These Are For You (Don't Ask Me How Much They Cost)

Summary: Dean's at the point where he's just really pathetic, but he wouldn't know the meaning of dignity even if Cas threw a dictionary in his face.

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester

A/N: i wasn't even thinking of writing destiel at the moment but this idea hit me like a truck and i had to run after it and drop something else i was in the middle of writing.

disclaimer: i have only the barest idea of how retail and brand name clothing stores actually work.

warning for: more swearing than i hoped

He wasn't really sure how his life had managed to spiral down into the mess that it currently was, but it was probably curtesy to his Winchester fuck-up charm. It comes with the name. Dean had been prowling around the retail store looking for unaware customers who were "just browsing" to pounce on. (He hated this whole 'commission paid wages' bullshit that the company pulled. He didn't like bullying people into buying some ugly ass clothes that they would return the minute his shift ended, but the money helped to pay for Sammy's tuition so he could deal.)

Around the corner stood his anticipated victim. Dean's steps became more confident as he headed directly for the man who was looking through the shirts-only-douches-wear rack. Dean assessed him from behind: oversized trench coat, dark mussed up hair – definitely a try-hard douche. He quickly thought of a tactic in his head: greet the customer, continue the conversation with some bro shit, shove the topics of hot girls loving this brand in there, and presto: another sale that would make his rest easier at night.

In reality, it didn't work out like that at all.

Dean was right beside the customer now. "Hey there! I'm Dean –"

The customer let out a startled yelp and threw the shirt he was holding at Dean's face.

Dean was hit in the eye with the hanger, but he somehow managed to thoughtlessly complete the rest of his programmed greeting, "– Do you need some assistance?"

"Oh," the man said, his voice gravelly deep like he had been eating rocks all day. Despite the throbbing pain in his eye (right one), he felt a shiver run down his spine at the sound. "I'm sorry. You surprised me," the man said, leaning down to pick up the item he had dropped. Unfortunately, Dean knelt down at the same time and their heads knocked together violently enough that he felt an impending headache.

"My apologies, again," the man said, snatching the fallen clothing from the floor which left Dean crouched over, empty-handed and embarrassed. Dean slowly pushed himself to an upright position, his palm automatically pressing against the momentary pain in his right eye. (It hurt, goddammit.) "I'm very sorry for the trouble I have caused you today."

Yeah you should be, Dean thought without venom. Instead he said, "Yeah, it's okay. That's fine. Um, well." The hook and liner was gone. Now he just looked like a stumbling mess in front of a grade-A dick bag that didn't sound very sorry at all. He half hoped that this dude would tell him to get lost, but the other half of him told him that he hadn't made any sales today. (He fucking hates commissions.) The pain was sort of fading now, and he took a look at the douchebag that had managed to cause him so much misery in such a short time.

Whatever he was expecting, it sure as hell wasn't this 'hunky piece of heaven' as his co-worker Meg would call him. (He usually disagreed with Meg's description, but this guy took the cake. Or the pie.) The mussed up hair looked more like I just rolled out of bed than I purposely stood in front of the mirrors for hours to achieve this. The unfitted trench coat was more like a battered hand-me-down that was half adorable and half really, really hot instead of one of the many recent mass productions following the random ass trench coat trend that appeared out of nowhere. It was topped with chapped but full lips and a five o'clock shadow that left Dean unconsciously wondering how it would feel against his ass. Head tilted, his squinty blue eyes examined the suddenly speechless sales associate.

The customer continued to stare at him, and Dean realized that he should probably be speaking instead of engaging in a staring contest with the man. "Yeah. So. Would you like some assistance today?" he asked, trying to remember what he doing in the first place. Sales. Clothing. Commission-based wages. Okay, he was (maybe) back on track now. "Do you need a specific colour or size? We have an extensive selection that you can choose from. And if you can't find anything you like you can always check our online store and we can order for it to ship to this location free of charge."

The man was still squinting at him – eyes now focused at his nametag. "I just want this." He held out the shirt that he had thrown at Dean's face earlier – a plain grey V-neck with a dip so deep that Dean wondered if the category V-neck even did it justice. Definitely a douche shirt. "But there's no price tag on it. Could you help me out, Dean?"

Usually when customers said shit like there's no price tag on it Dean busted a vein. (He hated working in retail sometimes.) But at that moment, all he was thinking of was Could you help me out, Dean? He could imagine a whole lot of positions the two of them could be in for the man to ask that question. He snapped himself out of it – it was not professional to be having inappropriate thoughts about a customer, no matter how attractive they were. (He could always "discuss" it with Meg afterwards – no shame.)

"Yeah, sure! Sure," he repeated, trying to sound less like an eager puppy. The man handed over the shirt and Dean took it mindlessly before he realized that he could have just pointed at the large sign over the V-neck rack they were currently standing at. He faked looking through the shirt for a price tag and finally settled on pretending to have read something enlightening on the label of the shirt. "Oh, yeah. It's the same price as the rest of the V-necks." He pointed up at the sign.

The man's mouth opened slightly. "One-hundred and thirty-nine ninety-nine plus tax?" he said, sounding incredulous. Yeah, so Dean was like that too when he first set foot in the overpriced store. (His boss Bela told him that he would have a thirty-percent discount on all in-store items as an employee – like that would convince him to buy anything from here.) "That's…that's quite expensive."

Dean put on his trained well we are a brand name smile. "Would you still like to purchase it?" he asked.

The man hesitated, and Dean held out the shirt for him. He took the shirt and fingered the fabric gently, his expression pulled down and his eyes sad. "I suppose not," he finally said, putting back the shirt on the rack with a reluctant kind of resolution. "Thank you for helping me today, Dean," he said.

Dean nodded, not even caring that he had lost his chance at making a sale. He did care about the fact that this man was leaving and he hadn't even gotten his name. The customer was turning to leave when Dean said, "Hey, um, what's your name?"

He felt like he could smack himself for being so stupid. This was a retail store, not a fucking bar. Meg would have a field day if she witnessed the entire scene. He could already see her cackling from the sidelines at Dean's stupidity. Apparently the man didn't visit retail stores much because he nodded at Dean like it was perfectly normal to be asking for the names of customers whom you haven't even talked with for more than ten minutes. "My name is Castiel. It was nice meeting you," he said sincerely. Then he smiled for the first time (Cas's eyes went all soft and goddamn, Dean was gone) and walked out of the store.

Dean stood there idiotically for a few minutes before he collected himself. He looked back at the rack to see the grey V-neck that Cas had been looking at sticking out at an angle. There was another customer now, and the woman was humming quietly as she looked through the shirts. Her hand landed on the grey V-neck, and Dean felt his heartbeat quicken with panic. He couldn't care less about sales at the moment, and he immediately swooped in to snatch the V-neck out of her grasp. (It was Cas's V-neck – douche-y as it was.)

"Sorry," he told her with as much authority as he could muster. "This shirt has been pre-ordered by a customer and was misplaced. If you would like one of the same color, you may purchase it online. Have a good day, ma'am." With that lie firmly in place, Dean took the shirt and walked at a brisk pace to storage room before he could stop and think about what he just did. Thankfully, the only person working today who could give a single fuck about his lie (Hannah) was busy with another customer.

And Dean proceeded to spend the rest of his fruitless shift in the storage room wondering what he was doing.

He bought the shirt when his shift was over and ended up staring blankly at it from across his bedroom when he got home.

Cas was already there when Dean checked in for his afternoon shift the next week.

His heart leapt, and he was about to run over before he realized that the man was already being chatted up by Meg. He paused, narrowing his eyes at his kind-of-but-not-really friend. The girl was all smiles and seductive glances under her eyelashes (okay maybe that was just Dean's imagination, sue him), and Dean felt a flicker of possessiveness. Before he could think his actions through, he had already left his position at the cashier and headed for the pair despite the man heading toward the checkout with a huge pile of merchandise.

He heard a faint but irritated "Dean!" in the background (probably Hannah), but he chose to ignore it.

Meg was in the middle of saying something about some irrelevant shit when Dean cut in. "Hi, Cas. Are you back for the V-neck?" he asked cheerfully.

And then he realized that he bought the last one of the same colour and size.

And he also left it at home where it was hanging menacingly from his bedroom doorknob.

His smile stayed resolutely in place, but he felt like face-palming himself with his fist. Cas gave him a small smile. "Hello, Dean," he said, and Dean could already feel himself fucking up all over the place the moment he said his name. "Unfortunately, it seemed to have sold out. Now I'm just browsing the new collection of pants." He motioned to the table folded skinny jeans.

Meg was glaring at Dean. He could already hear her voice. What are you doing, Winchester? Dean only flashed her a quick grin that he hoped pissed her off. She wasn't laying hands on Cas any time now. Her eyes widened in understanding as she looked at Cas before she suddenly gave Dean a wicked grin. "Well, it seems you two know each other," she said, putting the emphasis on know with a wink to Dean. "Have fun, boys." She made it sound like they were going to have rabid sex all over the place and Dean glared at her retreating back, wondering how he was going to explain his way out of this to her.

He turned his attention back to a confused Cas. "So! Pants!" He sounded like such an idiot that he wondered how he even got this job. Cas was wearing the same trench coat that he had when they met and Dean felt like he could drool all over the guy. "Any styles you were looking for?"

"Just these," Cas said with a nod. He searched through the messy pile of jeans and held out a pair of skinny jeans for Dean. It was the slimmest fit that Dean had ever seen in his life, and he subconsciously looked down to assess Cas's waist size before looking up to meet his eyes again. (Holy shit, it probably looked like Dean just checked him out to anyone watching – probably Meg. Which he did not. Because he was supposed to be professional here.) "How much are they?"

"Oh, those? Two hundred."

Cas's expression dropped immediately. "American dollars?"

"Um, yeah."

With a sad sigh, Cas dropped the jeans unceremoniously back on the table. Dean couldn't even muster the heart to feel annoyed at all the folding and reorganizing he would have to do later. "Well, I suppose I will come back another time," he said, managing a smile at Dean that made him want to kiss the hell out of him. "I hope to see you again." Dean could have easily said something like Dude, we have a sale section at the back of the store but he chose to nod dumbly and once again watch the trench coat clad man walk out of the store empty-handed.

Dean headed back to his position at the cashier to see Meg equal parts annoyed and amused. "What in the world was that, Winchester?" she asked him. "Did you just let a potential customer leave the store without even sinking those claws of yours into his soul and making him buy at least one overpriced item?"

Yeah, his work ethic was kind of pretty bad recently. He could already hear Bela talking to him about how his sales were at an all-time low. "Dude didn't want to buy it," he mumbled. "Now go do your soul-stealing or whatever." He pushed Meg out from behind the counter and called the next customer over.

Thank god Meg left before his shift ended, because he bee-lined over to buy the overpriced skinny jeans the moment the coast was clear. (No doubt she would laugh her ass off if she found out what Dean was doing. Actually, even he didn't really know what he doing.) Hannah squinted at him in confusion when she saw his purchase but didn't say anything. Dean was grateful enough that he gave her a genuine smile and a goodbye opposed to his usual I'm outta here. Needless to say, it left the woman even more confused.

Cas came in every week on a Thursday afternoon. And no, Dean definitely did not creep around him enough to figure out his schedule. It was just something he noticed…after practically taking every extra shift so he could cover every day of the week. Each time he came in, he would stare despondently at his item of the day: a pair of shoes, sunglasses, another douche-y V-neck. Dean made sure that he was available to 'help' Cas every time. When the man would inevitably leave barehanded, Dean would surreptitiously swipe the items into the storage room where he could wait until Meg left before he bought them.

At first he didn't know why he was buying all these things. Yeah, so Cas seemed to want to buy them but decided against it. So what? He scoffed at the idea of handing all the things that Cas wanted in a huge gift bag while saying, "Surprise! Would you like to go on a date with me?"

And then he realized that was exactly what he wanted to do.

He put his hands on his face and sat down for a while.

Hannah spilled the beans the moment Dean returned from the storage room after stashing away another one of Cas's stuff. (Yeah, he was buying it for the man. No shame in admitting – right?) "I've been meaning to ask you, Dean," she began, and Dean felt his heart sinking. His eyes darted to Meg to see that she was nearby organizing the messy pile of clothing that a mom and her children had left behind. She was well within earshot and had to be eavesdropping. Hannah plowed on, "Why are you storing away the items that the trench coat wearing customer has looked at and then buying them as soon as Meg finishes her shift?"

He didn't even have time to open his mouth before he heard Meg exclaim. "What?"

She had dropped all pretense of folding the clothes and was now staring at Dean in amusement and astonishment. "Um," Dean began. "I can explain."

She took one look at his deer-in-the-headlights expression and burst out laughing. "To think that I would see the day when the mighty Winchester is whipped enough that he goes around buying designer brands for them."

"Shut up!" Dean hissed, feeling more embarrassed than angry at her statement because she was kind of really telling the truth here. If Sam were here, Dean imagined he would be sporting the biggest bitchface the world would ever see. ("Are you kidding me, Dean? Do you even know his name?" "Of course I know his name! It's Cas. Tiel. Castiel, I mean." "Yeah, so do you know anything else besides his name?" "Well…")

Now Hannah was looking at him with an expression of utmost seriousness. "You are in love with said customer?" she implored.

That was going a little too far, and Dean felt himself flush at her question. "No! I mean, well, I'm just thinking that if I, you know, just try things out and stuff…" He wasn't making sense anymore. Before he could improve his statement with more bullshit, a particularly raucous family walked into the store. Meg smirked at him before she walked off to assist them and Hannah had already turned back to restocking the returned merchandise.

Whatever – Dean was going to give Cas all the things he bought him in a large gift bag the next time he saw him and ask him out for a date. If those two had anything to say about it, they could tell him after he spent a well-earned night (literally – Cas was squeezing over five hundred bucks out of him at this point.) in Cas's bedroom.

Now that he thought about it, he sure as hell sounded like he was trying to get Cas from the sugar daddy angle.

Cas didn't show up next Thursday, but some douche ass douche did.

Skinny jeans, douche-y V-neck, fucking sunglasses when it was foggy outside, topped with a British accent that Dean was certain it was faux. He could hear the guy talking to someone on the phone from all the way at back. Unfortunately, all his co-workers were occupied at the moment which left Dean to deal with him.

He plastered on his standard smile and approached the guy who was just hanging up. "Hey there. I'm Dean. Would you like some assistance?" Please, for the love of god, please say no.

The guy grinned at Dean and then proceeded to drag his eyes down Dean's body and then back up to his face. Dean's smile got more difficult to maintain. "As a matter of fact, yes. Castiel says he's well-acquainted with you, am I right?"

Dean felt a jolt at his name, and he narrowed his eyes at the douche. "Are you his friend?" Dean said, barely able to keep his tone cordial. What if he was Cas's boyfriend? He hoped not for both his and Cas's sake.

The guy's grin got wider. "Something like that." Definitely boyfriend. Dean felt his mood drop all the way down to rock bottom. In the back of his mind, he was thinking about the gift bag that sat behind the cashier counter, waiting demurely for a guy who already had a boyfriend. What the fuck, really. Dean hated his life.

"What are you looking for today?" Dean asked blandly, trying to bring it back to the topic of retail. There was no point anymore. At least Dean had kept the receipts of all his purchases. He would return them the moment this smarmy guy left.

"Just a gift for Cassie – Castiel," he said as if Dean didn't know who that moniker referred to. The guy definitely knew that Dean had a crush on his boyfriend by the way he was acting. Maybe he was just here to tell Dean to back off – that Cas was his territory. "Since you seem to see him a lot, I was wondering what you think he'd like?"

If he was asking Dean of all people what his own boyfriend would like, then he certainly wasn't a very good boyfriend. With every passing second, he wanted to punch the guy in the face. "Come this way," he said before turning around and leading the man briskly to the sales section.

He had planned on just ditching the guy at the back of the store and then heading to the backroom for the next thirty minutes. But then he started thinking about what he would buy Cas if he were his boyfriend, and he suddenly found himself rambling to the guy about their selection of ties. "I think the blue one would look great on him – I mean, I think he'll like it," Dean corrected, holding out the silk blue tie.

Cas's boyfriend took the tie and looked at it with slight interest before flipping around to look at the price. "This is too expensive," he said before shoving it back into Dean's hand.

"What? But this is – this is half priced with an additional fifty percent off!" Dean spluttered, looking from the tie to the man. If Dean went out of his way to buy a pair of two hundred dollar jeans, then his boyfriend shouldn't have a problem buying a brand-named tie at a pretty good price.

"I could get more at a lesser price," the guy said. "Well, thanks for your help anyway. See you around, Dean." The way he said his name made Dean feel like he was mocking him, and the sales associate had to restrain himself from yelling obscenities after the guy.

Instead, he called out for him to wait before he walked to the counter and grabbed the large gift bag. Stalking over to the bewildered man, he shoved the bag in his face. "Take it. It's Cas's," was his short explanation. With that, Dean turned and stormed into the storage room.

Then he looked at the blue tie he was still holding and decided why the fuck not.

Cas came in on Dean's Monday morning shift. He was bleary-eyed and looked in sore need of a large expresso. If it was possible, the man's hair was more mussed up than usual. Dean looked up to see him and then looked back down at the merchandise he was sorting through at the cashier counter. Then he looked back up again when his brain finally processed that yes, Cas was walking into the store in a path headed straight for Dean.

Dean stared at the smaller gift bag was still sitting behind the counter. He stared at it for a second and decided that there was nothing to lose. That and the fact that only Hannah and a college girl he didn't know very well worked Monday mornings. By the time that Cas had reached the cashier, Dean had lifted up the gift bag and shoved it in his direction. "Here," he said, his voice gruffer than he would have liked.

Cas frowned at the gift bag and then looked back at Dean. "What is this supposed to be?" he asked him.

"I got it for you," Dean said, his mouth on autopilot before remembering that this guy had a boyfriend who probably wouldn't appreciate his gesture. "I thought it would look nice on you. Just look at it first, okay?"

Cas's frown deepened, but he complied. He reached down into the paper gift bag and brought out the silk blue tie that Dean had bought on whim last Thursday. Now that Cas was holding it in his hands, Dean felt really, really stupid. He should have just returned everything he bought instead of giving it to his douche boyfriend. He also should not have bought another random ass gift that Cas probably wouldn't like –

"It's wonderful," Cas said, his eyes glued on the tie and rubbing his thumb on the silky texture. "Thank you," he said, putting the tie back in the bag and looking at Dean with a wide gummy smile and bright eyes. Dean felt like Cas could tell him to jump off a cliff at the moment and Dean would do it.

He snapped himself out of it, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. "It was nothing," he mumbled.

"No, it's not 'nothing'," Cas said. "I still haven't accounted for the other things you bought. Balthazar showed me when he came back."

Balthazar. So that was the boyfriend's name. It sounded douche-y and pretentious. Dean forced a smile and looked at Cas. "Yeah, well you looked like you really wanted them and I have an employee's discount and all." He shrugged like it didn't matter.

Cas smiled again. "Whatever the case is, thank you very much. Balthazar is very happy with the new additions to his closet."

Dean's brain short-circuited for second before it came back online. He stared blankly at Cas long enough that the man's happy expression was replaced with concern. "Dean? Are you all right?"

He finally found the words. "Balthazar? You mean the whole time I thought I was buying stuff for you I was just buying it for your boyfriend?" What the actual fuck. The thought of Balthazar grinning with glee when he saw all that merchandise. He should have returned it. He should have. He also should have expected it too, really. Seeing as Cas only wore the same trench coat attire every day, but Dean had been too blinded by his own stupid crush to even notice.

But then Cas was speaking again. "Boyfriend?" he asked incredulously. "Balthazar is my cousin." Dean took a moment to process that: it only made him feel slightly better, but then he thought about the Balthazar wearing the clothes that Dean bought with his own money. "Dean, are you all right? Do you need to sit down?"

"No, uh, I'm fine. Just peachy," Dean said, nodding fervently when all that was going through his head was I can't believe what I actually did. "I actually thought that I was buying all that stuff for you…"

Cas suddenly looked down almost shyly. "Oh, well. That…changes things, I suppose. I thought you had bought it for Balthazar, but now I realized you had never seen the man except for the day when he returned with the bag of clothing." He then looked back at Dean questioningly. "I'm just curious: why did you buy them for me?"

Instead of coming up with a cool remark that didn't really answer the question, he blurted out, "Because I thought you were really attractive and I kind of want to go out with you." Crap, did he actually say that out loud. He stared wide-eyed at Cas's face, wishing he could take the words back before everything backfired even more in his face.

Instead, Cas spoke the words that he thought he'd never hear, "I want that too."

"…What?"

"I would like to go out on a date with you too," Cas said, his smile growing wider. "The reason why I kept coming back to a place that was clearly 'out of my league' was because you were working here. I had originally come to buy a present for my cousin, but then you showed up. I thought that perhaps if I came back enough times then you would notice me, and I may be able to muster enough courage to ask you on a date." He chuckled. "It seems that we were both going through the same thing unbeknownst to each other."

Dean sure as hell was glad Meg wasn't here to see this moment. She would never stop making fun of it. He looked at the time on his watch. "So, my shift's about over. What do you say we check out that new place across the street?"

"That would be very nice, Dean," Cas said as Dean made his way from behind the counter over to the man. Dean waved goodbye to Hannah, and she nodded at him, a small smile making its way on her lips as the two left the store.

So yeah, Dean had spent a good seven hundred bucks buying brand-named clothing for Cas's douche cousin. But hey, he wasn't complaining anymore. Not when Cas was smiling and looking at him like that, and definitely not when he ended up moaning into Cas's bedsheets later that night.

The End

A/N: Thank you for reading! If you liked this fic, reviews would be very nice :)