of his statement, as if that part is a given, already established, and it’s most definitely not.
Cas...
Cas is...
Maybe the fact that he’s angling for a fake boyfriend and not a fake girlfriend should have been Dean’s clue.
His friend continues on with his explanation, oblivious to his internal meltdown, “I defended gay rights to my very conservative uncle, and in the course of the ensuing argument, I also implied that I have a boyfriend. Which brings me to my current predicament.”
Dean chokes out, “Implied?”
There’s yet another beat of silence. “Alright, I may have said that I have a boyfriend whom I’m very happy with. And now they want to meet this boyfriend, because they’re confident that I’m lying. Which I am. Because I’m... well.”
“Single.”
“Yes.”
Dean takes a deep breath. He can hardly believe this. He can’t believe what he’s about to do. He turns off the TV, giving up completely on the last of his Dr. Sexy, and says with more confidence than he feels, “Alright. Tell me what you need me to do.”
~
Half an hour later, Dean is pulling his car up along the curb in front of Cas’ house. Cas’ large house, he can’t help but note. With its brick facade and white posts on either side of the entryway, it’s ridiculously cliche, and also incredibly terrifying.
Apparently in addition to missing the fact that Cas is gay, he also completely missed the fact that he’s loaded.
His nervousness doubles in strength.
He sends Cas a text as he makes his way up to the house, and the other boy opens the door before he even has to knock. And god damn, Cas looks good. His hair is as perfectly tousled as ever, but instead of being in form-fitting jeans and a t-shirt or varsity coat like he typically is when he’s at school, he’s in—well, jeans, still, but nicer ones, paired with a button-down shirt that’s just the right shade to make his eyes look so blue there’s no way it’s not illegal.
“Dean,” Cas greets, and he sounds... breathless? His eyes rake over Dean’s form, which prompts Dean to shift his weight nervously. “You look... You look great.”
It’s not true—Dean put on an argyle sweater to meet Cas’ request of dressing nice, and maybe he spent ten of his twenty minutes getting ready on his hair alone, making sure every strand laid correctly, but of the two of them, he’s not the one worthy of ‘great’. Telling himself that, however, doesn’t help to tame his blush as much as he was hoping. He knows that arguing the statement will only draw the conversation out longer, though, so he tugs at his sleeve and accepts it.
“Thanks, Cas. So are we, uh. Are we doing this?”
The reminder of why he’s there visibly dulls Cas’ mood, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Yes, I suppose we are.” He pushes the front door back open where it had drifted shut behind him, and offers a hand out to Dean. Dean hesitates only slightly before he takes it, and once he does, Cas is pulling him across the threshold, and there’s no going back.
Dean toes off his shoes before they get too far from the front door, letting them join a lineup of many others, and then Cas slips an arm around his waist and guides him further in. Dean’s heartbeat is so loud in his ears that he almost misses the soft words Cas whispers into his hairline.
“I’m sorry for this in advance, but don’t forget that I am extremely grateful, and will find some way to make this up to you.”
It sounds ominous, and Dean’s stomach twists even as he mutters in return, “You fucking better.”
They’re stepping into a living room before Cas can say anything more, and a dozen sets of eyes are immediately on them. Most of them look judgmental, some shocked, and one—Cas’ brother Gabriel, of course, the only person here Dean has met before—just looks downright amused. It’s utterly silent in the room, everyone clearly having stopped talking when they saw Dean and Cas, and that makes it awkward as hell. Dean doesn’t know what to do, or say, so he looks to Cas for some indication—
“So, you must be Dean,” someone in the room says, and Dean’s head snaps back around to identify the speaker. The man (older, balding, mildly revolting to look at) has a tight grin on his thin lips, though the expression is really more of a sneer, than anything. It matches the false positivity in his voice disturbingly well. “Castiel here has been telling us a lot about you. The boy who has led my nephew into a life of sin.”
Dean’s stomach plummets, but Cas only heaves a sigh and says, “Zachariah. I’ve already asked you to stop saying that. This is not ‘sin’.”
Zachariah’s lip curls in distaste, and the tension in the room somehow manages to thicken. “We’re each entitled to our own opinions, Castiel.”
Cas’ teeth grind audibly, and Dean shrinks into his side. It only takes a moment for it to pass, though, as Cas quickly takes to ignoring Zachariah so that he may introduce Dean to the members of his family who are present. Three uncles, two aunts, a smattering of cousins, and two of his four siblings—Gabriel and Michael, who is apparently the oldest. Even if most of them are obviously dicks like Zachariah, they all at least have manners, and greet Dean in return cordially enough.
(Interestingly enough, Gabriel turns out to be the weirdest of them all about it, saying after Cas ensures Dean remembers his name, “Oh, this is rich.” Dean frowns, not sure what the hell it’s supposed to mean, but Cas merely kicks his brother in the shin and drags Dean along, depriving him of the opportunity to find out.)
Once Dean has been told everyone’s names—and forgotten probably half of them—he and Cas squish together in the last remaining open seat. It’s halfway between an armchair and a loveseat, and while Dean would normally freak out over that kind of proximity with Cas, he doesn’t have much to lose right now, since they’re already pretending to be boyfriends. And if being pressed against Cas helps to steady his anxiety, too, well. That’s just a bonus.
They’ve hardly settled into the chair by the time Zachariah grows impatient, reclining back in his seat on the couch and eyeing the two teenagers opposite him with a smug grin. “Well, Dean,” he begins, “how long have you and Castiel been... doing whatever it is you’re doing?”
“Uh.” Dean shifts, fully aware of how tense Cas is at his side. The only positive is that not everyone in the room is actively staring at him—the aunts are whispering to each other, Gabriel is texting as quickly as his thumbs will allow, and the cousins (Uriel and Hannah being the only names Dean remembers among them) have clearly lost interest. But even with his audience down to half, it still takes far more courage than he cares to admit to say, “What we’re ‘doing’ is called dating, in case you somehow missed that, or don’t understand the concept.”
Cas sucks in a sharp breath. Gabriel sounds like he nearly chokes in an effort to contain his laughter.
Dean wets his lips. “And to answer your question,” he continues, the hard glint in Zachariah’s eye not enough to deter him now that he’s already going, “we’ve been together for almost six months. Since the beginning of the school year. Neither of us wanted to go to homecoming, so we went to the movies, instead.”
And they had; Cas had been asked to the dance by Meg Masters, but when he discovered that Dean both hadn’t asked or been asked and was going to be alone while all of his friends and classmates were out partying, he ditched Meg (who he admitted to not really wanting to go with, anyway, despite how baffling that notion was to Dean at the time), and insisted on hanging out with Dean instead. That was the start of their true friendship, and when they got milkshakes after their movie, sitting in a dim booth in the back corner of the Roadhouse, Dean had also come to realize just how hard he was falling for Cas.
It’s easy, then, to call that the start of their relationship.
Michael asks, then, only slightly less derisive than Zachariah, “Are your feelings for my brother genuine, or do you simply know that he comes from money?”
Cas makes a sound in the back of his throat like he’s going to interrupt before Dean has to answer, but for whatever reason, Dean doesn’t want that to happen. He agreed to come here and help Cas out of the mess he’s gotten himself into, and it that’s going to happen, then Dean can’t just be silent and let them both be stepped on. And Cas’ family really are dicks; he deserves better than this.
“First off, I didn’t know Cas ‘comes from money’ until today.” Cas winces almost imperceptibly, probably, if Dean had to guess, because that’s something he’s clearly kept a secret. Dean might give him a bit of shit for that later, but for the time being, he doesn’t give a damn, so he ignores his friend’s reaction. “And I don’t care who has money and who doesn’t. That’s not what makes a person. I have plenty of other reasons to love Cas, I don’t need that one.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Cas says lowly, sounding almost strangled, “Dean.”
Dean glances at him, unsure of how he earned that reaction—but then he realizes what he said, and the color abruptly drains from his face. He feels queasy. “I... I mean...”
There’s an unspoken question in Cas’ eyes, but far more than that, as well, and Dean doesn’t even know where to begin decoding all of it. He can’t tell what Cas is thinking, and not knowing what Cas is thinking right now is utterly terrifying. Gabriel lets out a low whistle, but even that doesn’t break their stare.
And then one of the other uncles, Raphael, breaks the silence. “What do your parents think about this relationship? About your sexuality?”
Dean looks over at the man and balks. He’s lost his momentum. Standing up to Zachariah and Michael was easy, because of nothing else, he could tell himself he was pretending, but now he’s said that word, as both he and Cas are keenly aware “I, uh... I mean, they...”
His blatant hesitation is like blood in the water, and Cas’ family latches onto it with a vengeance. Most of them look amused, like the question may as well have already been answered, and Zachariah sits forward with a sick sort of excitement in his eyes.
“Do they even know that you’re dating Castiel? Or has your guilty conscience insisted on keeping that fact hidden?”
Gabriel makes a derisive sound. “Guilty conscience, Uncle Zach, really, that’s the best you can do? Get off your goddamn high horse—”
“His parents probably don’t even know he’s a queer,” Zachariah adds, ignoring his nephew completely. Between the pressure of his stare, how close to home his question hit, and the fuck-up Dean just had with Cas—Dean needs to regroup. He can’t do this.
He quickly extracts himself from Cas’ side, mumbles an, “Excuse me,” and hurries out of the room and back to the front door. He steps into his shoes and slips outside, pointedly ignoring the outbreak of an argument he can hear in the room he just fled.
Christ, he shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have agreed to this, shouldn’t have gotten himself involved in this charade.
He leans against the railing of the small front porch and tries to focus on his breathing. Despite how much he’s starting to regret his current situation, it’s still not enough to make him ditch Cas. Maybe it should be. He’s already embarrassed himself, and probably made his friend’s situation worse, to boot. Why should he stick around?
He sighs and hangs his head. For Cas.
A few moments later, the front door opens and closes, and although Dean doesn’t look over his shoulder, he knows from the cadence of the footsteps that it’s Cas. Because of course it is.
Cas steps up to the railing beside Dean and mirrors his position, posture slouched and elbows resting on the wood. There’s a stretch of silence, and then Cas says, “I’m sorry for making you go through that. I had hoped that they would let your presence pass without harassment, but in hindsight, that was stupid of me. I should have known.”
Dean shakes his head. He can’t look at Cas, and studiously keeps his eyes trained on his hands. “Why’d you ask me to do this, man?”
He sees Cas shift in the corner of his eye. “I... I don’t know. I panicked, partially. I would probably consider you to be my best friend, and certainly my favorite. You’re the kind of person my parents would like—theoretically, at least. Kind and smart and charming. And I…”
He stalls, prompting Dean to finally look over at him. His heart is beating too loud, he feels too warm, and the things Cas is saying are sounding a lot more genuine than Dean would have ever expected them to. He swallows thickly and prompts, “Cas?”
“I just… I thought…” Cas closes his eyes for a brief moment, steels himself, and then pins Dean in place with an unwavering stare. “I thought it would be most believable if I pretended to date someone who I would be happy to actually date.”
All of the breath leaves Dean’s lungs in a rush. “Oh.”
“Dean, I’m sorry. I know you don’t feel the same about me, and what you said inside was out of context—”
Dean doesn’t need to hear any more than that. Operating on nothing more than instinct and following the spark of euphoria in his chest, Dean grabs Cas by his perfectly-pressed shirt, closes the distance between them, and crushes their lips together. It’s harried and crooked and far from perfect, but Dean couldn’t care less. Especially when Cas makes a choked sound in the back of his throat and starts to reciprocate. One of his hands slides up to cup Dean’s jaw, and then they’re steadier, more centered, and Dean couldn’t imagine it possibly being any better.
He has no idea how long they spend like that, but he doesn’t care, either. He only knows that when they part, his lips are tingling and his lungs are aching, and he’s never been happier in his life.
Cas grins, expression bright with awe and the most genuine excitement Dean has ever seen his friend wear. It has his heart skipping a beat, and the only thing that keeps him from kissing Cas again is the fact that the other boy is speaking.
“Dean,” he says, fingers curling into Dean’s hair, “will you be my boyfriend for real?”
Dean mirrors his expression without hesitation. “Hell yeah.”
Even if dating Cas means more exposure to his family and all the hell that apparently accompanies them, Dean couldn’t care less. It’s worth it. For Cas.
