I am so sorry this chapter took so long! My lappy started tweaking out even more and then yesterday I bought a new one, but I spent all last night copying my necessary files off that one to an external hard drive and it took forever, so...yeah. Anyway, this chapter wasn't intended to contain smut and then it kind of did...and here's a lovely surprise for all you Destiel shippers out there.
Before we begin, for those of you who didn't know, I'm discontinuing/putting on hiatus (still haven't exactly decided) "Finishing Touches." If it is a legit discontinue, I will be reworking and posting it, still as a Sabriel story, so never fear! Second, I am finally tracking my author tag on Tumblr ("L. Greene", with a space between the words), so if you have a Tumblr and post your reactions, be sure to tag me!
Thanks to Sexy. Lil. Emo, kb18142, Chloe JP, r2metoo, IslanderBib, and charlotte. eliot. 3 for your reviews to last chapter!
Lu could brush the incident with Michael off rather easily, but he found himself dwelling more on what he and Balthazar had talked about. Specifically, his father.
He hadn't thought about his father in a long time. He hadn't had cause to—Raphael's dad had been his father figure for the last ten years. That was one of the reasons he hadn't been too upset with Raphael's parents for essentially kicking him out of the house a few weeks before—he was twenty-five, and having two obnoxious twenty-five-year-olds in a band under one roof was probably a lot to handle. But Lu's real father hadn't even crossed his mind.
But now that he'd brought it up, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He hadn't seen his father in eighteen years, hadn't spoken to him since they left. He wondered about his dad. He couldn't help it.
He remembered his dad towering over him, although he'd been a little kid at the time. He wondered how tall his dad actually was; he had a feeling he was taller than him now. He couldn't remember a whole lot about him as a whole, though. He could only remember small things, like how he always stank of Captain Morgan when he fought with Lu's mother and how sharp his voice got when he was angry and how he would call him "Lucifer" like he was admonishing the Devil himself.
Mostly, though, he remembered that split second of terror before the agonizing pain of when his dad broke his arm.
He didn't remember anything else from that night, just the fear and the pain. He didn't like thinking about it, didn't like remembering anything from before he turned nine.
Anger bubbled up in him, a delayed reaction for the horror inflicted on his seven-year-old self. He was just a kid, and the way his father had treated him… no child deserved that. Your father was supposed to love you, take care of you, give you strength, and Lu had been denied that. He suddenly wanted to drive to Mississippi and punch out his dad, but part of him knew that, if he saw him again, he might just revert to that childhood fear of him for no reason.
Balthazar murmured something unintelligible in his sleep and spooned closer to Lu. In that moment, the trance he'd been in was broken, and he let out a tired sigh. His dad wasn't here. It was just him and Balthazar, and he felt himself relaxing, however slightly. They cared about each other. That was what counted right now. He didn't need his dad—that had been proven to him eighteen years ago when he mom buckled him into her car and took off, never looking back.
Maybe he could squeeze a few angry songs out of this. Hell, it might be the one good thing his dad gave him, and maybe he could move on.
Resolving to put it all out of his mind for the time being, Lu closed his eyes and, tracing the tattoos on Balthazar's arms, finally drifted off to sleep.
The rest of the week passed without incident, except for Friday morning. Castiel showed up to the studio with a huge smile on his face, one that Lu had only seen once before—the day after his first date with Dean. He wasn't the only one to notice it, either. Gabriel looked him up and down and said, "So, what happened to you?"
Castiel looked around and realized his entire band was regarding him with interest. With an added blush to his smile, he said, "Well, it's a long story…"
"We've got time," Balthazar said. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, giving Castiel a reassuring smile.
The guitarist's blush deepened. "Well, okay. Um, Dean and I… we're getting married."
There was silence for a split second before they all burst out talking at once.
"Congrats, man! That's amazing!"
"When are you getting married?"
"Who asked who?"
"Holy shit! Congratulations!"
Castiel gave them an embarrassed sort of grin. "Thanks. We wanted to do it quickly, so it's tentative for next Saturday. And he asked me."
Gabriel swept him into an excited hug, which was quite an accomplishment, considering Gabriel was three inches shorter than him. "This is so exciting!"
"I'm going to want to hear this story in its entirety," Balthazar added. "Not right now, of course. Later."
Why? Taking notes? Lu thought, although that prospect was terrifying. Even the idea of getting engaged right now—to anyone, let alone someone he'd just sort-of started dating a week ago—was overwhelming.
"Next week, huh? You really are in a hurry, aren't you?" Raphael half-joked.
"Like I said, we wanted to do it quickly. I mean, we've basically been married for the last year. It's just a matter of making it official." As he spoke, his whole demeanor took on a contented air; he almost seemed to be glowing with happiness. "We're going up to Canada for it. Sam already bought tickets for the four of us," he added with a glance toward Gabriel. "But, of course, you three are invited as well."
Raphael grinned. "We could make a road trip out of it," he said. He was always up for a road trip.
Locked in a car for a day and a half with my best friend and my boyfriend? Lu could already feel the insanity creeping up on him. Still, Balthazar was starting to grin, too.
"That doesn't sound like a half-bad idea. What do you think, Luce?"
He was pretty sure he saw Raphael raise his eyebrow at Balthazar calling him "Luce," but the drummer didn't comment. Lu couldn't tell what he wanted to do more: punch Balthazar's smug smile off his face, or drag him off to that storage closet and christen it. When the blonde called him that, it was sweet and had the effect of making Lu agree to pretty much anything. "Alright, fine. But we're taking Bones," he added with a sharp look at Raphael.
The drummer's grin hitched slightly. Apparently, he still wasn't comfortable with the idea of riding around in a secondhand hearse. "Well… okay, whatever."
Castiel's smile widened. "Wonderful!"
"You know, it's not so bad back here. It's roomy," Raphael called from the back of Bones. "Maybe you could get a disco ball or something, hang it right in the middle here."
It was the following Thursday, around ten in the morning. They'd been on the road for an hour now and Raphael had made himself comfortable on the queen-sized mattress Lu and Balthazar had dragged out of Lu's old room (he'd basically moved his stuff into Balthazar's room) and wedged into the back. It just barely fit, but Lu had figured it would. The trunk had been designed to hold bodies.
"You know, there's another seat right there," Lu pointed out with a grin, indicating the third seat, behind the passenger's seat and next to where the hypothetical casket was meant to rest.
"Yeah, but how often do you get the chance to crash on a mattress in the back of a body trolley?" Raphael joked.
"I see you've made yourself at home back there," Balthazar said, smiling.
"I'm trying to forget that there were dead people back here."
Lu snorted with laughter and checked his rearview mirror quickly. The temporary plates on his back windshield had finally been removed; his real license plates had arrived and he'd giddily attached them.
Things were finally coming together again. The album was close to being finished; they were planning a small promotion tour, opening for quite a few big-name bands around the West Coast and Nevada; Castiel and Dean were getting married (honestly, Lu thought it was about time—Castiel hadn't been exaggerating when he said they'd basically been married for the last year); things with him and Balthazar were actually going pretty well, better than he expected; and aside from dropping his phone in the sink on Tuesday, his technology was behaving. He knew he should be wary. This was the time when bad shit started happening.
But he couldn't make himself worry too much. It was easy to forget that Balthazar hadn't always been a band member with the way he clicked with the group. They were all getting to be great friends, which was a relief for Lu. The last thing he wanted was more drama in the band (although the thing with him and Balthazar would probably cause a bit of drama when it came time for the big reveal).
They stopped every twenty miles or so as the scenery on the California coast changed. There were areas for people to stop on the side of the road to take pictures, which Balthazar abused the holy Hell out of. He'd brought a tripod and his camera and made them get out and take pictures of the three of them, but Lu couldn't even pretend to be too upset about it. Raphael, too, was pretty excited about the idea of having a photographic record of their trip.
About ten hours into the trip, they rotated drivers. Lu was starting to nod off at the wheel, so he went to the mattress and fell asleep while Balthazar started driving. Raphael rode shotgun until four-thirty the next morning, when Raphael took over and Balthazar hit the mattress after a stop at a gas station for fuel (gas, smokes, and food) and to hit the bathroom. The blonde was well-aware of his tendency to spoon up to Lu in his sleep and, if only because he knew Lu still wasn't ready to tell anyone about them yet, was relieved when Lu crawled into the passenger's seat. He didn't think the bassist would be too happy to wake up and discover Raphael's questioning look at them from the rearview.
He was actually surprised Raphael hadn't used the time while Lu was unconscious to dig for details, although maybe he was just being paranoid. Balthazar didn't think he'd been overly subtle, but maybe everyone was so wrapped up in their own personal relationships that they didn't notice. Castiel, for sure, was almost certainly oblivious to whatever tension there was between the singer and the bassist. Gabriel might have noticed based on his smirks, but he was starting to realize that was just Gabriel's typical expression.
He expected better observation from Raphael, to be honest, considering he and Lu were best friends, but if his developing relationship with Anna was that distracting, it was possible no one really knew what was going on. He supposed he should have been grateful for that, though. If Lu even thought someone else suspected what was going on, he might get freaked out. He liked to keep his private life just that—private—until he was good and ready.
Still, it was hard work to keep his hands to himself, especially when Raphael was passed out in the back. He really just wanted to drag Lu into the gas station bathroom and fuck him senseless (and he entertained the notion for long enough to really frustrate himself) but finally accepted that he would just have to wait until they arrived at the hotel the next day.
They had just enough time when they arrived to shower, shave, and change into clothes they hadn't been wearing for the last day and a half before Gabriel came by their rooms and carted them off to the courthouse. The dress code was, mercifully, not suits—Castiel was the most formally dressed in his Army Dress Uniform, but Dean was in khakis and a tie and Sam and Gabe both wore jeans, along with three other people who were already present.
Lu recognized the dark-haired man standing near Castiel in a sport coat—it was Castiel's father. His mother, Lu knew, had been dead for eight years. The last he'd heard, the elder Collins wasn't thrilled about his son being gay, but apparently he'd forgiven him that, or at least decided to shelve his opinions, because he was standing there with a huge smile on his face. The other two, a man and a woman, were presumably Dean's parents, John and Mary. John and Castiel's father Ross had apparently hit it off because the two of them were chatting comfortably while Mary straightened Dean's tie.
"I guess this basically makes Gabe and Cas in-laws, huh?" Raphael joked as their small group headed to the front.
"One more wedding for that," Lu said. "Although I doubt that'll be too far off." He saw how Gabriel looked at Sam sometimes, when the younger Winchester wasn't looking. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that the guitarist adored him.
"Everyone's here! Let's get started!" Gabriel said excitedly.
The ceremony was brief, but by the end of it, Dean was crying with a smile on his face that Lu had never seen before. His parents were smiling, too, and even Castiel's father had a fond expression. Castiel, for his part, had abandoned his usual stoic look and was grinning just as much as Dean.
Balthazar insisted on taking pictures of everyone and everything, much to Gabriel's amusement. He took every opportunity he could to photobomb them, although the singer did manage to get a few normal pictures. As soon as the certificate was signed by both grooms and their witnesses (Mr. Collins for one and Sam for the other), Mary Winchester took all ten of them out to lunch.
It was the first real meal Lu had eaten in two days, and he was grateful for it. He tried to enjoy it, but Balthazar's hand was on his leg under the table and it was distracting. He was really just hoping no one else noticed that the singer's arm was at a strange angle and clearly practically in Lu's lap, but everyone seemed to be far more interested in the newlyweds. He had to admit that, if Balthazar was going to use a cover to tease him, he was smart for using this one. It was unlikely that anyone would so much as glance at them.
This just meant that by the time they got back to their own room (Raphael hadn't questioned them rooming together), it was only a matter of minutes before they were stripped down and fucking like porn stars. He managed to keep his voice down, burying his face in the pillow to muffle his louder groans, but when Balthazar leaned over and started whispering filthy things in his ear, he cried out and started pumping his cock.
They fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms, and part of Lu dreaded the coming morning. It heralded the return to pretending there wasn't this deeper relationship between them, feigning that they were just friends. He knew they would have to tell the band soon, but for right now, he was content to lie there, nose buried in Balthazar's blond curls, arms around him.
Alright, guys, hopefully I'll be able to get 21 written and posted tomorrow!