Sam was happy with his new life. He hadn't sat down and thought about his time in Stanford for a long time. Now he had Dean, Cas, and Gabriel. He had more pressing things to think about. Dean and Cas's wedding for one. He might be happy for the couple, but planning the whole thing was a bitch. He wasn't prepared for any of it. He'd expected wedding planning to be nice, adorable and just a lot of watching Dean fretting about the most girly things like what flowers to have at the ceremony. However, Sam wasn't expecting to be roped into figuring out the extraordinarily menial things like whether to have the napkins styled like the opera house or a swan. Gabriel groaned. "Why do we have to do this? This is their wedding, why are we having to choose what freaking napkins to put on the tables?" Sam sighed. "Hey if it makes the whole process less stressful for them, then I think it's worth it. Dean nearly bit my head off this morning because I told him that the cream tablecloths were just as good as the eggshell tablecloths. Seriously. It's like bridezilla, except he's not actually a bride." Gabriel snorted. He leaned back on the back two legs of his chair, sighing. Sam glanced down at the chair legs that were dangling above the ground. "You know, this is a lot of stress for something that's supposed to be happy. When we get married, we'd both better be really chill about it." Sam was successful in his goal. Gabriel reacted and fell out of his chair. Sam burst out laughing, ruining the opera house that he'd been folding out of the dark blue napkin. Gabriel glared at him. "Well geez Sammy if you're going to propose to me do it nicely, don't just say we're going to get married and make me fall out of my chair." Sam smiled and reached over to help his boyfriend off of the floor. He smirked at him fondly. "Now come on." Sam told Gabriel, vaguely rebuilding his opera house. "The opera house, or the swan thing?" Gabriel sighed a long suffering sigh, as if Sam were asking him to choose between something that was actually difficult.
"Come on Gabe, Cas has given us one job, and that's to decide what type of napkin. So… opera house or swan thing?"
"Mm, opera house. A little bit more… napkin-y. Less weird to wipe your face on."
"I agree." Sam considered, "Although not quite for the reasons that you say. I just like it better than the swan things." Now it was Gabriel who was laughing at Sam. "Maybe you'd like them better if you didn't call them 'the swan things.'" Sam snorted. "Probably to be honest." He kissed the top of Gabriel's head and set off to find Dean, and tell him their decision to use the opera houses.
"Hey, Dean. We decided on the opera houses." He told his brother once he found him.
"'Kay, 'kay. Yeah, go and buy the napkins, could you? And make sure they're Prussian blue, not midnight blue. Listen does eggshell or cream look better with the midnight blue napkins?" Sam sighed. This was exactly what Dean had snapped at him about earlier. "Um… The cream. It's less… yellow."
"Yeah. That's what I was thinking." Dean stared at the swath of cream tablecloth. He groaned and sat down in the chair, covering his face with his hands. He sat there for a few seconds, before he looked up at Sam with a pained expression. "What am I doing, Sammy? I'm getting married. I'm getting married. I say it to myself so many times, but I just can't get myself to believe that it's true. I mean, I've been a hunter for as long as I knew that there was such a thing as marriage. And I sit here, and I realize how goddamn lucky I am. So yeah, I'm a hunter. That sucks. But even so, I get to get married to a beautiful man. A literal angel. And I am so blessed for that. But what am I doing? I'm freaking out about things like what color tablecloth we're going to have. Because somehow, it makes sense that if I choose the wrong color for the tablecloth, the whole event is going to be ruined, and nothing is going to go right. But I know deep down that I'm still going to cherish whatever memory that comes of it, and I'm still going to love Cas, and Cas is still going to love me. But…" He stood up, shaking the tablecloth pieces in his hand. "But I still need to call the florist and see if the lilies we ordered are going to be here." Dean ran off without another word, and Sam wondered if Dean had even realized he was still talking aloud by the end of his speech. Sam stood there, before shrugging, and walking back to where he and Gabriel had been watching youtube videos to figure out how to fold the swan things and the opera house. Gabriel was leaning back on the back to legs of his chair again, but quickly stopped, and let the chair fall forward again when he saw Sam coming. Sam laughed mercilessly at him. "Okay. So Dean's onboard with the opera house design. And he wants us to go buy the napkins. Yeah." He said when Gabriel groaned.
"And we have to make sure they're Prussian blue, not midnight blue." Gabriel stared at him. "What does that even mean? I thought that was midnight blue."
"Yeah, that's what I thought too but no. It has to be Prussian blue." Sam replied rather bitterly. "We should probably get going if we want to get the napkins."
They left the bunker, almost glad to be free of the terror that was Dean's wedding panic. Gabriel lead them into a small secluded area, and flew them both to the store that they were finding the napkins at.
"Oh my God, Sam?" There was a voice that Sam only vaguely remembered coming from his right. He looked over.
"Oh my god, it is you! Holy shit!" She was tall and had a braid down her back. Sam blinked. "Sorry, you look familiar, where do I know you from?" He looked over at Gabriel, who shrugged. She laughed. "Yeah, I barely recognized you myself. Mary-Ann. From Stanford." There was an awkward pause. "Holy shit, Mary-Ann!" He hugged her.
"How have you been?" He asked once he pulled away.
"How have I been? How have you been? I haven't even heard from you since Jess died and you left. What happened?" Mary-Ann asked, and Sam squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, like I told you, I took a break and went traveling around the country with my brother."
"Oh is this Dean?" She motioned towards Gabriel. Both he and Sam scoffed at that. "Oh god no, this is Gabriel. My, uh, my boyfriend." He slipped his hand into Gabriel's. Mary-Ann's eyes widened. "Oh! Cool. Huh. Just a little weird for me. Last person I saw you with- hell last time I saw you- was Jess. Still really sorry about that. Did you ever figure out what exactly it was that started the fire?"
"Uh, yeah. Just a gas leak. It was stupid."
"We worried about you, Sam. You said you'd be back, but you never were. I heard that Rebecca ran into you a few months later. What kept you from coming back to school?" Sam shrugged. "I was with my brother. He was going through some shit with our dad. We've both been to hell and back since, but we're holding up. Especially recently. I don't know what it is, but suddenly, it doesn't feel so much like the entire world is out to get us anymore. But hey," He said, trying to deflect the conversation off of the subject of he and Dean. "Why are you here? Wedding supplies shop and all." Mary-Ann noticed that Sam was trying to avoid the subject of his family. "Oh yeah! Remember Rebecca and John?"
"Oh yeah, I thought that they hated each other."
"Ha!" She laughed. "You would think that having left when you did. But I think was losing Jess and you leaving kind of brought us all closer together, and they ended up getting together. You know, Rebecca talked about how she saw you and your brother about a pest control type thing." Both Sam and Gabriel thought that this was way funnier than she thought it was. "Sorry," Sam told her, grinning, "It's nothing. Pest control is just an inside joke in our family. So little Becky and John are getting married?"
` "Yeah. What about you? Are you two…?" The let the question hang, and Sam shook his head. "No, but my brother is. Cas finally convinced him that getting married wouldn't be the worst thing in the world." Which is when Sam said something that he would regret as soon as he said it. "Hey, would you like to come over and meet them?" Gabriel looked over at him, eyes wide in a 'what the fuck, Sam?' way.
"Really? Sure. Now I'll finally get to meet that brother that took you away from Stanford and never brought you back."
"Yeah. I'll um… I just have to grab the napkins- Prussian blue, not midnight blue- and I'll meet you back here." Sam still had no idea what he was saying, but he couldn't just un-invite her. Sam glanced at Gabriel as Gabriel grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him into an aisle. "What the hell was that, Sam? What are we just going to bring her back to the Bunker? How do you think that's gonna work?"
"I'll, uh, I'll call Dean and tell him to clean the place up, try to get it as non-demonic as possible. But I can't just tell her that I'm not inviting her anymore. Come on let's just find the napkins." Gabriel sighed. "Fine. I'll find the Prussian blue things, and you call your brother."
Sam really hoped that Dean wasn't mad.