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Singing still feels like a girly habit, for all Dean belongs to the city’s Gay Choir. Not that Dean’s gay, he’s bi, but “Choir Of Dudes* Who Like Dudes* (And Possibly Others) (*dude here meant to indicate anyone who answers yes at least 51% of the time to the question “do you identify as a man?”)” is a long title.
So they just call it the Gay Choir for short.
The point is, Dean’s getting better at singing, and he’s getting better about letting himself do it too. Country songs and his dad’s favorites have always been fair game, but maybe someday, maybe, Dean will actually let himself admit he knows some Taylor Swift lyrics.
They do a lot more than just pop songs, though. Dean’s had to pick up some Spanish, some Italian, even one song with some Japanese in it, and learning foreign language songs by ear is always a special kind of hell. This month’s special hell is an extremely ironic type of hell: it’s Enochian, a language not even made for human throats. The song’s written out phonetically under the music, and they don’t even have a translation, only the general theme.
Dean does his level best to practice despite it all. He sings in the car. He sings in the shower. One late evening, daring himself to keep pushing his own boundaries, he sings it on the apartment rooftop. (He makes sure absolutely no one else is up there on the lounge chairs or among the potted plants that make up their community garden, but he does sing aloud in a place that’s technically outside.)
The Gay Choir’s performance gets closer and closer, and while the lot of them are definitely improving on the melody part, Dean’s still coming up blank when it comes to checking whether they’re pronouncing anything correctly.
With only a week to go, Dean swallows his pride, holds down tight on his nerves, and texts Cas to come over.
His heart’s fucking pounding as he paces up and down the rows of potted plants. Singing solo? Not his thing. Though Dean’s alluded to being bi, he’s not explicitly told Cas, and Dean’s never even referenced being in the choir.
And it’s not like he’s expecting Cas to go off on him. Cas has explicitly stated that he doesn’t care about sexual orientation, although Dean can’t fully remember the context, what with being kinda drunk at the time.
The point is, this’ll be fine.
Unless Dean’s pronunciation sucks, in which case, Cas will make it fine.
Provided Dean survives the embarrassment.
Before Dean can pace a rut through the roof and fall into someone’s apartment, Cas mercifully shows, flapping his way overhead before coming down into a walking landing. The angel does that little hopping jog he always does, folding his wings back and reining in the momentum; Dean carefully doesn’t think about getting in Cas’ way to catch him, to turn the force of landing into the strength of a hug.
“Hey,” Dean calls over, raising a hand in an unnecessary wave. He comes around the cherry tomatoes and, fuck yeah, gets a hug anyway. Cas wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders, and Cas’ wings force Dean’s hands low, putting them in a slow-dance position.
“Hello, Dean,” Cas says into Dean’s ear before pulling back, his feathers fluffed with the same smile that lights up his blue, blue eyes. “What was so urgent?”
Dean’s wince becomes a strange sort of twisting, Dean’s body trying to turn away from the oncoming embarrassment.
“Okay, so,” Dean starts, “you’re not allowed to laugh.”
Cas dutifully nods. He plinks his wings away, tucking them into whatever realm of non-existence angels stick unused body parts into (Dean knows for a fact that Cas has three other heads besides this one), and says, “Of course.”
“There’s... this thing,” Dean makes himself continue. “That I’ve been practicing. I only know one half, though.” It’s a call and response kind of thing, or maybe more of a conversation. He’s on Side A of the choir, with Side B singing the answering bits.
Clearly confused but also entirely intent upon Dean, Cas continues with the serious nodding.
“I figure I’ve gotten as good as I’m gonna get without actually letting you hear it,” Dean says.
Cas cocks his head to the side.
Dean takes a deep breath.
With Cas still staring at him, Dean begins to sing.
His feet are grounded, his spine straight. He keeps his head tall and his shoulders down as the wind pushes at his back. He focuses on the melody and lets his eyes drop, listing sharply off to the side when Cas startles with clear recognition of the tune.
Dean does his absolute best, his breathing controlled, his volume appropriate, his heart still beating wildly out of rhythm. He’s over-enunciating, has to be. He’s making a mess of it, clearly.
Pushing through, he reaches the end of his first segment, the bit where the other half of the choir is meant to come in, but instead of letting Dean pause or maybe skip to his next part, it’s Cas who starts to sing.
Dean takes a turn at staring, because Cas is... Wow.
He’s wow.
His voice, rich and deep, easily turns guttural sounds smooth. There’s a fluidity to the syllables that the entire choir has failed to achieve, but Dean still recognizes it with a thrill. The hairs all over his body stand on end, and his accelerated heartbeat finally has an excuse.
When Cas reaches the end of the response segment, Cas himself is beaming, singing through the largest smile Dean’s ever seen on the guy.
Dean sings the next part, and Cas smiles even wider.
They grin and sing, back and forth, Dean’s human efforts against Castiel’s angelic prowess, and for the final portion, where the two parts come together, Cas steps forward and takes both of Dean’s hands in his.
It feels good. Feels right.
For the music, that is. It absolutely suits the song.
They come to the end, still holding hands, their arms a circle.
Somewhere, someone whoops their applause, presumably through an open window or from another rooftop garden.
Dean reclaims his hands, twisting away to scratch at the back of his neck, his raised elbow not doing much to block sight of his obvious flush.
“How long have you been practicing that, Dean?” Cas asks, again stepping closer, now moving around Dean.
When Dean dares to look, Cas is... Fuck, he’s pleased beyond measure. Despite the fact that Dean can’t compare, Cas is still looking at Dean as if at a miracle.
Dean shrugs, looking down. “Couple months, I guess?” He makes himself pull it together. Get to the point of this little get-together, not that it’s always good to see Cas. “How’d I do?”
“Very well,” Cas says, his expression and voice both impossibly fond.
With a reflexive smile, Dean persists, “No, c’mon, I saw you make a little face, there was a bit.”
Rolling his eyes, Cas admits that there was. He walks Dean through it at Dean’s insistence. The way Cas tugs at Dean’s jaw with thumb and forefinger is maybe a little more tactile than Dean thought they were gonna get, but he ain’t complaining, only blushing. At the corrections, obviously. It’s the corrections that have him turning red.
“But that’s it?” Dean checks. “Besides that, it was good?”
“Wonderful,” Cas confirms, and he clearly means it. Fuck if the guy doesn’t look impossibly sentimental.
“Awesome,” Dean says. “I really wanna get it right.”
Something in Cas’ expression freezes. “You got it right,” Cas tells him, tone abruptly careful. “The slight mispronunciation doesn’t mean you have to do it again.”
Dean blinks, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I...” Right, Cas doesn’t know: “I’m in a choir, Cas.”
“And?” Cas says, as if that couldn’t possibly relate.
“We’re preforming this,” Dean explains. “Y’know. At a wedding.”
“You’re...” Cas takes a step back, the warmth in his eyes turning to the wrong kind of heat. “No.”
“Uh. Yes?”
“You can’t perform that,” Cas tells him flatly.
“You said I did okay, I don’t-”
“It’s not a, a song for ‘performing’,” Cas says, whipping out the finger quotes, never a good sign. “Do you...” And here, Cas’ hands freeze in midair. “Do you not know what you sang?”
“It’s... an angelic wedding ceremony thing, right?” Dean asks. “What, is it not appropriate?”
Cas looks like he’s about to explode.
Dean leans back a little. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk to our conductor. It was the couple who picked the thing, the couple getting married, they’re the ones who wanted it.”
“They aren’t angels,” Cas says, pointedly not asking it.
“Uh, no,” Dean admits. “I’m getting that’s bad?”
Cas looks at him.
“Okay, that’s bad,” Dean confirms.
“It’s something to be shared, not performed,” Cas tells him flatly. “You cannot sing this.”
“I think they invited some angels, if that helps?”
The widening of Cas’ eyes and the flaring of his nostrils indicates a very solid No. Definitely the opposite.
“Okay, that makes it worse, got it,” Dean says. “I’ll talk to the guys about this.”
“You will not sing this,” Cas tells him with a level of authority that would have Dean flipping off anyone else. “I mean that, Dean. If you use it in such a way, that is the end of our- our friendship.”
“Okay, okay, I got it, jeez.” Dean holds up both hands, entirely failing to placate Cas. “I didn’t pick the song, okay? It’s not like I’m even all that attached to it.”
Each of Cas’ eyes becomes a thundercloud, the roar of the storm visibly held at bay between his teeth.
“Sorry,” Dean says taking another step back. “I don’t actually know what the words mean, all right? They just gave us the sheet music and what syllables to make when.”
Cas’ ire doesn’t lessen, but it does focus elsewhere. Whoever made the sheet music is probably gonna die, but hey, at least Dean gets to live. “I see,” Cas grits out.
Dean clears his throat. “So, uh. Do you still wanna-”
Without another word, Cas whips out his wings, takes off, and fucking flies away.
“...So that’s a no, then.”
Dean does his best. He promises Cas via text, gets no response whatsoever, and soldiers on through. He emails the conductor. He texts a couple of the other guys he’s gotten vaguely close to, just to check if anyone has a different email address.
On the next rehearsal, their last one before the wedding of two of their former members, Dean finally gets to talk to the guy.
“Hey, Travis, a sec?”
With a choir of over sixty guys (and demi-, semi- and sometimes guys), Travis clearly takes a second to place Dean. “If you lost your sheet music, extra copies are by the water cooler.”
Shaking his head, Dean restates the contents of his email: that he asked his angel best friend about the Enochian song, and the angel had been offended as fuck at the idea of it being used in a human marriage ceremony.
“I hear you and I see your concerns, but this is the set list we’re performing,” Travis answers. “Now, if you could take your spot-”
“I don’t think you get how pissed off I’m talking. I mean, tear you apart angry,” Dean says. “We’re stepping in something we shouldn’t be. The couple isn’t even angelic.”
“You’re not our first member to have concerns about cultural appropriation, but we have permission,” Travis states.
“What about cultural appropriation?” one of the other guys says, and about twenty more people immediately turn to pay attention.
“The Enochian song,” Dean says while Travis visibly holds his temper. “My angel buddy says it’s a bad idea.”
“We have permission,” Travis repeats.
One of their only sopranos, a diminutive black trans guy Dean knows only as “Soaps” (presumably short for soprano) pipes up. “Permission from who? ‘Cause it doesn’t work like that.”
“From an Archangel,” Travis says.
Immediately, the bubbling of dissent in the room cuts out, no one entirely sure of which way to step now. Archangels are basically species representatives.
“...Which one?” Dean asks, having a bad feeling.
“The Archangel Gabriel,” Travis says, someone else trying to say over him, “It doesn’t matter which one.”
“Uh,” says Dean, who has heard more than a few stories from Cas about the guy. Dean attempts to relay this, and then the argument breaks out in full.
In the part of it directly around Dean, there’s a little bit of raised voices, a lot of airing of unrelated complaints, two people accusing Dean of making Cas up (one of whom declares Dean closeted even in his own fantasies, since Dean isn’t even dating this “make believe angel”), and a lot of stress hitting a boiling point.
When everyone finally gets back on track, there’s a fuckload of glaring and crossed arms before they reach a vote. After a bit of back and forth there too, it’s finally decided that those who aren’t comfortable singing the Enochian portion of the ceremony can sit out of the entire wedding service, as it would be too awkward to have this chunk of the choir exit or remain conspicuously silent after singing the English portions.
Dean and a bunch of the other dissenting choir members head out then and there, hardly needing to stick around and rehearse for a wedding they won’t be performing at. It still leaves the Gay Choir a little over forty-strong. They’ll be fine, probably. Dean’s definitely no longer in the choir, but screw it. Cas is and always will be more important.
As for Dean and these acquaintances-turned-situational-friends, they grab three big booths in a diner. Dean eats pancakes for dinner while listening to Soaps talk about all the ways Travis has always sucked at feedback, and it’s a pretty good time, honestly. Still more high-strung than Dean would prefer, but way more relaxed than hanging out with the choir in general has ever been before.
When Dean gets home, arriving even later than usual from his night out, he texts Cas to confirm he won’t be singing for the wedding. There’s no response, but Cas can be weird about responding.
Trying to ignore the fact that Cas has been weird about responding for fucking days now, Dean shoves it as far out of his mind as he can (not very) and goes to bed.
The day of the wedding, Dean stays home and catches up on TV. He was only gonna make a small amount of cash, plus snacks, anyway.
The day after the wedding, Dean gets a text from Soaps in all-caps, reading YOU FUCKING SAVED US OMG LMFAO.
Soaps also includes a link to an article.
Dean reads it.
Dean fucking chokes.
Cas comes over, looking way calmer than Dean had last seen him.
“So, uh,” Dean says, sitting on the plastic lawn furniture that peppers the rooftop. “Thanks? I guess? Saved my bacon, there.”
“I read the article you sent,” Cas answers, tucking his wings away before sitting down next to Dean.
“Wow,” Dean says.
Shaking his head silently, Cas clearly agrees.
“44 Person Choir Accidentally Marries Itself” is probably the weirdest headline Dean’s read in a while. Everybody on Side A is now legally married to someone on Side B—no way to actually tell who—because the presence of an Archangel at the wedding made the Enochian song—the Enochian ceremony—binding.
“Are they gonna be able to get divorced?” Dean asks.
“I’m not sure,” Cas admits, frowning off into the city skyline. “They’d have to know who they’re married to first. But divorce is certainly an option. Once they know.”
“Huh.”
They watch the city. As the sunsets and the shadows lengthen, Dean’s need to ask grows.
“Hey, Cas?”
Without looking at Dean: “Mm?”
“Does having any angel present make it binding?” Dean asks.
Still not looking back at him, Cas nods.
“You sang back,” Dean says.
Closing his eyes, Cas nods a third and final time. He hangs his head, clearly awaiting judgment.
Dean reaches over.
Slides his fingers between Castiel’s.
Cas looks up at him.
“What do you think about dating a little?” Dean asks. “I mean, no need to jump through all those legal hoops if we don’t gotta.”
Squeezing Dean’s fingers, Cas rolls his shoulders, bringing his wings out. One stretches around Dean’s shoulders like a feathery black blanket, warm and surprisingly light.
“Yeah?” Dean asks. “If you wanna back out, that’s, I mean...”
Rolling his eyes, Cas tugs him in with one wing, and for the first time, Dean kisses his husband.