Author's Note: A special gift for you all, same-day updates. Wedding Day, part two! I hope everyone enjoys (bit nervous, for obvious reasons, about this). Please do let me know, I love to hear from you!

. . .

"You have now officially pissed away every bit of the fifty dollars this'll win you on flowers." Dean announces himself with the jingling of keys, the rustling of plastic grocery bags, and sarcasm aimed at his brother.

Sam looks up from the sink, up to his elbows in soapy water, and unsuccessfully attempts to blow his wet hair out of his face. "Worth it. Get the bags on the table and go change, Jody's already got Cas cleaned up and Bobby's in there with him. I, apparently, need to clean up the mess you made of the kitchen before the minister gets here."

"Get that tie and your ring in here before she starts climbing the walls." Bobby's voice rises from the living room, before Jody interrupts him, planting herself in the doorway to keep Dean out of the room.

"Nope. Not gonna happen. I've never done this with two grooms before, but there's tradition. It's only an hour or so 'til the minister gets here and you two can survive without seeing each other that long. Plus you'll muss him up, and I just finished with him."

"She gets bossy when she's nervous." Bobby earns a glare he can't see, but Dean's pretty sure without being able to look into the room at them that Bobby's amused with himself anyway. "What'd you get for dinner?"

"Fixings for burgers. And pie." Sam and Jody groan at the same time, both apparently giving him up as a lost cause, but Sam can't let it drop. "Cake. I specifically had cake on the on the list."

"Well, you can have cake when you get married. Which isn't gonna happen with you sitting behind the computer screen all the time and. . ."

"I'm sorry, am I supposed to use your method for choosing spouses? No, you're marrying the guy who brought us back. . ."

"I am not going to marry you, too, Sam." Castiel's voice intones solemnly from out of sight in the living room. "And I like pie. And burgers."

"Cas is on my side." Dean snorts, grinning at his little brother, slapping him on the shoulder and then digging through the bags to pull out the ties, handing one to Jody as he slips his ring off and sets it on the countertop far from the sink. "We win. See?"

"I see you're going to be grilling in thirty degree weather in a suit." Sam snarks back, smug. "Go get your suit on, jerk."

"Finish the dishes, bitch. And don't lose my ring."

. . .

Dean is buttoning his collar in front of the mirror with a pensive look when his brother joins him, dragging a brush through his too-long hair to tame it back and looming over Dean's shoulder as he does. "You look good."

"I always look good." Dean answers, the reflexive retort quick to his lips as he glances at his brother in the mirror.

"You okay? You're not getting cold feet, are you?" Sam's concern is genuine, and he's standing by ready and willing to play the part of best man, to bolster his brother through this and keep his spirits up, as he's tried to do for Cas as well.

"My feet are toasty, Sammy." Sam's skepticism is apparent, and Dean waves it off, stepping back and settling onto the edge of the bed. "I'm okay, really. It's Cas I'm worried about."

"I get that." Sam replies quietly, and Dean's eyes jump to his brother's face searchingly. "Yeah, I figured it out. I don't know details, but. . ." He shrugs awkwardly and puts the brush down, leaning against the dresser. "I thought you guys'd tell me. Keep me in the loop."

"It's been a busy couple of days, between Bobby and the ghouls and this today." Dean drops his one sock-clad foot to the floor, and rakes his hand through his already-combed hair, making it stand at ends again. "He's been pulping his grapefruit when he does the mojo thing, we figure. The headaches. . . he's got an aneurysm. A couple of them, really, and it's bleeding into his brain."

Sam swears under his breath, and joins his brother on the edge of the bed, neither of them looking at each other. "What're we gonna do?" He asks after a few minutes, because they're Winchesters, and they never accept any setback like this laying down. It makes Dean's lips twitch wryly, how quickly and instinctively Sam's on his side.

"I figure we start with Kansas. We've gotta check it out anyway, and if Cas thinks it might be a frequency of angel radio. . ."

"Could be a trap, too. And even if it is angels, they probably won't be friendly towards him." Sam points out reasonably, but they both have already mentally accepted the risk. After a moment, Dean resumes putting his socks and shoes on, and Sam buttons his cuffs, before bumping against his brother's shoulder, speaking into the silence between them again. "Proud of you, you know."

For just a moment, Dean appears comically surprised at the sudden change of conversation, and then he hides it behind sarcasm and a lazy roll of his shoulders, settling his suit jacket on. "Don't know why you would be. World's still ending, things are still screwed up, and Cas is still. . ." He shrugs, and pushes himself to his feet. Sam follows him immediately, not letting him escape that easily.

"Maybe because none of that's your fault, Dean? I mean, you're still trying to fix it, and we're doing what we can. . ."

"Which isn't much."

". . . and you haven't given up. I mean . . . this is the most optimistic thing I've ever seen you do. And I am proud of you. God, everything you had to get through to be here. . ." Dean had traversed through so much physical and emotional crap to reach this point, and Sam knew for damned sure that his big brother would try and do whatever it took to keep what he was building, their little dysfunctional family.

Dean seems on the verge of saying something serious, of responding to Sam genuinely, but the doorbell rings and they know the minister has arrived. Instead, he points at his brother, eyes narrowing.

"Listen up, Sammy. Don't you start this now. I am not having you crying at my wedding."

. . .

The minister is staring at Castiel with a look of shock, and Cas's spirits fall again as he shifts in place, lowering his hand to his side again without the man returning his offered handshake. Jody has frantically darted away to retrieve the camera she uses for crime scenes, a last-minute addition to the plans, and while Bobby cannot see the stilted interaction he picks up on the silence and shifts in his wheelchair gingerly. Stubbornly insisting on his own FBI suit has left him winded, sore and exhausted and perhaps more cantankerous than usual. "Ed Cooper, if you stand in the doorway gawping at Cas, Jody is going to skin you alive for letting all the heat out."

The sheriff's fearsome reputation within the town and Bobby's not-so-gentle reminder spurs the man into motion. He steps inside, closing the door behind him, and Castiel takes a respectful step back, allowing him distance and not forcing his presence on the pastor.

"You're him. I. . . Bobby, you said same-sex, but I thought you were kidding about who. . ."

"Well, I wasn't." Bobby remarks shortly, and gestures vaguely, bringing Castiel to his side, where he takes the push-bars of the wheelchair, eyes downcast. "If you got a problem with Castiel, you leave now. Because I ain't having you ruin my boy's day by proving you're an addlepated idiot who listens to the goddamn propagandists over your own friends."

"We got a problem here?" Sam Winchester fills the doorway into the front hall, bracketing Cas between Bobby and a familiar Winchester presence. Letting his breath out in a low exhalation, Cas glances at the younger man, shaking his head slightly, warning him back. He doesn't want anyone threatened on his behalf. He deserves this reaction from men of faith.

"Sam, please take Bobby back into the living room, and tell Dean I will be right there? Pastor Cooper, I mean you no harm. Can we talk? Please?" Cas gestures fleetingly at the front door and, brown eyes wide and uncertain, the pastor glances at his blinded old friend and the young hunter behind him before opening the door and stepping out to the front porch. Cas follows him quietly, hands loose at his sides. The cold is biting, even edging as they are into spring, and snow melt drips incessantly into the empty, out-of-season flower beds edging Jody's front porch, where it will inevitably freeze once more overnight. There is a long moment where Cas is considering what to say, before the pastor finds his courage and asks outright.

"You're God."

Cas winces, and shakes his head slightly. "No. I'm an angel of the Lord, but I am not Him. I was lost, for a while, but I have been trying to redeem myself in my Father's eyes since then. This family, they've accepted me. When I stumbled, they picked me up again and put me on this path." Cas rubs the back of his neck and takes a seat on Jody's front porch swing, making himself smaller, less intimidating, keeping him from looming over the short, stout minister in his winter coat over his church vestments.

"And you're marrying one of them." There's a sense of shocked disbelief to his words, as if the pastor is still trying to work out the facts of this for himself, stunned into short declarations.

"I fell." Cas responds simply. "And I fell in love. It's a long story, and not always a pleasant one, but I know who and what I am now." Bracing an elbow on the armrest of the swing, Cas rubs his temple, thumb pressing slow circles into the thin skin there, and he continues after a moment. "You're Methodist, I see. You believe in the concept of free will, the idea that man's choices dictate his fate, and that nothing is predestined?" The pastor nods, once, and slowly takes a seat opposite Cas on a battered wicker chair. This is progress, and Cas continues in quiet words. "So do I. Recently, free will and a strict interpretation of my Father's word, as it is laid out in the Bible, came into conflict. These men, they believed that humanity deserved to be saved, that the Apocalypse could not come to pass. They made me believe it too. And they stopped it."

"We stopped it. You helped." Dean closes the door behind him just as silently as he opened it, and Cas breathes easier with him present, closing his eyes and keeping himself from leaning into Dean as he takes the space next to Cas on the swing. Dean is trying to come to his rescue: Cas may never be fully comfortable with accepting his help in a conflict, but in conversation he is frequently at a loss. "We wouldn't have been able to do it without you, so don't try giving us all the credit. The rest of it's where the story gets complicated." And Dean wasn't letting Cas get into it. Not today.

The pastor doesn't hesitate to shake Dean's hand, Cas notices, when Dean extends it and offers his name. "Dean Winchester. Bobby's told me a bit about you. You've been getting the protection bags we've been sending back here, right, using the sigils?" Somehow, he manages to include Cas into that statement, making it clear that Castiel had played a part in protecting his flock, and Dean is subtle in a way that Castiel never has managed. "We've been all over the US, haven't seen a city half as in-the-know as Sioux Falls before. Don't know how you guys do it."

"Jody, mostly. Jody, and Bobby, myself, the mayor, and the heads of the Lutheran and Catholic churches here have all been trying since the Witnesses to get the town ready. I haven't managed to affect much change outside of the city limits, yet, but we've been working on it."

"It's impressive as hell. You've saved a lot of lives." Dean casually throws an arm across the back of the swing, along Cas's shoulders, and smiles: charming and unassuming and beautiful. Cas tries to keep himself from looking, to accede to Jody's traditionalist thoughts on seeing each other before the wedding, but he can't help but notice the way Dean's hair is burnished bronze in the evening sun, or the way the vibrant tie and splash of colorful flowers at his lapel, blue with sprays of white and green, changes the commonplace suit into something dashing and formal. Dean notices him staring: the smile warms, becomes more genuine, and he glances at Cas out of the corner of his eye and then winks cheekily.

"So you've known Bobby a long time, he tells me. Us too. Well, me and my brother. He practically raised us. . ."

Dean manages in ten minutes of polite conversation what Cas would have struggled for in an hour of awkward explanations and theological discussion, bringing the pastor back inside the house as they chat like old friends. Cas catches Dean's hand as they slip back inside, squeezing it gently in thanks.

. . .

The minister glances around at the meager gathering within the house as Jody takes his coat, and frowns faintly as he does. "Are we waiting for anyone else?"

"This is all the family I've got or need." Dean answers as he moves past him into the room, Cas following in Dean's wake. When the preacher's eyes fall on Castiel, as if he's suddenly nervous he's going to be inundated with angels, Cas shakes his head slightly, his voice quiet. "I have no one." Even before Heaven closed its doors, he had been disowned by everyone who counted, told not to pray for help, not to call attention to himself or risk being killed for releasing Asmodeus and Ba'el, and for his part in restarting the apocalypse. He has no right to claim them as family, after everything he has done.

Lowering her camera, Jody swallows heavily and blinks back sudden, hot tears at the matter-of-fact admission. She knows loneliness. Jody has lost her son twice, her husband, her parents, friends and family she could not protect. . . she moves to position herself at Cas's side in front of the fireplace instinctively. "I'll stand for him. If that's alright with you. . ."

They have all suffered losses. They've all formed family from friendships, and Cas is not even the newest interloper in the small group in the room, and possibly not the only one feeling slightly out of place. With a slow, hesitant smile, Cas nods slightly and Jody beams at him, dashing a hand across her eyes and moving to fix his boutonniere into place. "Thank you." he adds, and Dean casts a newly appraising look at Jody, before offering her his grin.

"Damn fine woman you've got there, Bobby, did I mention?" Dean teases, tilting to look past Sam at Bobby, who . . . hell, Dean knows that face, even with the bandages across his mentor's missing eyes. He's seen it more than once during Spanish soaps, as they both pretended not to notice the other letting their 'stories' get to them. The wedding hasn't even started and half the room's already weepy.

"I'm not 'his woman.' If anything, he's a kept man." Jody quips lightly, and she raises the camera and snaps another picture of the grooms without moving from her place, catching them at an angle, lit by the sun through the windows and the fire crackling merrily behind them.

"Any time you wanna get started, I think we're ready then." Sam feels like they've managed to navigate landmines, the potential for this going terribly wrong and leaving everyone a depressed mess is making him unaccountably nervous, and he starts to wonder if maybe they would have been better off going to Vegas and standing with an Elvis impersonator, as Dean had once threatened, or just leaving well enough alone and foregoing a wedding.

"Keep it short, Ed. We've all gotten our share of preachifying, and no one here stands much on ceremony." Bobby adds before the minister can open his mouth, and earns a wry chuckle from the others, including the minister.

"I'm wearing the 'holy bathrobes,' Bobby, so that's Pastor Cooper to you. But I'll try."

In the end, there's no music at all, and Castiel's tie is backwards beneath his suit jacket despite Jody's claims that she'd just fixed it, and there are awkward solemn moments leading up to it. Each of them brings their own tragedies to the table, too, thoughts of weddings with Karen Singer and Sean Mills, of engagement rings and Jess Moore, of family lost and estranged, old insecurities and new worries, but it's them for all their flaws, and maybe Sam had been right about what they'd needed after all.

. . .

"We are gathered here today, in troubling times, to celebrate the ultimate expression of hope and love, humanity and faith. These men, Dean and Castiel, have come together from different worlds and separate lives, against all odds and in defiance of all obstacles, to build from this day forth a life together."

"Love is not an accident. It does not spring from nothing, it grows from friendship, and binds together two souls in unity." Cas shuffles slightly in place for the first time, as if prepared to argue whether he has a soul, and Dean reaches out and takes his hand, calling his attention away from the minister and back to him. Tilting his head slightly, he quirks a smile at Cas, and semantic arguments die away in favor of the truth of the message: in their case, semantics aside, perhaps more literally than others.

The minister's voice is rich and rolling, and with the small gathering he looks to each of them in turn as he speaks, and despite his hesitation before he then directs his words straight to Dean and Cas. "Love is built in trust, strengthened in time and undiminished in adversity, and it acts as a light even in the darkest times and a shield against doubt and fear. Dean, Castiel, as you prepare to take these vows, give careful thought and prayer, for as you make them you are pledging yourself to one another into eternity."

Dean turns slightly, glancing at Sam at his side, who smiles smugly. Apparently, the preacher had gotten the message about the 'til death do you part' after all. Covertly, Sam points a finger at the minister, and Dean has the sudden sneaking suspicion that his brother is up to something.

"I have been told that the grooms would like to express their own commitment in personal vows."

Son of a bitch. He'd been set up, payback for two apparently unsatisfying wordless proposals from a meddling, sadistic, pain in the ass little brother who had invested way too much attention into his relationship. Dean turns back to Cas, expecting to see a deer-in-the-headlights look from the fallen angel, and finding bright blue earnest eyes fixed on him instead as Castiel hesitates and then lets his breath out slowly, eyes dropping to Dean's lips as he finds words, his palms growing cold and clammy in nervousness, held in Dean's.

"Dean. . ." He had no idea how to begin: as he had explained before, there simply weren't words. "When I first saw you, I was struck by how brilliant a soul you are. You were a beacon that guided me through Perdition, and I have trusted that light to guide me again and again, through confusion and guilt and pain and loss. I've turned away from it in the past, and you still. . . you still found a way to guide me home. I have lived millions of years, and I thought I understood love, and humanity and. . . I knew nothing." Breathing out shakily, Castiel raises his eyes, meeting Dean's, and he shifts nervously, as if after everything they'd been through this would be when Dean finally realized he deserved better. "I promise you, that I will always try to be worthy of your trust and your love, and of you."

It takes Sam nudging Dean to break the moment, and Dean's only aware that they've fallen into the staring thing again at that point as he turns slightly to skewer his brother with a look and hiss under his breath. "Quit jabbing me, I'm thinking. That's hard to follow."

Cas smiles, ducking his head, and squeezes Dean's hands comfortingly, suddenly relaxed. They understand each other, and Cas knows now that Dean is still with him, that this is still them. With their linked hands, Dean nudges Cas's chin up, and offers him a crooked smile when their eyes meet again.

"Cas. You have seen me at my worst, broken and ruined, and you put me back together again and never turned away because of what you saw. You make me stronger, make me try to be a better man, because for some reason. . . you see that in me. And it's taken. . . way too damned long for me to admit how much you mean to me. I let a lot of stupid things get in the way, and I don't. . . I'm not going to keep letting everything get between us. You're it for me, Cas. You're what I want, you're the happy ending I didn't think I could have. So. . . If you'll have me, I'd like to try and be yours, too."

This is choice, every word an affirmation of what they fight for, a direct counter to the accusations of Michael and a rebuttal to Lucifer's claims of predestination. The minister's words follow in a haze of 'I Dos' and symbolism of rings returned to their rightful places on their fingers, reaffirming what they'd already declared before. Cas is studying Dean's face, his attention drifted back to where it should be, memorizing his hunter in that moment, his intent regard drawing a smile from Dean, and a casually quirked eyebrow.

Cas almost misses when the Minister blesses the union and releases them to each other, but he finds himself pulled back by the end. . . because giving away your heart and binding your soul is, as always, sealed with a kiss.