
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/912558.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Castiel/Dean_Winchester, Castiel_&_Dean_Winchester, Gabriel/Sam
      Winchester, Jo_Harvelle/Adam_Milligan_(background), Garth_Fitzgerald_IV/
      Becky_Rosen_(background), Krissy_Chambers/Ash_(background), Bobby_Singer/
      John_Winchester_(past), John_Winchester/Mary_Winchester_(past), Pamela
      Barnes/Virgil_(background), Chuck_Shurley/Naomi_(unrequited/background),
      Lucifer/Meg_Masters_(background)
  Character:
      Castiel, Castiel_(Supernatural), Dean_Winchester, Sam_Winchester, Bobby
      Singer, John_Winchester, Anna_Milton, Gabriel_(Supernatural), Jo
      Harvelle, Ash_(Supernatural), Garth_Fitzgerald_IV, Kevin_Tran, Gilda_
      (Supernatural), Becky_Rosen, Meg_Masters, Lucifer_(Supernatural)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_High_School, Slow_Build, Romance, Drama, POV
      Multiple, Minor_Violence, Implied/Referenced_Suicide, glacial_build,
      Fluff, Slow_Burn, Pining, Frottage, Dry_Humping, Mutual_Masturbation,
      Blow_Jobs, First_Time, Fingerfucking, Anal_Sex, couples_for_everyone,
      teacher_problems, feels_of_all_ages, Fluff_and_Angst, mixtapes, Therapy,
      Mental_Coercion, Emotional/Psychological_Abuse, surprising_couples,
      franks_discussions_about_sex, or_as_frank_as_a_teenager_gets, School
      Dances, ROTC, Trials, Strained_Relationships
  Series:
      Part 1 of Introvered_Romance_in_Our_Troubled_Minds
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-08-04 Completed: 2013-12-16 Chapters: 30/30 Words: 216260
****** Born to Run ******
by deathsteel
Summary
     Castiel and Dean are experts at running away from their problems.
     But, when circumstance brings them together in their senior year,
     will they be willing to face their demons and fight for something
     that really matters? Or will the fragile trust they build not be
     enough to repair the damage that's already been done to their minds
     and hearts? Highschool AU
***** Bastards of Young *****
Summers have that inexplicable quality of taking eons to arrive and then
dragging on forever like a funeral march once you have finally admitted that
you miss the routine monotony of school. The summer before Dean Winchester’s
senior year seemed to lose its novelty much quicker than the previous vacations
and breaks that were peppered throughout his high school career and Dean had
spent much of his summer as he had the ones preceding it working in his Uncle
Bobby’s garage. His little brother, Sam (little being used in its most ironic
of ways since the guy now had several inches on his older brother) was exempt
from the nepotism based slave labor that Bobby had come to expect of the boys
every school break since they were old enough to hold a flashlight steady
because he was taking entry level courses at the University of Kansas the
summer before his own junior year began.
This particular summer had been maddeningly mundane, much like all of the
others before it, but for some reason this summer, this last summer, had left
Dean wanting. He had gone to the parties of course, the bonfires and the
campouts with his friends, the sneaking into clubs in Kansas City a couple of
times, and the subsequent hookups with girls from the college and other high
schools in Lawerence. Their faces kinda blurred together, but Dean tried to
soothe his guilty conscience for not remembering most of their names by telling
himself that it was due to the alcohol and not some moral lacking on his part.
So the summer had passed slowly and Dean had done his level best to not kill
his brother who was bursting with stories about his classes and the antics that
the older students in his lectures got up to. He spent less time with the guys
on his football team when he found that he couldn’t really stomach the stories
of their conquests, which he knew he wasn’t much better but he wasn’t the type
of guy to kiss and tell, and more time with Jo, Ash, and Garth whom he had
always kinda considered his backup friends as horrible as that sounds. However,
he amended his previous designation for them rather quickly after a heated
night of watching Star Wars with the trio that had degraded into mock light
saber battles in Garth’s basement rec room using broom handles resulting in
several large bruises, a busted lip, and a broken figurine of a dancing
unicorn. Those fun nights had been the only bright spots of color in an
otherwise washed out summer and Dean had resolved to have more nights with
people he could actually stand to be around.
As monotonous as the summer had proven to be, it was finally ending and the day
before school started found him wiping the grease off of his hands after what
felt like the billionth oil change of the week and looking forward to spending
some quality time with Sam, whose classes at the college had ended the week
before and who’s smugness at his grades had sufficiently faded enough to make
him tolerable to be around for more than fifteen minutes.
“Heading out?” Dean heard a gruff voice behind him ask as he went to retrieve
his backpack from the tiny, dingy breakroom/office that had been haphazardly
slapped on the side of Bobby’s shop several years earlier during a particularly
toasty spring break when John had failed to come through yet again with his
promises of a father/son camping trip for the two boys.
“Yea,” Dean replied slinging his bag over his shoulder as he turned to face his
almost uncle. “Y’know. School starts tomorrow.”
“Yer Dad told me,” Bobby replied with a sage nod before the usual grumpiness
settled back onto his face. “What kind of school starts in the middle of the
week anyway?”
“Highschool,” Dead replied seriously moving to leave the shop with a salute to
Bobby.
“Hold on, boy,” Bobby groused moving to stand between Dean and the doorway and
reaching for the well-worn leather wallet that Dean knew he kept in his back
pocket. He extracted the wallet that was as familiar a fixture of the older man
as the dirty green and white trucker hat he was currently wearing or his
seemingly never ending supply of flannel work shirts and proceeded to remove
several bills before returning it to his pocket as he cleared his throat
awkwardly. “Here’s yer wages for this last week.”
Dean took the outthrust bills and went to shove them in the pocket of his
faded, grease stained jeans before noticing exactly how much Bobby had actually
given him and scrambling to give it back. “Whoa, Bobby! There is way too much
here, I only worked two days and I cut out early yesterday because I had to
take gigantor school shopping, there’s like three times that amount here.”
“I know ya idjit,” Bobby growled crossing his arms sternly across his flannel
clad chest. He stared down Dean for a moment waiting for the younger man to
just accept the money and not force an explanation. But after several moments
of tense silence Bobby could no longer stomach the pride and stubbornness in
Dean’s eyes that made him curse inwardly for giving a rat’s ass about any of
the Winchesters. Well maybe not so inwardly, “Goddamnit, Dean. I know ya still
need things for school and I can’t trust yer Dad to get it fer ya. So take the
money and go buy some pants that ain’t got holes n’ grease all over ‘em.”
Dean’s first impulse was to defend John’s ability to provide for his sons but
this was Bobby and Dean was well aware of the number of times his surrogate
uncle had scraped his father off of the floors of some of the less savory bars
in Lawerence and of the times that Sam and Dean had turned up on Bobby’s front
porch for dinner because the grocery money had disappeared or to shower when
the water was abruptly cut off at their own apartment. A flush crept up Dean’s
neck at the memories of Bobby’s kindness over the years resurfaced and he knew
trying to defend John’s actions to the wizened man before him was not only
useless, but also insulting. His second impulse was to shove the money in the
front pocket of Bobby’s work shirt and take off running, which while marginally
less insulting was fucking suicide when Bobby caught up to him.
Bobby knew the inner struggle Dean was having as it wasn’t the first time he’d
voiced his dissatisfaction with how his friend was handling raising his two
boys on his own, but he also knew how the struggle would end as he fought to
keep the corners of his mouth from twitching into a smirk of triumph. Dean gave
him a thunderous stare, his jaw clenching in frustration that his failings were
so obvious to Bobby and he shoved the money deep in his pocket. He cleared his
throat hoping his conflicting emotions of gratitude and hopelessness were not
evident in his voice, “Thanks Bobby. I’ll uh…work some extra shifts this next
week to pay you back.”
Bobby gave a curt nod, knowing Dean well enough to know that it was pointless
to try to turn down his offer and clapped the younger man on the shoulder, “Go
on , git outta here. Big day tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Dean muttered still fighting to swallow the lump in his throat as he
made his way quickly towards the door.
“Making burgers Sunday,” Bobby declared stilling Dean who was halfway out the
door back tensing under his grease and sweat streaked grey t-shirt. “You and
Sam can come by, tell me how your first week went.”
Dean looked back over his shoulder, hoping Bobby wouldn’t see the sheen his
eyes had unwillingly taken in the fading evening light. He managed a smirk for
the older man that he knew didn’t reach his eyes, “I’ll bring the pie.”
Castiel had always dreaded summers, they dragged on and on with seemingly no
end in sight, trapped in a home that felt foreboding and with a family he felt
out of sync with. He usually spent a vast majority of the summer cloistered in
his room with his iPod or at the local park jogging and practicing rifle drills
with the striped down rifle that his father had gotten for him. It was really
one of the few indulgences that had been allowed to him since his father
thought that the ROTC at Lake Forrest promoted discipline. He supposed you
could count the iPod as an indulgence, but that had been a present from Gabriel
and he wasn’t even sure if his father had known about the abundance of secular
music that was programmed on the device, not that it really mattered now. The
rifle had earned Castiel some strange looks the first time he had brought it to
the park that was a couple of blocks away from his new house, but he had
managed to convince the few early morning walkers and joggers that he wasn’t
the Son of Sam by bribing them shamelessly with coffee and donut holes.
The summer before his senior year had been one laden with upheaval and the
realization of the sheer enormity of how drastically his life had changed left
him feeling uncomfortably rushed- no amount of running or getting lost in books
or music could help him shake the guilt that still plagued him. However,
Lawrence hadn’t proved as disappointing as Castiel had initially feared even
though he hadn’t had as much time to explore it as he would’ve like. It was
much bigger than his home town of Pontiac, not that even that had felt like
home since he spent the majority of his time at Lake Forrest. It did have a lot
of parks and trails and such for which Castiel was grateful since it meant he
had somewhere to go to escape the suffocating newness of his new home. It also
had some really interesting museums that Castiel had insisted on dragging his
younger sister Anna out to. Initially she had begrudgingly accepted his
attentions even though she was still partially blaming him for her having been
ripped away from her friends right before starting high school. Their outings
had been awkward, stilted and morose and as a result had caused Castiel to stop
inviting her after the second silent disastrous trip. Castiel had shrugged off
her coldness as her being a teenage girl, which he had never understood anyway
and luckily the thaw had set in midway through the summer when Anna had
befriended several girls at the local mall.
Gabriel’s attentions had almost immediately been diverted after the move since
he had opted to start school in the summer instead of waiting to join the rest
of the incoming freshman in the fall. Castiel suspected it was to avoid
unpacking more than the silence that permeated their new house since Gabriel
talked enough to make up for what his siblings lacked as they acclimated to
their new surroundings. Before classes had ended, he had brought the newly
revived Anna to tears with laughter with stories of his classmates, one of
which Gabe vehemently swore was a child genius.
In the last week leading up to his final year, Castiel had finally slowed down
enough to recognize the feelings of dread creeping up on him as the start of
the school year loomed ominously. This was unusual since as a rule Castiel
typically couldn’t wait to return to school and get away from home. But home
meant something different now, it wasn’t the disapproving silences of his
father and eldest brother or the ill-concealed contemptuous whispers of his
neighbors. It meant the warm laughter of Anna now that she was showing him
affection again and Gabe’s undying involvement in British period dramas that
caused him to smile when Gabe openly bawled for his favorite characters’
misfortunes. It was something that had him quickening his pace on his morning
runs and desiring solitude a little less. The dread though was nothing new, it
had become all too familiar a feeling during his final days at Lake Forrest and
his final week in Pontiac at the house he had always felt ambivalent about
calling home. It was familiar, but different. It wasn’t the dread of being
harmed or discovered, been there done that and Castiel sure as hell wasn’t
going to put himself in that situation again. No, it was the dread that he
could potentially harm the only two people he could still claim to care about.
Thoughts of this nature had been invading Castiel’s mind and the shelter he had
once found in running and music were long longer his safe haven from troubling
feelings and memories.
The morning the bomb dropped, as Castiel had affectionately started likening
the commencement of his senior year to the detonation of atomic missiles, had
been clear, the slight smell of ozone in the air and the sheen on the ground
being the only evidence of the rain that had fallen overnight. Castiel cut his
morning run short of its normal five miles in order to get home and surprise
Anna and Gabriel with breakfast, seeing as how he wasn’t very good at verbally
expressing affections he had decided that waffles would obviously be the next
best thing. The sentiment was cut short when Castiel stepped into the house
after his cool down in the front yard had left him breathless and sweaty only
to be slapped in the face by the overwhelming smell of bacon. He rounded the
corner from the hallway to see Gabriel bouncing around the kitchen singing some
inane top 40s song wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron.
Castiel watched him for a moment, a smile twitching at the corners of his
mouth. At home, Not home, Castiel corrected himself. This was home now. He knew
now that whatever Pontiac may have been to him, it had never felt like this. In
his father’s house, Gabriel had always been mischievous but subdued and had
kept away from the house as much as possible during holiday breaks in order to
avoid conflicts. Castiel knew now that he had been acting more out of a sense
of self-preservation than any lack of familial love on Gabriel’s part. Hadn’t
Castiel done the same by begging his father to send him to Lake Forrest in
order to get a reprieve from Raphael and his father’s looming presence? Not
that it had helped him in the end. Castiel shook off the fog that was pressing
in, threatening to blot out the few bright spots that had revealed themselves
over the summer. As Castiel watched Gabe began to move plates of breakfast
foods, still singing to himself he finally noticed Castiel standing in the
doorway.
“Heeey brother,” Gabriel crowed he mouth curving upwards into a wide smile.
“Big day today. Thought I’d play Mr. Mom since you’ll probably be living off of
poptarts til’ Christmas break.”
“It looks great,” Castiel said in his normal chain smoker meets cement mixer
voice, moving to sit as Anna swanned into the room, already dressed for school.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
“A dress,” Anna replied primly picking up a piece of toast and nibbling on it
daintily.
“That!” Gabriel said in a choked voice as he gestured wildly up and down Anna’s
seated form. “That is not the kind of dress you wear to high school!”
Anna cast both of her brothers a murderous look before impassively turning back
to loading her plate. “I have been wearing a uniform for the last three years
and now I can wear what I want to school. And I am going to wear this dress.”
She arched her eyebrow shrewdly at the two men, daring them to argue with her.
The dress in question wasn’t entirely reprehensible, in fact it might be
considered modest by the standards of many, but the transformation it brought
to Anna Novak was what shocked her two older brothers. The green of the dress
brought out the emerald clarity of the young woman’s eyes, its length and cut
showing off the best features of the petite woman without being scandalous or
overtly revealing. Overall it made the girl look every bit the age that the
maturity her tone and bearing suggested.
“Fine.” Gabriel groused after a tense moment. “But put a fucking sweater on or
something.” He added as an afterthought.
Castiel watched as his sister smirked at her small victory, but nodded demurely
as Gabriel started touting the evils of adolescent boys and hormones,
blustering in a way that was an eerily accurate pantomime of their father’s
imperious mealtime sermons. Castiel delved into his breakfast and contemplated
the irony in either he Gabriel attempting to lecture their younger sister on
morals. Since escaping their father’s household, Gabriel had revealed numerous
character defects and vices that his siblings had been utterly unaware of
including many different variations on the deadly sins, taking the Lord’s name
in vain often and in very creative ways, and his proclivity for being a
complete pushover where his younger siblings were concerned. As for Castiel,
well it went unsaid that he was the reason for overturning their entire lives,
but his own disdain for most people his own age now went unchecked and more
often encouraged by Gabriel, who delighted in making the ineptitudes of others
obvious to the rest of the world. Not that Gabriel was cruel, far from it; he
just loved seeing people get their comeuppance.
Castiel finished his breakfast just as Anna managed to artfully steer the
discussion to her excitement at attending public school and since he couldn’t
claim to share the excitement he decided to go and get ready. It was just one
year and after that he could go and do his own thing. After a quick shower, he
found himself dully staring at the row of school uniform components taking up a
majority of his closet. He didn’t even know what people wore to public school.
With a shrug he slipped on a white button down shirt, rolling the sleeves up on
his forearms since summer was still stubbornly lingering even as August drew to
a close. He reached for a pair of his dress slacks before a thought struck him
causing a smile to quirk his lips, “Fuck it.” he grumbled turning instead to
retrieve a pair of dark stone washed jeans from his dresser and sliding them
on. He admired the affect in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door
grabbing a pair of socks and slipping them on along with his ratty Converse
sneakers that were sitting by his bed, still loosely tied from where he had
removed them the night before after returning from the movies with Gabriel and
Anna. Leaning closer to the mirror he made a half-hearted attempt to flatten
his bedraggled looking hair with a sigh, knowing it would only do what it
wanted to anyway. He snatched up his messenger bag from its spot near his door
and hesitated for just a second before grabbing his blue Lake Forrest tie from
where it had resided all summer on his doorknob and headed down the stairs.
“Ready, Cassie?” Gabriel shouted from where he was washing dishes at the
kitchen sink still clad in purple pajama pants and an old yellowed Madonna t-
shirt that he had in all likelihood slept in.
“Are you?” he asked incredulously as Gabriel shuffled to the door and slid on a
pair of Anna’s sequined flip flops.
“I’m in college,” he said with a shrug grabbing his keys from a bowl by the
door. “I can wear whatever I want to class. Plus I still look sexy as hell.
Let’s go.”
Anna trailed behind Gabriel, alternating between pleading with him not to
embarrass her and threatening him with creative forms of torture if he did.
Castiel slipped his tie loosely around his neck and locked the door to the
house musing that if nothing else Gabriel’s car would make their introduction
to their new classmates a memorable one. The cherry red 1959 Cadillac
convertible was backing out of the garage with Anna and Gabriel in the front
seat, forcing Castiel to run and vault himself into the back seat in order to
not be left walking to school.
“The paint!” Gabriel shrieked slamming on the breaks abruptly causing Castiel
to lurch down on to the floorboards of the classic car with a startled yelp. “I
was going to fucking stop! You didn’t need to go all Bruce Jenner and pole
vault into me car!”
“I don’t understand that reference,” Castiel moaned as he peeled himself off of
the floorboards, rubbing his sternum from where he had somehow managed to elbow
himself in the chest
.
“The grocery store,” Anna stated blandly, flipping down the passenger mirror to
poke at her face like girls do when they are nervous about their appearance.
“That’s right,” Castiel said turning his attention to his tie, which he began
to expertly knot with quick movements of his slender fingers. Gabriel turned
and scowled at his, his mouth nearly disappearing in displeasure. “You left me
at the grocery store.”
“I forgot you were with me.” Gabriel stated through gritted teeth as he angrily
threw the car into gear and started towards the high school.
“I ran after you for six blocks,” Castiel reminded sternly.
“I didn’t see you.”
“I yelled,” Castiel said pointedly. “You had the top down, but you didn’t hear
me because you had that awful song playing and were singing at the top of your
lungs.”
“That’s it,” Gabriel growled as he swung the car wildly into a parking spot
marked ‘Visitor’ in front of the sprawling single story building. He turned as
pointed an accusing finger at his younger brother, his hazel eyes glinting
madly. “Total Eclipse of the Heart is a fucking classic and I will not put up
with you besmirching Bonnie’s good name after you’ve already assaulted her. Now
get out of the car.”
Anna rolled her eyes at Gabriel’s theatrics,” Can we get this over with?”
“Yea yea,” Gabriel muttered darkly, climbing out of the car and then watching
with glee as Castiel fumbled past the seatbelt and out of the backseat with the
grace of a blind one-legged penguin. “I’ve got some things to sign in the
office here before I head to campus. Let me get a look at you before you go.”
Anna and Castiel moved to stand together at the front of the car for Gabriel’s
inspection. Anna taking in the steadily filling parking lot and the looks of
curiosity the trio were receiving with barely restrained excitement and Castiel
fidgeting awkwardly with his tie and the strap of his messenger bag as he
resolutely avoided eye contact with the flow of students surrounding them.
Gabriel surveyed them with his arms crossed before sighing in resignation and
running a hand through his messy brown hair.
“Got your bags?” The two younger Novaks grumbled in assent and Anna lifted her
brown leather satchel in a frustrated way.
“Schedules?” he barked noticing that Castiel momentarily raised his eyes
heavenward murmuring, “Lord give me strength.” under his breath.
“Seriously, Gabe,” Castiel intoned solemnly. “You don’t have to mother us.”
“I know,” Gabriel replied with a huff before moving swiftly forward to embrace
his siblings in a rib-crushing hug that more ended up crushing Anna’s throat
and Castiel’s kidneys due to the differences in the three relatives’ height.
“My babies are just growing up!” he finished dramatically before pulling away
and wiping condensation from his eyes. He smile tearfully before turning and
heading towards the main office, the sequins on his pilfered flip flops casting
dancing reflections on the teacher’s vehicles as he passed.
“Ready?” Anna asked rubbing her hand over her throat, her voice sounding
nervous and small.
Castiel offered his arm to his younger sister with a smile that reached his
eyes for once. “As I will ever be. Do try to remember what Gabriel said
though.”
“Teenage boys are disgusting, moronic, buttholes.” She replied seriously as the
duo started towards the school with more confidence than either of them felt.
“No,” Castiel stated, chuckling slightly at the way his sister subconsciously
edited Gabriel’s more colorful statements. “What he said last night. At the
pizza restaurant.”
Anna’s step faltered for a moment at the door of the building before her
shoulders set with a new serenity. She tilted her chin up proudly, her eyes
dancing with amusement. “The Novaks will be the hottest motherfuckers at this
school.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she cursed and she looked around
self-consciously for a moment.
“Yes we will,” Castiel replied, his own blue eyes sparking as he opened the
door and motioned for his sibling to enter. He paused for a moment to retrieve
his iPod out of his backpack and slipped an earbud into his ear, sighing in
contentment as he queued up the song he had been listening to on his jog.
God what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Anna smiled brightly as her brother relaxed beside her. She gave Castiel a wink
and set off to find her homeroom tossing encouragement over her shoulder as she
went, “Poor guys will never know what hit them!”
***** Teenagers *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Shitshitshitfuckshit," Dean muttered griping the wheel of his 1967 Chevy
Impala with white knuckles as he skidded into the parking lot of Lawrence High
School, leaving Fast & Furious movie worthy marks and a distinct smell of
burning rubber lingering in the air as he began frantically searching for a
parking spot.
"Calm down, Dean." Sam sighed wearily from the passenger seat as he fished the
last broken bits of a poptart out of the foil wrapper in his hand. "It's not
like we aren't already late."
Dean growled in frustration as he thought about what exactly had made the two
brothers late. It had been John of course, stumbling into their small two
bedroom apartment at around 3 a.m. slurring incoherently about the goddamn
vampires who had sucked him dry at the poker table and stinking of cheap
bourbon, the cloying smell invading Dean's nose as he shouldered his father's
weight and led him to his room, hoping that Sammy hadn't been woken up too. He
had gone through the familiar motions of unceremoniously dumping his father
into bed, removing his shoes, and then going through his pockets and wallet to
try to calculate exactly how much John had lost that night. Sam had been
sitting on the couch when he had returned to the living room, looking groggy
and irritated.
"How much?" Sam had asked blandly. Dean winced at the memory of how resigned
and world-weary his younger brother had sounded then. He was too damn young to
be worrying about this kind of stuff.
"We'll have enough for rent," Dean had replied, receiving only a grunt from Sam
in return before the younger Winchester had returned to their shared room and
the twin mattress that he had outgrown over the course of the last couple of
months.
After glaring at the green digital numbers of the microwave clock for a few
moments, willing his buzzing brain to stop thinking of how long he could put
off buying a new bed before Sam got permanent spinal damage, Dean had resigned
himself to another sleepless night and settled on the couch with one of the
dog-eared paperbacks that he kept on the side table. He didn't even remember
falling asleep.
His reoccurring dream had just taken an uncomfortably awkward turn involving
Wash walking in on him and Kaylee on the bridge and saying something about "an
inevitable betrayal" when he realized that the incessant beeping he was hearing
was not coming from the flight console he currently had Kaylee pressed against.
He blearily opened his eyes and stumbled towards the noise that was coming from
his bedroom.
"Turn it off," Sam groaned as Dean stumbled into his little brother's feet
which were hanging off of the end of the bed by several inches.
Dean fumbled for his old flip phone sitting on the nightstand separating his
and Sam's beds and thankfully the noise stopped. He collapsed into his mattress
with a grateful groan and flipped so his back was to Sam before snuggling under
his cool blankets. Dean vaguely hoped his dream got back on track and that Wash
would take the hint and fuck off like a leaf on the wind. Being roughly shaken
awake by the jolly green giant's nerdier, more annoying cousin was the next
thing he remembered. One look at the clock on the cell phone that Sam thrust in
his face had Dean lurching out of bed even though he had initially wanted to
drift back off. Scrabbling around on the floor for jeans that were the least
covered in motor oil, need to do laundry today, Dean snagged his favorite Led
Zepplin shirt that Jo had given him for his birthday out of the clean basket of
laundry that he had not gotten around to putting away yet. He frantically
sprayed some deodorant on and jammed his boots on, the laces flopping awkwardly
as he hustled Sam out to the car.
Fifteen minutes later and Dean now couldn't find a decent parking spot to save
his life.
"There!" Sam yelled, gesturing frantically at an empty spot next to the gym
that had probably remained empty due to it being bordered on one side by some
haphazardly stacked football tackling sleds.
"Of freakin' course," Dean muttered easing into the spot in an effort to
protect his baby's paint job. He grabbed his bag from the backseat and rushed
Sam out of the car.
The two ran towards the main building, breathless in the warming morning air
that held no hint of the approaching fall, they could still make homeroom. No
one would probably even notice they were late. Dean's phone chimed merrily from
the pocket of his jeans that no, had not come with the rips already in them.
Dean groaned, retrieving the device and quickly setting it to vibrate before
reading the new message, it could only be from one person.
Broanna: where r u!?
Dean: In the lot. Save me a seat.
Dean quickened his stride in an effort to keep up with this long-legged
brother, so intent on making it to homeroom before Mrs. Barnes noticed that he
ran right into Sam who had stopped dead in his tracks in front of him.
"Oh, Dean," Sam said reverently moving towards the object of his affections.
"Look at this car."
Sam's hands ghosted over the raised fins that supported the taillights of the
red Cadillac once he got within touching distance. Dean watched as his brother
did a slow circuit of the car and he could agree that it was a pretty hot
little automobile. It had a cream leather interior with wood paneling and
chrome finishes on the dash and was damn close to perfect all the way down to
its white-wall tires. Those fuzzy handcuffs on the rear-view mirror are freaky
though, Dean mused, fidgeting anxiously with the strap on his backpack, they
were getting later and later.
"Let's go, bitch. With any luck the guy's in your class and he won't mind
braiding your hair in the backseat," Dean snapped irritably, getting Sam's
patented bitch face in return but it got him moving. Moving towards the school,
which was really the only thing Dean wanted.
"Whatever, jerk. I bet the guy who drives that gets more action than your
hearse gets you," Sam retorted loudly, catching up with Dean at the door of the
school.
The door swung open suddenly from the inside, catching Sam in the shoulder
causing him to stumble back half a step and drop his messenger back, where it
promptly exploded, sending spirals and pens scattering.
"I do pretty ok," an amused voice said, its owner coming out the door with his
eyebrows waggling suggestively. The man stopped short when he saw the
destruction in his path, a confused frown settling on his face as he looked up
and up (and up when he turned his gaze to Sam)to the two men in front of him.
Dude's short, Dean thought with an exasperated sigh as he watched the man stoop
to begin helping Sam scoop up the widely strewn school supplies.
Sam spared the man an annoyed glance as he shoved a messy stack of papers into
his bag, before freezing and doing and almost comically slow double take at his
helper. "Gabe? What are you doing here?"
"You know this guy, Sammy?" Dean said curiously as he watched his younger
brother flush crimson when the shorter man smiled widely at him, handing him a
fistful of pens and highlighters. Dean appraised him in a cursory sort of way,
taking in the man's (Gabe was it?) bejeweled flip flops and Madonna shirt with
a quirk of his eyebrow. Oh, Sam was going to hear about this later.
"Yea," Sam said trying, and failing, to sound nonplused. "Gabriel was in my
classes over the summer. Remember the story I told you? The guy with the
Skittles and the whoopee cushions?"
"Oh, Samtown. I'm touched I made such an impression." Gabriel said with a wry
smile, standing and retrieving a set of keys from the pocket of his purple
plaid pajama pants. "Anyway, I've got to dash to class myself."
Gabriel made his way towards the red Cadillac, twirling the keys on his finger
and Dean watched slightly horrified, but more impatiently as Sam lumbered
gracelessly to his feet and took several steps to follow the shorter man. "Why
are you here, Gabe?"
Dean snorted and rolled his eyes, he really did not care about Sam's painfully
obvious man-crush right now. Homeroom was with Mrs. Barnes and while she was
hot as hell, especially in that one dream with the Van Halen soundtrack that he
had every so often, she was also fucking scary when you got on her bad side.
"I'm going, Sam."
Sam waved him off absentmindedly and Dean headed into the building with a
shrug, catching Gabriel's reply just as the door closed behind him.
"I'm just dropping off my sister and brother."
Castiel had a strategy for his senior year. It was simple and though he was
fairly certain that it would prove effective he was still nervous about
actively putting it to the test in this setting. He had nicknamed the strategy
the Black Widow, the inspiration for it coming to him when he had gone to see
Iron Man 2 with Gabriel as a sort of brotherly bonding exercise right after the
move. He had practiced the spy's cool, unaffected manner with his therapist and
while she had initially badgered him incessantly, throwing threatening, doctory
sounding terms at him like major depressive disorder and unhealthy coping
mechanisms for the disinterest and lack of emotion he had shown in their
sessions, but even she had finally given him up as a lost cause and written him
a prescription for Prozac with a resigned sigh.
So far, the disinterest was a lot less hard to affect than he had feared as he
surveyed the other people in his homeroom while they staggered through the
door, looking too tired to qualify as living. Most had shuffled in and
practically collapsed into their seats, slumping down in exhaustion or flat out
setting up make shift beds using multiple desks and their book bags as pillows.
He had been one of the first people in the room and snagged the desk that was
as close to the door as possible, a seat that would give him the opportunity to
not only study his classmates without drawing attention to 'that creepy staring
thing' Gabriel swore up and down he did when he was focusing intently on
another person, but also give him the chance to be the first out of the
classroom when the bell sounded.
As the room filled steadily with students, the buzz of the chattering around
him and the shrieks of the old friends having heart-felt reunions began to
grate on his nerves. Castiel also noticed that he was drawing far more
attention than he liked, he assumed it was because he was new and shiny. He
employed his first tactic of avoidance by pulling out his schedule and looking
at it, even though he had practically memorized it in the last two weeks since
it had came in the mail, and turning up the volume on his iPod. He smirked
slightly at the insightfulness of the device that had been playing songs that
eerily mirrored his emotions since he had turned the shuffle feature on.
They said all teenagers scare the living shit out of me!
"Homeroom, physics, history, english, lunch, french, study hall, calculus,
gym," Castiel murmured tapping his fingers unconsciously along with the music
on the desk.
The final bell rang, drawing a rush of students in the door. These seemed like
a slightly livelier bunch, most were clutching energy drinks or sodas, but the
two that peaked Castiel's interest, though he was very careful to keep his
curiosity from showing on his features, were holding large Starbucks cups that
someone, he could only assume a concerned barista, had drawn skulls and warning
symbols on. One was a petite girl with cascading blonde hair wearing an
unbuttoned blue flannel shirt over a plain white shirt and cut off bermuda
shorts. Castiel noted that she was very free with her smiles and laughed a lot.
The other was a pale young man, whose own dirty blonde hair was cut into what
could only be described as a mullet, wearing a button down denim shirt with no
sleeves and black shorts with well-worn Vans. The boy spoke less, but seemed
fond of the word 'dude'.
The pair took seats towards the back of the room, the girl tossing her backpack
down on the empty seat in front of her and pulling her phone out, thumbs flying
as she texted and laughingly rolled her eyes at the boy who had taken the seat
next to her. Castiel tore his gaze away from the pair, the ease and genuineness
of their interactions had distracted him enough that he had not noticed the
older woman who had taken up a post at the front of the room, leaning on her
desk with her arms crossed languidly over her chest and a slightly amused look
on her face. Castiel surreptitiously removed his headphones as the room began
to fall silent under her intense gaze. Once she had gotten everyone's
attention, she fluidly grabbed a stack of papers off of her desk and dropped
them on the desk of the student sitting in front of the room on the opposite
side from Castiel.
"Take one and pass it back," the woman said in a bored, rehearsed manner. She
paced the front of the room in easy strides, her restless movements at odds
with the blandness of her tone as the heels of her black boots clicked sharply
on the tile floor.
She's got the voice down, Castiel thought. But she's no Natasha Romanoff.
"My name is Pamela Barnes," she continued. "You guys can call me Mrs. Barnes or
Pam if you don't piss me off."
A hand shot up from the middle of the room, Castiel craned his neck and saw
that it belonged to a boy who looked way too old to still be in high school
with eyes that had a strange jaundice-like tint, pock marked skin and a
letterman jacket draped across his desk. Football, Castiel decided as he took
in the other large boys sitting around the hand-raiser, making vulgar gestures
towards the teacher as if she couldn't plainly see them. Mrs. Barnes
acknowledged him with a nod. "How do we know if we've pissed you off, Pam?"
She frowned at the boys and moved to sit behind her desk. "You should just
assume that is the case until you have been notified otherwise," she told him
in a biting, clinical tone.
That stopped the boy and his friends cold, their laughter quickly becoming
uncomfortable and then nonexistent. Castiel grinned as he watched them shift
awkwardly; he hoped all of the teachers were like Mrs. Barnes. "I'm going to
call roll, please respond with something appropriate when you hear your name."
Castiel paid attention, schooling his features into a mask of boredom that he
had practiced for hours in front of the mirror on the back of his bedroom door.
Wanting to put names with faces, he noticed that the blonde girl was named
Joanna Harvelle, but she preferred to be called Jo as she quickly informed the
teacher and her friend was named Ash Lindberg. Castiel was surprised when the
teacher did not stumble over his name as many did, but he figured with another
student named Azazel she was probably used to weird names. However, upon
hearing an unfamiliar name many of the students turned to look at him and he
could feel the muscles in his neck tensing under the scrutiny. He stifled his
feelings of panic and turned his attention to the thick ream of stapled papers
that had finally made its way around the room to him, in order to avoid meeting
anyone's gaze and inadvertently giving off the impression that he wanted
friends.
But you do!An annoying part of Castiel's mind protested, a part that sounded
vaguely like Gabriel's singing from earlier that morning.
"Parker, Ryan" Mrs. Barnes continued reading the least of students as if she
were reading the ingredients of a particularly disappointing brand of breakfast
cereal.
'Lawrence High School Student Handbook' Castiel skimmed the title with a sigh,
flipping to the table of contents and reading it disinterestedly, his fingers
itching to put at least one ear bud back in to combat the nausea that welled up
unexpectedly. He focused on his breathing instead.
"Steward, Miranda"
Really? Castiel thought as he read through the more saucy parts of the
handbook. There is a whole section in this handbook about what constitutes lewd
behavior, in detail. And it includes spitting? How is spitting lewd? Its gross,
but not lewd. Well, unless you have some weird body fluid kink.Castiel tried
not to think about what happened to necessitate such thorough descriptions in a
Midwestern high school handbook. But the dress code went into just as much
uncomfortable detail when it described what swimwear was and was not
appropriate to wear on school outings. Public school is different.
Mrs. Barnes arched a disdainful eyebrow at him, "Right. And finally.
Winchester, Dean."
The silence echoed through the room, with a sigh the teacher repeated herself
before grumpily stating, "Oh for Christ's sake. What is this, Ferris freaking
Bueller!? Anybody see Winchester this morning?"
In a moment that Castiel decided could've only been better timed if John Hughes
had been shouting direction from behind a camera, the door opened and in walked
a breathless looking boy. Castiel studied him for a moment, not realizing that
the curious tilt to his head had the potential to negate the all of the work he
had put into cultivating a guise of aloofness if anybody had focused their
attention on him instead of the more recent addition to the classroom. The boy
was probably about Castiel's height, maybe slightly taller, it was hard to tell
since he was not standing himself. He was well-muscled in a way that implied
that he was not unfamiliar with physical labor, but probably didn't actively
work out much beyond any sports he might play. Castiel decided that it had to
be football, judging from his bow-legged stature he probably wouldn't be
coordinated enough to maneuver with the fluidity of a basketball player and
while his skin was tanned, it wasn't really the dark tan that many baseball
players sported. He had delicate features, but not like a girl. Just…pretty.
Beautiful! His inner Gabe voice squealed.
Castiel ignored the voice and continued his observation, his brow furrowing in
concentration as he studied the newcomers face. It wasn't that pretty.
Gorgeous, his traitorous mind supplied. Okay, so the guy had cheekbones that
could probably cut glass and the stubble on his cheeks, while probably
unintentional since the guy was over fifteen minutes late to the first day of
school, gave his face a rugged quality that most producers probably salivated
over when casting action films. He had these amazing cupids bow lips that were
currently twisting into a sheepish grin as he quietly shut the door to the
classroom behind him. The boy's nose was Romanesque, casting his face into
sharp profile, but had a slight bump, as if it had been broken and had not been
reset properly, but Castiel decided that it only added character to the face
before him.
"Am I late?" the boy asked innocently as he turned and cast a searching gaze
over the classroom. It afforded Castiel the opportunity to get a complete view
of his face, revealing a faint dusting of freckles as the light glanced off of
his features.
Freckles!
"Not at all, Mr. Winchester," Mrs. Barnes replied, her voice dripping with a
mixture of amused sarcasm and boredom. "We're honored you've decided to join
us. Now if everyone will turn to the sixth page of your handbook…"
Castiel tuned her out, his fingers tapping an agitated rhythm on his desk as he
observed the newcomer,Dean, move towards the back of the room out of the corner
of his eye. He rolled his shoulders, attempting to ease the pressure on his
muscles and ok, maybe he turned his head just a little so that he could follow
the boy's progress as he sank heavily into his seat, the seat that had been
recently occupied by one Jo Harvelle's backpack, and ran a hand over that
perfect face. Castiel noticed that he looked tired. How had he not seen the
dark circles under the boy's eyes when he had been gawking at him? He watched,
his vision going slightly red on the edges as Jo punched Dean in the shoulder
in greeting and the boy turned to smile at her in return.
She's probably his girlfriend. Another voice hissed in his head, this once
sounded sanctimonious and spiteful.
Great, now he had multiple personality disorder too. Castiel figured his
therapist would have a field day with that, but he had no intention of telling
her about the fractured parts of his conscience that had recently began to
reveal themselves. He was so intent in his own personal self-diagnosis that he
did not notice that Mrs. Barnes had moved to stand in front of him until a hand
with crimson nails struck out and stilled his frantically tapping fingers with
an iron grip. Her gaze, when he met it, could have burned the eyes right out of
his head. Her mouth twisted shrewdly and Castiel wondered idly if she hated her
job or maybe it was just the students.
"Mr. Novak," she began imperiously. "Why don't you tell us a little bit about
yourself?"
How about I don't. Castiel thought. He knew this part of his head was his own.
The sarcasm was unmistakable. Because there is nothing to tell. Because you are
nothing. That however, was laced with venom and almost caused his carefully
constructed mask of disinterest to crack.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and forced a grin at his teacher, getting
to his feet with much more aplomb than he felt. With a quick prayer to whatever
or whoever might have been listening, though Castiel liked to think that
somewhere God's voicemail was not entirely full just yet, he faced his
classmates seeing interest, mirth, hostility, exhaustion, hunger, confusion,
and a myriad of other emotions screaming back at him from the audience in front
of him.
He cleared his throat thoughtfully, "My name is Castiel Novak."
Chapter End Notes
     Hi there! Just wanted to take a moment to assure you that I am a real
     person and not, in fact a robot. As a person I like to interact with
     other persons. So please don't hesitate to let me know what you think
     or if there is something you want me to include or you think I could
     improve on. I'm not easily offended and I'm not entirely comfortable
     begging for reviews, but here I am anyway. I'm going to try to get on
     a regular posting schedule, but now I don't know what that will be
     yet, just know I have a lot of ideas for this story (as well as
     another one) and have no intention of letting it die. I should have
     decided by the next update which days I'm going to post one so stay
     tuned!
     Also thank you to all of you who did read, comment, subscribe, kudo
     or even hated this story. If I cause you to have feelings when you
     read this then thank you!
***** Perspectives *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Many people called Jo Harvelle driven, but those people were just being polite.
Some referred to her as quirky and that one just confused her because what was
this? Fucking Gilmore Girls? Others still said she was a bitch, both to her
face and behind her back, and that was probably closer, but it failed to
account for why many of the people who called her that had also recently gotten
their asses handed to them by her for one reason or another. Her mom, Ellen,
told her she was foolish and pig-headed. Those were both true, but Jo liked to
think of herself as brash. Dean and Ash called her 'Broanna' with affection,
but they also used it when they needed something. In Dean's case it was usually
a place to crash or a hot meal that he didn't want to ask for, but she could
tell he needed and for Ash it usually meant he wanted a wingman or an alibi.
Garth just called her, which was irritating but also sort of endearing.
But back to brash, sure it had some negative connotations, but it also got the
job done. Brash is what war generals and friggin' superheroes were. Han Solo
was brash, Iron Man was brash and, damnit, Jo felt like she was as good as a
gun toting genius billionaire badass space captain any day. But she was also a
girl and as is the wont of the fairer half of the species that has been blessed
with fallopian tubes and biological clocks, she liked a challenge. And while
she currently had her hands full with that Becky girl who still wore tube socks
with her gym uniform and talked about Buffy all the time, it didn't mean that
she was oblivious to the fact that Castiel Novak was desperately in need of an
intervention.
She listened thoughtfully as he rattled off the usual new student spiel, gave
his name and talked about his hometown. He told the class he had gone to Lake
Forrest Academy and was in the ROTC there. That explains the stick up his ass,
Jo thought as she took in his stiff posture and his clipped manner of speaking.
He made some offhanded remark about how he wanted to be an engineer, which
seemed incredibly dull to Jo and she figured it was bullshit anyway. Studying
engineering sounded like something your parents told their friends you did when
you were really off experimenting at a liberal arts college.
She found herself intrigued that his words and manner were so at odds with his
appearance. He wasn't obsessively put together like some of the other fanatic
military kids who were in the ROTC here. His dark hair was ruffled and messy,
like he had just gotten out of bed and not bothered with fixing it. His
expression was one of bland exasperation, he seemed like he was irritated about
having to speak in front of the class, but not particularly nervous. He had a
tie loosely knotted around the neck of his white button down shirt that he
hadn't bothered tucking into his jeans and scuffed, dirty Converse that
definitely had seen better days.
Castiel didn't really look like the kind of guy who could take having orders
barked at him, he was sort of on the delicate looking side with pale skin and a
slim frame. Yep, Jo decided when Pammy B. asked for a volunteer to show the new
student around, her hand shooting into the air faster than Tommy Martin's had
shot up to grab her boob when they had slow danced at the winter ball in the
9th grade. The poor guy sticks out worse than Garth's ears and I have to save
him from himself.
"Great," Mrs. Barnes stated drily at Jo's enthusiasm and motioned for Castiel
to go back to his seat with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Castiel locked eyes with Jo for a tense moment and she noticed the fingers on
his left hand twitching against his leg before he stiffly moved to sit back
down. He fumbled with an ear bud clumsily, a gesture that was at odds with the
cool demeanor he had just presented to the rest of the class.
"Why, Jo?" Dean asked her spinning around in his seat and snapping her out of
her thoughts. "Why do you always do that?"
"Do what?" she replied innocently, tucking her hair behind one of her ears, the
force of her gaze transferring to her friend in front of her. He looks tired.
she thought taking in the stubble on his jaw and the dark circles under his
eyes. She offered him her Starbucks cup which by now was only half-full and
probably mostly cold.
"Take in strays," he grumbled in reply, taking the offered cup gratefully and
practically inhaling his first mouthful before making a disgusted face and
coughing slightly. "What is this jet fuel?"
"Eight shots," Jo stated ignoring his first statement. She did not 'take in
strays' she was friendly and she liked to help people, so what if those people
usually reminded her of the sad puppies on that sappy ASPCA commercial. "And
why were you late?"
She meant to sound suggestive, everyone knew of Dean's track history with
girls, however only a few of select people knew of why he was so reluctant to
be more emotionally invested in another person beyond flirting and one night
stands. Jo happened to be one of those people. So the question came out
sounding more mother-y than she had intended and she saw him slipping into the
easy nonchalance that he was known for, that he probably didn't even realize he
did anymore.
His reply was short, but it was still enough that Jo heard the anger in his
voice, "John had a late night."
She stifled the urge to lecture him and settled for a long-suffering sigh
instead. Jo wasn't sure which was worse, the forty year old drunk who would
just fake his way through rehab again if he were forced into it or his son who
had the emotional depth of a kiddie pool. But she was well aware of how futile
it was to try to get Dean to talk about it, so she decided to focus on
something that she might be able to do something about. Castiel looked like he
was going to bolt as soon as the bell rang. "I'm gonna need you guys' help with
Bambi."
"Who?" Ash replied tearing his eyes away from his cell phone where he was
probably hacking into NASA or something and Jo rolled her eyes at his
obliviousness.
She jutted her chin sharply at Castiel who was surreptitiously slipping his
messenger bag onto one shoulder. Dean and Ash turned their attention to the boy
just as he chanced a look over his shoulder at Jo, his eyes going wide when he
saw the trio staring at him. His head snapped forward and Jo saw Dean's
shoulders tense under the faded material of his shirt. God, maybe I shouldn't
drag him into this. He's got other things to stress about.
"What's the plan, dude?" Ash drawled, sounding only mildly interested as he
slipped his phone into the front pocket of his work shirt.
"I'm going to go introduce myself," Jo said shoving the useless student
handbook into her bag. "When the bell rings, you and Dean need to…Dean. Dean,
are you paying attention?" she punched him sharply in his arm to get his
attention.
Dean tore his gaze away from the stiff back and rigid profile of Castiel,
shaking off the tunnel vision she knew he got when he was really tired. "Yea,
but maybe you should leave the guy alone, Jo. He doesn't really look like he
wants-"
"What? Friends? What kind of person doesn't want friends?" Jo said effectively
cutting off Dean's protests as she stood and slipped down the aisle, moving to
place herself between Castiel and the doorway just as the bell sounded.
The boy flinched slightly at the bell, like he hadn't been expecting it to be
so loud. He looked at Jo with wide eyes and she couldn't help but smile. "Hi!
My name is Jo. Let me see what your schedule looks like and then I can tell you
where to go."
Castiel hesitated for a second, but then wordlessly handed his schedule over to
Jo as Dean and Ash fell into place behind her. Ash attempting to look stern
with his arms crossed over his chest and Dean looking embarrassed by Jo's
relentlessness with his hands shoved deeply in the pockets of his jeans and his
ears tingeing pink. She took the proffered slip of paper and gestured casually
at the two boys standing behind her. "That's Ash and prince charming there is
Dean."
Jo noticed that Castiel's mouth dropped open at her off-handed remark before he
flushed slightly and murmured a greeting at the two boys. She smirked slightly
at his reaction. Awww, Bambi is so the right name for him. "Oh, hey. You have
physics next. Ash, don't you have physics with Gerlach too?"
"Sure do," Ash replied. "I'll take care of you newb, no worries. Let's go"
With that Ash made to leave the class and Castiel hesitated slightly before
following him, Jo trailed behind them still studying the boy's schedule. She
noticed that he would have at least one of the three of them or Garth in every
one of his classes and did a silent fist pump into the air that caused Dean to
raise an eyebrow at her curiously. She just smiled at him, watching Castiel
trudge along in front of them with Ash like he was walking to his execution.
She hoped maybe he was just nervous, but if he was then he was still doing a
pretty good job of hiding it.
Dean just shrugged and tossed the now empty Starbucks cup into a trash can as
he passed, "Well, I'm off to Spanish with Senor Sanz, wish me luck."
"See you at lunch, dude." Ash said with a small salute.
Castiel gave Jo a glance before grumbling in his deep voice, "Adios."
Dean gave the boy a confused look, a bemused smile on his face as he gave Jo a
quick one armed hug and headed off down an adjoining hallway.
"I should get going too," She said reaching out and giving Castiel's shoulder a
friendly punch. It wasn't as hard as she usually hit the others, but the boy
scowled at her and rubbed his arm in a wounded manner. She handed him back his
schedule and turned to bounce back down the hallway towards her Algebra class,
calling back to the pair who were standing outside their own classroom. "Ash be
nice, I'll see you next period, Castiel."
0000000
Ash Lindberg had taken a test once when he was a kid. Well he had taken a lot
of tests, but this one had been different. It was around the same time that he
built that robot that shot paintballs at his neighbor's Pomeranian when it
barked. So he figured he had probably been around eight. The results had said
that his IQ was something a like 190 and when his dad had looked up Steven
Hawking's online when they got home that night the stern older man had started
crying. But when he asked, his mom told Ash that they were happy tears. A
couple of weeks later he had met Jo at the public pool and she treated him just
like every other dumb boy who pulled her pigtails. And really, he was.
Ash hadn't let the fact that he was considered a genius phase him. He had still
liked Pokémon and all he really wanted for his birthday was a skateboard, not
the chemistry set his dad spent a whole paycheck on. He never felt different,
at least not until his parents tried to send him to a magnet school in the
fifth grade and separate him from the small group of friends who helped calm
the buzzing mess his head usually was. So, he had sat himself down at mom's
computer and deleted all of the records that contained any mention of test
scores. He then forged some less than glowing letters of recommendation from
his teachers and doctored his past report cards so he just seemed above average
instead of genius. Thwarting his parents had taken him less than an hour, but
to this day his dad still had trouble looking him in the eye.
As a small part of Ash's mind reminisced, the rest of it was currently being
less than stimulated by the droning of Mr. Gerlach, the portly teacher going on
and on about what the class was going to be studying this year. Field theory
and quantum mechanics, puh-leaze.
To entertain himself Ash turned his scrutiny onto his lab partner, taking him
in with a practiced gaze. He was interesting, in a way, a man of few words. But
Ash thought that it was probably less of a natural trait, like his own brand of
slacker stoicism, and more of a self imposed state of being. Ash could tell by
the way Castiel thinned his lips and swallowed when he had wanted to refuse
Jo's insistence at being his guide, like he was forcing the words back down his
throat.
The guy was also in every single advanced placement class that the school
offered; even Ash only took the interesting ones. Who takes AP English? He
thought one area of his mind idly picturing Dean crouched over a dusty old tome
in some massive library, giggling like a school girl. Nerds, that's who.
So Ash figured the guy was either seriously smart or anal retentive or had a
very sad, pathetic social life to want to take on that much extra course work.
He, himself could do any assignment almost as fast the teacher's could print
them, but that didn't mean that he wanted to take time out of his busy schedule
of drinking and blowing apart the validity of sci-fi movies to engage in more
'intellectual pursuits'. As he watched Castiel take fevered notes over what, he
didn't know, Gerlach wasn't saying anything interesting; he decided that it was
probably some fucked up Molotov cocktail combining all three and thus the guy
definitely needed to chill out.
He hadn't ever been convinced of Jo's intervening expertise. Hell, Becky Rosen
still sent half of the class forwards of her Spike and Giles slash fiction and
that was after getting Jo's special brand of 'help' for the last six years. But
he felt like between himself, Garth, and Dean they could probably offset her
half-assed attempts at Oprahing the new kid enough to get the guy laid at
least. Judging from Castiel's less than enthusiastic response to Jo, he needed
to start with baby steps.
"Dude," Ash said, pulling Castiel away from whatever boring bullshit Gerlach
was spouting. "You like sci-fi?"
"What?" Castiel replied in a near whisper, casting an uneasy glance at the
oblivious instructor.
"Science fiction," Ash clarified slowly, noticing how the boy's pupils dilated
and his fingers started twitching when he was anxious. "Like space, robots, the
future, aliens. Y'know impossible sciencey stuff."
Castiel let out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through his hair, causing it
to stick up even more as he tilted his head in a confused way. "I know what
science fiction is. What I do not know is why you are asking about my
preference for it."
"We do a movie night on Wednesdays, me n' the boys. Mostly we watch sci-fi, but
we take turns picking and trust me Jo and Garth's tastes can be a little too
estrogeny sometimes, if you know what I mean. A fifth person would help break
ties. You in?"
Castiel eyed him suspiciously, probably searching for ulterior motives. Ash
watched as the guy frowned unconsciously, an almost imperceptible facial twitch
that probably would've been misinterpreted as Castiel considering if anyone
else had been observing him. But Ash could see the wheels turning in the boy's
head and knew the answer as soon as it was decided. "I appreciate the offer.
But I am quite certain that I will be busy."
His reply had been given in slow measured tones and Ash could sense that
Castiel had other things that he wanted to say. But then the boy swallowed and
the words were gone, reduced back down into nothingness. Ash prided himself on
being able to read people; he was the one that had known that Garth had a crush
on Jo even before the kid had opened his mouth and he knew everything that Dean
didn't tell them about what was going on with his dad, even though John was
very careful to not leave visible bruises, for a drunk. Castiel was hard to
read though; his face was a mask of carefully studied indifference. Ash could
tell it was a mask, of that much he was certain, but for what purpose he wasn't
sure.
Bor-ring! The majority of Ash's mind thought, pulling him away from his study
of his lab partner and filing away his observations for later examination. He
always did his best thinking after two or three beers anyway. He pulled out his
phone with a shrug and shot Jo a quick text message.
Dr. Badass!: Movie madness is a no go. I'm tapping out, you're up.
Then he got back to his most pressing project-hacking Alistair's student email
so that he could send Mr. Gerlach anonymous love messages. He figured he would
be done by the end of second period.
0000000
Garth Fitzgerald IV was a simple man. He liked bar-b-que, Nascar, peach cobbler
and pretty girls. When he came to Lawrence in the spring of his freshman year
he had been hoping to find decent bar-b-que, knew that he would still have his
mom's peach cobbler, and had been lucky enough to find someone to talk about
Nascar with. That person had just happened to be a pretty girl and Garth had
thought that he could not get any luckier.
He was convinced to this day that Jo Havelle was the only woman he could ever
love, though she had made it clear to him that she thought of him as nothing
more than a goofy brother. Initially, he was really very hurt by the whole
thing, especially since he thought that it wasn't very fair, no one could be
expected to compete with Dean Winchester. After several years of friendship, he
now knew without a doubt how dumb his initial assumptions had been. Jo thought
that Dean was just as goofy, if not goofier than Garth.
He walked into his third period history class, excited that he was going to get
to see Jo. He did not have a lot of classes with her this year and he couldn't
wait until the end of the month to give her her birthday present at the party
she was planning for herself. When he spotted her sitting behind an unfamiliar
boy with a thunderous expression on his face, chatting amicably even though it
looked to him like the conversation was pretty one sided his stomach twisted
into the now familiar knot of jealousy that he got when he saw Jo with another
guy, but the feeling soon subsided as he watched the boy pinch the bridge of
his nose in an irritated way.
"Hiya, beautiful," he called to Jo with his normal greeting. Quickening his
pace to snag the empty seat beside her, he gave the boy in front of her a once
over, assessing the possibility of Jo liking this guy.
"Hey Garth," Jo replied giving him a wide smile and cocking her head at the boy
in front of her who had turned slightly in his seat to observe their
interactions. Garth noticed that the thunderous expression had been downgraded
to a mildly inconvenient rain storm. "This is Castiel Novak, he went to school
in nowhere Illinois."
Castiel extended his hand in a perfunctory sort of way, "I'm from Pontiac. But
my school was just outside of Chicago actually."
"Neat." Garth replied reaching out and shaking the boy's hand enthusiastically.
"Garth Fitzgerald IV, my dad wasn't creative enough to think of a new name."
"You didn't say you went to school in Chicago," Jo interrupted, her brow
furrowing in that cute way that just made Garth want to jump in front of
bullets for her.
"You didn't ask," Castiel replied drily. He turned back around in his seat and
placed an ear bud in his ear.
Garth couldn't decide how he felt about the guy. He was a little rude, maybe.
Garth always tried to not assume the worst in people; his mother had raised him
to be a 'glass half full' kind of guy. Maybe Castiel just didn't like Jo, but
everyone liked her so that couldn't possibly be it. Maybe he was an alien.
Garth had read about some aliens in the National Inquirer who came to earth to
engage specific test subjects, but didn't see the point in expending the energy
they used to power their cloaking devices in plying pleasantries on people they
were not trying to probe. But then the thought struck him that if the dude were
an alien that mean that Garth was a potential probee since he had wasted energy
being civil to him. The thought made him shudder, No thanks.
He watched Jo as she struggled with being snubbed, it didn't come very
naturally to her. She looked at Garth for a moment, her mouth moving wordlessly
and he just shrugged in response. She frowned and then turned back to face the
back of Castiel's head as she reached out and rapped him sharply with the pen
in her hand. The boy's hand shot up and grabbed the back of his head where the
pen had hit him, flinching as the unexpected pain laced through his nerve
endings.
"Ow, what the hell!?" Castiel said turning around quickly in his seat with an
annoyed look on his face and was met with Jo's equally irritated expression.
"What the fuck is your damage!?." Jo barked causing the students in the row in
front of them to give the trio a scandalized look. Their teacher was currently
sitting back with his feet up on his desk talking on his cell phone. AP History
was kind of pointless and most of the students were used to their instructor's
apathy, but that didn't mean they wanted his attention on them or worse on the
material they were supposed to be learning. "I am trying to help you and you
won't talk to me or my friends. You act like we're completely inconveniencing
you!"
"I never asked for your help," Castiel's tone was icy and Garth was happy it
wasn't directed at him because if looks could kill, then Jo would have been
mourning over his sizzling corpse right now.
The paired stared at each other and Garth could only look back and forth trying
to understand exactly where all of this tension had come from. "Fine", Jo
snapped pulling out her phone without breaking eye contact. "I'll tell Dean not
to bother looking out for you in Shurley's English class next period. You're on
your fucking own."
Jo chose that moment to look down at her phone, but Garth saw it. The brief
flash of panic that crossed Castiel's face before a blank mask settled on his
features and he replied blandly, "Excellent."
Oh, Garth thought. He didn't have all of the pieces but he was pretty sure he
knew where Castiel's hostility towards Jo had come from. It was the same place
from which Garth had gotten the nerve to punch Tommy in the face when Ash had
related the story to him, about a month after he had moved to Lawrence, about
the boy groping Jo at a formal dance. Jo had been the first person to sign his
cast in appreciation.
He watched Castiel turn back around and put both ear buds in, angrily punching
the buttons on his iPod till the music became loud enough for Garth to hear
faintly from his seat. Garth reached out a hand to still Jo's own angry button
stabbing, giving her a small shake of his head when she gave him an annoyed
look.
"Don't bother," Garth said trying to sound soothing and taking the phone out of
her hand. She made a move to stop him as he deleted the long-winded text that
she had been about to send Dean and then glanced at Castiel. "Just let him find
out on his own."
Jo thought he was talking about Dean. Which is what Garth knew she would think,
sometimes he thought he was the only one who could read the subtle shifts in
Jo's mood. He figured he would just have to play peacekeeper between Castiel
and Jo until he could lay out his theory for her. They had Chemistry next, he
could do it then. Because Garth knew jealously when he saw it and it made you
do stupid, thoughtless things, Garth still had the pins in his wrist to prove
it.
Chapter End Notes
     Tuesdays and Fridays. Those are good days to update, right? I hope
     so, because if i didn't set a schedule out I would be forever writing
     this and I have another AU I want to do before trying my hand at a
     canon fic. I've raised the rating to M, because the characters are
     kind of doing what they want and a teenage boy's libido is a hard
     thing to predict. Again, thank you for reading. If you like it take
     the time to review, if you don't like it tell me what I can do to
     make you happy. I just want you to be happy! Let me make you happy!
***** Aimlessly Alive *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The first thing Dean did when he entered Chuck Shurley’s classroom was take a
deep breath, inhaling the smell of old books and coffee. A scent that he
associated with nights spent at Bobby’s musty, comfortable house on the
outskirts of town where he and Sam could do their homework in peace away from
their father and the sparse impartialness of their apartment. The cozy
classroom was lined with bookshelves filled with precariously perched books,
the walls covered in literary posters and Chuck’s coffee maker was burbling
cheerfully from the corner behind his desk.
The teacher looked up at him from the typewriter he was busily working at as he
walked in and gave Dean a small, sincere smile. “Sit wherever you want, Dean.
Same drill as last year.”
Dean nodded back at the bedraggled man in acknowledgement and moved to sit in
one of the desks that were arranged in pairs haphazardly around the room. He
pulled a spiral notebook out from his battered navy backpack and watched with
mild interest as Chuck wrestled an ancient looking projector from the corner of
the room, its rusted wheels squealing loudly in protest causing the scattered
students to cringe.
Chuck then moved back to his desk and removed a small flask from one of the
drawers, taking a long drink that he didn’t bother trying to hide from his
charges. These were the advanced students after all, it’s not like they were
stupid.
It was then that Dean noticed Castiel enter the room, the agitated look the boy
was wearing morphed into wide-eyed shock as Chuck unceremoniously poured a
large splash of alcohol into one of the many coffee mugs hidden amongst the
papers on his desk. It was a widely known fact to the rest of the student body
that Chuck had to be sober to write, but buzzed to teach. Otherwise the
instructor would stammer and stutter his way through every lesson. Dean thought
the teacher was amazing, if a little strange.
“Cas!” Dean called waving the scandalized looking boy over to the empty seat
beside him. “I saved you a seat, man.”
Castiel moved to take the seat cautiously, confusion causing a crease to form
between his eyebrows. “Cas?”
“Oh, I just thought…” Dean said his smile faltering as his voice trailed off
lamely. He flipped to a blank page in his spiral to have something to do with
his hands.
“Thought what?” Castiel asked curiously, tilting his head slightly.
“I, uh thought that your name was a bit of a mouthful.” He replied smiling at
his partner sheepishly. “The rest of us have one syllable names. Y’know. Jo,
Ash, Garth, Dean. My little brother is named Sam. I guess I didn’t realize that
we did that until now.”
Castiel seemed to consider this information for a moment before giving Dean a
serious, approving nod. “I like it. Castiel is so serious sounding; I was named
for the Angel of Thursday. My brother, Gabriel, calls me Cassie.”
The boy shuddered in revulsion and Dean couldn’t help but smile at the small
admission he had managed to get from his so far reticent classmate, of course
this otherworldly person was named after an angel.
“Gabriel?” He asked, thinking of the small, eccentric man that Sam had been
going all schoolgirl over earlier that morning. “Drives a big, red Caddie? Kind
of…flamboyant?”
“I apologize for anything he might have done. I wish I could say he was
adopted, but unfortunately that is not the case.”
Dean laughed at Cas’s ominous tone and clapped him lightly on the back noticing
how the smaller boy stiffened slightly at the contact, “Nah, he was alright. I
think he was in one of my little brother’s classes or something this summer.
Sam had all these wild stories about this guy who kept pranking their teacher.”
“That sounds like Gabe,” Castiel had a small smile curing up the corners of his
mouth. “He likes to play tricks on people. It used to make our father furious.”
Castiel stopped suddenly and his face twisted in pain before smoothing back
into the mask that been the first thing Dean noticed in homeroom that morning.
It made his face look robotic and the boy’s eyes became distant, the sparkling
blue that Dean had been looking into becoming dull and cloudy. “How are your
classes going so far?”
Dean was confused by the sudden subject change, but just gave a noncommittal
shrug. He was probably going to have to get some help in Algebra and Spanish
was still as confusing as it always had been, but he figured the rest of the
day would be a breeze after lunch.
Chuck cleared his throat at the front of the room, getting the attention of the
quietly chattering students. He held his extra Irish coffee in one hand and a
transparency in the other as he moved to turn off the lights at the switch near
the doorway. The projector sputtered to life with a wheezing whir and Chuck
centered it on the whiteboard at the front of the room placing the transparency
gently, causing the poem on the sheet to be magnified for the class.
“Shakespeare,” the teacher began, running a palm over the stubble on his cheeks
and jaw in a nervous way. “We’ll be starting this year with his sonnets and
plays before moving on to contemporary fiction. Around graduation you’ll work
in pairs to complete an original short story. I hope you all sat next to
someone you like because otherwise it’s going to be a crappy year.”
Dean glanced at Castiel out of the corner of his eye, the boy’s features cast
into sharp relief in the half-light caused by the glowing projector. The guy
seemed nice enough, a little uptight, but Dean figured he would be tense too if
he were starting a new school. And he could have done worse; Cas had gotten
there just in time to keep Becky Rosen from pouncing on him. Even now she was
looking back at him with hungry eyes and Dean silently thanked Jo for not
picking a weirdo to adopt this time. Castiel chose that moment to turn towards
Dean, he now realized he had been staring at the boy for almost a minute, lost
in thought and he quickly turned his attention back to Chuck.
“Today is easy. Put both your names on a piece of paper and then each of your
needs to write one word that describes how this sonnet makes you feel. After
you finish, you can do whatever. If you stay, stay quietly or you can cut out
early to go to lunch. I don’t really care. Leave your papers in a pile on my
desk when you leave.”
Dean read the poem through quickly,
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Whatever the hell that means, he thought scribbling his name and answer on a
piece of notebook paper, ripping it noisily of his spiral and passing it to the
boy next to him.
Castiel’s eyes were still fixated on the poem, but a soft smile was playing on
his lips as he mouthed the words to himself. Dean couldn’t help but fidget
self-consciously when Cas finally looked down at the paper, the smile
disappearing from his face as he read Dean’s answer, ‘lonely’. The boy looked
up at Dean and the mask had once again disappeared, but this time Dean thought
he saw something like sadness softening the features. Cas’s pen hovered over
the page as he searched Dean’s face in the dark before he slowly wrote his own
name in precise script, hesitating for just a moment before he wrote,
‘hopeful’.
Cas then stood and moved quickly to place the paper on the corner of Chuck’s
desk before returning to his seat and slipping headphones in his ears.
Dean briefly considered bailing and going ahead to the cafeteria, but it’s not
like anyone else was going to be there yet and he was just going to end up
sitting at their table by himself if he left. Plus, Castiel’s response to the
sonnet confused him. That poem seemed pretty damn bleak to Dean or maybe he
just didn’t get it. He looked over at his tablemate who had started doodling
idly on the cover of his notebook and Dean quickly scribbled a message onto the
blank page of his spiral before sliding it over to bump against the hand that
Cas had splayed over his iPod that was on the desk between them.
Bored?
Cas flinched, startled by the contact and his eyes skimmed over the page before
he looked up at Dean with the curious tilt to his head that Dean was beginning
to associate with the boy. He pulled the notebook closer and scrawled a
response, his handwriting messier when he wasn’t taking care to make it
legible. Dean had trouble making it out in the dim light of the room.
Not at all.
Oh, what are you listening to?
Castiel didn’t reply to this in writing, instead he just ran a finger over the
controls of his iPod until the screen lit up and he tilted it towards Dean so
he could read it. Dean read the name of the artist and shook his head slightly
indicating to the boy that he wasn’t familiar with it.
Cas rolled his eyes and smiled at Dean widely, pulling the headphone from his
right ear and offering it to him. Dean took it gently and slipped it into his
own ear, moving closer to the boy so that the chord connecting them was slack.
Cas started the song over and Dean listened closely, frowning slightly in
concentration at the opening chords of the slow song began and a low female
voice began singing soulfully,
 I’ve got affection to criticize, monogamy to abhor
 A cold heart and an altered state of mind
And, baby you’re just what I’m looking for
‘Cause we’ll go to sleep when we’re dead
And I’ll quit when I’m 25
But now I’m feeling indestructible
Aimlessly alive
It was not what Dean was used to. He preferred classic rock that he often
played at ear splitting levels as he cruised around in the Impala or was
working in Bobby’s garage. Sam called it cock rock and tried to change the
station to NPR when he thought Dean wasn’t noticing. And it really wasn’t what
he had been expecting Castiel to be listening to, he seemed more like a blues
kind of guy with his deep, smokey baritone and serious demeanor, but if blues
had a modern counterpart then Dean figured that maybe this could be it.
He looked back at Cas to see the boy staring at him intently, waiting for
Dean’s verdict on what he was hearing. Dean made the universal face for ‘not
bad’, shrugging indifferently and holding out a hand that he flipped back and
forth for a moment.
What kind of music to you like? Castiel scribbled quickly on the page, veering
off of the lines at an angle
Dean thought for a moment before replying, Classic rock. AC/DC, Zepplin,
Metallica. Stuff like that.
Cas held up a hand, palm out and nodded excitedly, his slim fingers moving with
lightning speed over the controls of the device between them. A new song
started, this time with acoustic guitars and a male voice singing.
Dean looked up surprised at Castiel as he realized that he was hearing a cover
of Led Zepplin’s ‘Ramble On’. Cas had a smug look on his face and Dean gave him
another clap on the back, his arm sliding down to rest amicably on the back of
his friend’s seat. He listened to the whole song, shutting his eyes and taking
in how the familiar song was transformed by the people performing it.
The bell sounded sharply drawing Dean out of his revere, he pulled the ear bud
out of his ear and shut his spiral before slipping it back into his bag. He
clambered to his feet, stretching his arms over his head as he waited for
Castiel to gather his things so they could meet Jo in the cafeteria. Castiel
looked at him strangely and slowly stood, moving towards the door of the
classroom behind the rest of the students.
“You do not have to wait on me, Dean.” The boy said cautiously. Dean noticed
that the disinterested expression that Cas usually wore hadn’t returned,
replaced instead by something resembling anxiety.
“Why wouldn’t I wait on you?” he replied as they made it out into the crush of
the hallway, the small space was tightly packed full of other students heading
towards the cafeteria at the back of the school. “Jo will kill me if I ditch
you.”
“Probably not,” he heard the frowning boy reply softly.
He slung an arm around Castiel’s shoulders, pulling him to the side to avoid a
large group of girls who were chatting in the middle of the hallway. “Don’t
worry, she’s not really as intense as she seems. She just likes to be helpful;
she gets it from her mom.”
Cas gave him an unconvinced look and stepped away from him as they entered the
cafeteria, moving towards the line to get his food. “Either way, I think it
would be better if I sat somewhere else today. Enjoy your lunch, Dean.”
And then he was gone and Dean was left staring at the space where he had
slipped into the tide of moving bodies.
Goddamnit, Jo. He thought gritting his teeth and searching over the tables for
his friends, spotting Garth’s lanky form as he sat at a table in the far corner
of the room.
0000000000
Castiel moved through the lunch line robotically, deliberately keeping his
distance from the students around him in order to avoid accidental contact. He
was extremely conscious of body language since leaving Lake Forrest. Before
everything happened, Castiel had been very affectionate, showering his friends
and family with small touches and smiles that he felt he could say so much with
when his words failed him. But since leaving the hospital he felt like he
couldn’t stand to have another person’s hands on him.
He studied facial expressions for deceit, every muscle twitch just affirming to
him that people were liar, lieing, liars. A forehead creased in concerned could
be just as dishonest as a lie spoken out loud and a hug could be just as
suffocating as hands wrapped around your throat. It had taken him all summer to
become accustomed to the spontaneous embraces of Gabriel and the small,
comforting brushes of Anna’s hand on his arm when she woke him from a
nightmare.
His therapist, Rachel, had been ‘pleased with his progress’ when he shook her
hand at the end of one of their sessions several weeks earlier and he lied to
her face easily when he said that he was too. Not to say that he hadn’t made
progress. He could now initiate contact with other people without
hyperventilating and the small brushes of his fingers against another person’s
was usually more than enough to subdue the cravings that his hormonal teenage
body had for closer contact.
He could still feel the warm, solid weight of Dean’s arm as it had draped
across the back of his seat and then pulled him flush against his side as they
had traversed the crowded hallway. The contact had surprised him at first, but
then made him strangely at ease, relaxed in his own skin for the first time in
months. The smell of motor oil, cedar, and spice that had invaded his senses as
they had sat shoulder to shoulder in the darkened classroom was still competing
for space in his mind against the newer smells of the various foods in the
cafeteria.
Castiel placed a burger and some fries on his tray, grabbing the side of
veggies and the condiments he wanted as he passed the cold food bar that was
separated from the hot entrees, closer to the register at the end of the line.
He chose a couple bottles of water and a piece of cherry pie to finish his meal
and paid quickly moving towards the doors at the end of the cafeteria. He hoped
it led to outdoor seating and some peace away from the roar of students trying
to talk over each other in the lunchroom.
He saw someone waving at him out of the corner of his eye as he pushed the door
open with his hip, balancing the tray on one hand and adjusting the strap of
his messenger bag with the other. It was Garth waving wildly at him from a
table in the corner and Castiel hurried through the door, out into the harsh
sunlight before the rest of the table noticed his presence.
He found himself in a small courtyard with several wood tables and benches.
There were a couple of other students sitting together far away from the
building and Castiel could smell the smoke of their cigarettes as it wafted
towards him on the breeze. He chose a table situated under the shade of a large
oak tree and sighed contentedly as he sat down with his back towards the
school. He was lost in thought, considering asking in the office who the ROTC
sponsor was and tossing pieces of french fry at the small birds who were
watching him curiously from the tree when a small warm hand landed on his
shoulder.
Jo hoisted herself ungracefully over the bench and settled next to Castiel, Ash
taking the seat beside her and Dean and Garth sitting across from Cas and Jo on
the other side.
“You’ll have to try harder than that, darlin’” she said amicably, pulling two
brown paper bags out of her backpack and tossing one to Dean. “Mom made
meatloaf sandwiches.”
“Sweet!” Dean replied happily, unwrapping the sandwich and taking a large bite,
his cheeks puffing out as he smiled at Castiel.
Castiel looked around the table confused, hoping someone would provide him with
an explanation. Ash was engrossed in his phone, munching on a bag of Doritos,
the condensation from his Mountain Dew darkening the wood of the table and
Garth just gave him a goofy grin before diving into the lasagna that he had
gotten out of the cafeteria.
“What do you guys think of Milligan?” Jo asked suddenly, looking around at the
table.
“Adam Milligan?” Garth sputtered choking on his lasagna slightly and giving
Dean a startled look.
“Little young for you, isn’t he Jo?” Ash drawled, not looking up from his
phone.
“He’s a sophomore. That’s not that bad.”
Dean shrugged and reached out a hesitant hand towards Castiel’s unopened bottle
of water that was sitting on his tray. “You mind if I have this?”Castiel
shrugged mutely in reply, still struggling to catch up to what was going on
around him. “You could do worse, Jo. Kid is on the baseball team and he’s
pretty good. I think he does ROTC also. You do that, right Cas?”
Castiel jumped at the direct question and Jo giggled at his reaction. “I have
not decided yet. I do not even know who the teacher that sponsors it is.”
“Oh, that’s Virgil Sanz,” Garth piped in helpfully. “The Spanish teacher, dude
used to be in the Marines or something. Scary stuff.”
“Oh my god, you should join!” Jo squealed, flapping her hands at him excitedly.
“Then you can totally talk me up to Adam!”
“I do not understand.” He replied. This conversation was moving really fast.
Where had these people even come from?
“Jo wants you to tell Adam how pretty and smart she is so she can make out with
him.” Ash supplied from the end of the table.
Jo nodded enthusiastically and Cas noticed that Garth had a rather stricken
look on his face. He looked at Dean in askance; the boy was just staring at him
with those bottomless green eyes, an unreadable expression on his face. The
breath caught in Castiel’s chest as the sunlight coming through the tree’s
branches cast dancing shadows on the face before him, causing the lighter
strands in Dean’s brown hair to glitter in a way that made him want to run his
fingers through the short strands.
Just because he is not with Jo, doesn’t mean he’s a filthy fag like you.
Castiel pushed the voice aside, licking his lips which had suddenly become very
dry. He turned his gaze onto Jo who was looking at him with a small smile on
her face.
“You should come to movie night tonight and we can strategize. I can’t go to my
own birthday party without a date.”
“I can’t,” Castiel replied in a small voice, a part of him wondering why
exactly he couldn’t. His reasons for avoiding these people were becoming hard
to remember and he needed to get back in control of the situation. “I am busy.”
Jo frowned at the lame excuse and flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “Okay,
but keep your Wednesdays free from now on. You’re picking the movie next week.”
Castile felt himself smiling at the girl beside him, his reasons for snapping
at her earlier feeling trite and petty. He cast his gaze over the rest of the
table, stopping finally on Dean who was still looking at him with amusement in
eyes as he nodded seriously at Castiel. “I cannot watch The Notebook again,
man. You’ve got to save me, Cas.”
“Ok,” he replied simply. He could almost feel the Black Widow’s disapproval
when his mask slipped away forgotten as he continued eating his lunch, content
to simply listen to the conversation going on around him.
00000000
The rest of the day passed quickly. History was as laughably easy as it always
was, Jo and Dean taught Cas how to play B.S. in study hall. The librarian had
looked at them disapprovingly when they had dissolved into laughter the first
time the new student had yelled ‘bullshit!’ at the top of his lungs ending up
with a handful of cards for his enthusiasm. Algebra was painful, but Dean knew
Sam liked that kind of junk so he tried not to worry about it too much.
Dean’s last class of the day was Gym with the other senior boys and he sat with
Ash, Garth, and Castiel in the middle of the bleachers as their teacher, a
large , heavily muscled man with ebony skin and a bald head explained the
safety rules and pointed out the various equipment situated around the
cavernous space.
“The cardio machines and free weights are upstairs,” Uriel Wisdom said
gesturing to the balcony that overlooked the basketball court and bleachers
where the students were sitting. He motioned towards a door that was recessed
into the wall at one end of the court. “Those are the locker rooms, pick a one
and put your stuff in it. Now you can all go grab a set of gym clothes and then
you have free time for the rest of the day.”
There was a table set up at the end of the room that had boxes of grey t-shirts
emblazoned with ‘Lawrence High School” and basketball shorts stamped with a
white insignia of the school mascot, a roaring lion, on one leg and the group
of boys ambled over to it to grab their gear. Dean led his friends into the
locker room and the group found empty lockers in the corner, changing quickly
into their gym clothes.
Dean noticed that Castiel looked uncomfortably around the room at the rest of
his classmates who were in various states of undress. The boy clutched his
clothes to his chest and quickly moved to the stalls around the corner from the
main locker room area and shut himself inside of one of them, emerging a couple
of minutes later blushing furiously and plucking at the front of his shirt
awkwardly as he dumped his clothes in his chosen locker.
“We were thinking of playing basketball.” Dean said putting a hand on the
smaller man’s arm, trying to comfort some of the unease that the boy obviously
felt. “Two on two.”
“I was going to check out the treadmills, actually.” Castiel said moving away
from Dean, not looking at the boy who was still sitting shirtless on the
benches that were in front of the lockers, exchanging his boots for worn tennis
shoes.
Dean looked at the remaining two boys in askance as Castiel quickly left the
locker room and Ash simply shrugged at him in return. The three friends played
knock-out for the remainder of the period and Dean could see Castiel on the
balcony running with loping strides, continuing even when the bell rang and
Dean returned to the locker room to get ready for the first football practice
of the season.
“Well if it isn’t the white knight,” A hissing, nasally voice said as he was
pulling his practice jersey over his head. Dean turned to see Alistair entering
the locker room followed closely by Azazel and a couple of the other more
moronic football players that he had once spent a majority of his time with.
The group moved to stand in a semi-circle around Dean, cutting off his exit and
Alistair stepped forward menacingly, towering over the shorter boy by several
inches. Dean could still remember the moment when he had stopped valuing what
the opinion these idiots had of him.
It had been after a particularly debauched night of drinking at a club in
Kansas City that didn’t bother to check IDs too closely. The atmosphere was
oppressive, all heat and smoke and sex. The bodies grinding on the dance floor
looked disjointed as the lighting strobed and pulsed around them. Dean
untangled himself from a very pretty red head, promising her he would be back
with a wink before making his way towards the bathrooms at the back of the
club.
He heard the crying, soft gasping sounds that were barely audible over the loud
music that was blaring out of the sound system, before he saw Alistair. His
back was to Dean and he was leaning heavily over a small blonde girl in a
revealing red dress, her mascara making stark rivulets against her pale skin as
it ran in streaks down her face.
Alistair was murmuring something to the girl in a soft voice that sounded
vaguely comforting, but Dean could see that the tall, lanky boy had his hand
knotted harshly in the girl’s loose hair and was forcing her head up to look at
him as he spoke. He moved without really thinking, the alcohol making
everything seem far away, putting a rough hand on his teammate’s shoulder and
spinning him around until he was pressed against the wall. The girl looked at
Dean with wide, scared eyes and he remembered telling her to go and find her
friends.
“What are you doing, Winchester?!” Alistair had spat at him angrily, struggling
to throw the heavier boy off of him.
“You were hurting that girl,” Dean had managed to choke out thickly, the bile
rising in his throat as he thought of what might have happened if he had not
walked up.
Alistair scoffed and relaxed in a self-assured way against the wall, “That
bitch, was asking for it.”
Dean could only think of how much the girl had looked like Jo, like someone who
trusted too easily and still smiled at strangers because the world wasn’t full
of darkness and bad things only happened in movies that still ended in happily
ever after. Sweet, little Jo who made him cupcakes for his birthday and called
him out on his bullshit when he acted like a jerk. He saw red.
He came to his senses when he was pulled off of Alistair by Azazel and another
boy on the team who had come out with them. The taller boy was slumped on the
floor, bleeding heavily from his mouth and one of his eyes was starting to
swell shut. Dean looked down at his split knuckles and shook off the hands that
were holding him. Some of the other boys tried to ask him what happened, but he
could only shake his head, images of John on really bad nights filling his
mind.
He had run away from Alistair’s sprawled form and driven far enough away from
the club until he felt safe enough to sleep off the rest of the alcohol in his
system, waking up parked at an abandoned gas station to a missed call from
Esper telling him that Azazel was looking for him and that he should probably
lay low for a while. Ellen had let him into the house, only asking him if he
had eaten breakfast yet and bandaging his knuckles with practiced hands.
“Move,” Dean said now, running a tired hand over his face. He just wanted to
get practice over with and then veg out on Garth’s couch with some pizza.
He couldn’t say that he was surprised that Alistair was messing with him, Dean
had tried to avoid the boy all summer and baring one very tense party that they
had both been at, he had managed to keep from getting jumped by the boy and his
old friends. He had never tried to explain his actions to them, not really
understanding it himself, and he knew that Alistair had probably come up with a
creative story making himself seem victimized enough to get a majority of the
team on his side. The door to the locker room opened suddenly and a very
sweaty, satisfied looking Castiel walked in, stopping quickly as he took in the
sight of Dean pinned against the lockers, clearly outnumbered.
“Dean?” he asked his gaze flickering to the trapped boy for a moment before he
took a defiant step towards the group of boys, fists clenching at his sides.
“Isn’t that sweet?” Azazel said mockingly, causing the other boys to laugh.
“Looks like you’ve got a fanclub, Deannie.”
Dean gritted his teeth and silently screamed at Castiel to run, go get someone,
leave. Do anything but stand there and stare down the pack of overly-muscled
boys who would not think twice about kicking his ass, new student or not.
Coach Wisdom walked it clapping his hands loudly to get the attention of the
room. “Let’s go boys. Practice in fifteen, anyone late is doing laps.”
The boys quickly dispersed, Alistair giving Dean a murderous look before
roughly pushing past Castiel who had moved to stand protectively next to his
new friend and storming over to his own locker on the other side of the room.
Dean let out a shaky breath and glanced at Cas who was still glaring at the
back of Alistair’s head, his jaw clenched and knuckles going white from the
effort of keeping his fists at his sides. Dean reached out and put a hand on
his friend, shaking the boy lightly until he looked at Dean and his jaw
unclenched. Cas tilted his head and forced a half-hearted smile onto his face
before he turned to grab his clothes from his locker and went back into the
stall he had used earlier to change.
Dean waited for him to come out so that they could talk about what had
happened, the locker room emptying out around him. He let a couple minutes pass
before he went reluctantly to go join the rest of his team. Castiel still
hadn’t emerged when he left.
Chapter End Notes
     I know it seems like I'm picking on Becky Rosen, but Emily Perkins is
     actually one of my favorite actresses (go see Gingersnaps and try to
     have a different opinion). The sonnet is Shakespeare's 29th and the
     lyrics used are from P.S. Eliot's 'Tennessee' which is a really great
     song and for me it sorta sums up how Cas feels when he looks at Dean
     and where his mind is at this point in the story. I swear things are
     going to start picking up here pretty quickly if you think they are
     moving too slow.
     As always reviews are appreciated, so let me know what you're
     thinking. I can't read your thoughts y'know.
***** The Weekenders *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Castiel sat in the plush armchair, drumming his fingers on his leg in an
absentminded way. He considered going around the desk in front of him and
checking to see if the file cabinets next to the window were locked, but he
knew that Rachel wasn't dumb enough to leave him alone with access to his
records. She didn't have a computer, probably for the same reason, and her desk
was rather sparse, covered with only well-organized office supplies, an
intercom phone that connected to the receptionist in the front office, and the
small yellow legal pad that she took notes in shorthand on during their
sessions.
She had realized that he was reading her observations on him after their third
session when he objected to her supposition that his uneasiness with others
touching him was a result of possible sexual abuse at the hands of a family
member. There had been abuse, he knew that she knew that, she had his medical
records and the police reports. But Castiel knew enough about Psychology to
know that every waitress with a master's degree thought that homosexuality was
caused by horrible things happening in a person's childhood.
And since she knew that his preference in partners tended to be more on the
masculine side (again the police had been very thorough despite how much they
may have agreed with what had been done do him, they still had jobs to do), of
course that meant that he had to have an uncle that touched him. Yeah, that had
to be the reason he didn't like being too close to other people, not y'know the
massively huge betrayals he had been through or anything as simple as that.
Rachel had started writing in shorthand after that in order to keep him from
'compromising his treatment' she said.
Ten minutes had passed since he had been ushered into the therapist's office
which was painted in muted earth tones that were meant to be soothing but
weren't and decorated with tasteful, understand artwork that was meant to be
abstract, but looked like a third grader's finger painting to Castiel.
He was starting to get worried, though you would never be able to tell that by
looking at him. As soon as he and Gabriel had pulled up to the medical park
that housed the therapist's office, across town from their own home in the more
suburbanized area of Lawrence, he had slipped the mask of apathy he used with
the counselor back into place. It made his back hurt and the muscles at the
corners of his eyes twitch as he strained to keep the bland expression on his
face.
Over the last couple of days, he had been failing to practice keeping his
emotions hidden, the smiles coming easier around the small group of high
schoolers who had taken him in, despite his habit of lapsing into brooding
silences when they told carefree stories of their shared childhoods together or
abruptly abandoning conversations altogether when the subject turned towards
himself or his family. He was trying desperately to keep all conversations off
of himself because if they knew his past then the fragile camaraderie he was
forming would be tainted by pity and disgust. Pity for his family that had been
ripped apart by his own selfish desires and disgust that he had been to
cowardly too accept the consequences of his follies without messing it up like
everything else he touched.
There was forty minutes left of his allotted hour when Rachel walked into the
room, wearing a well-tailored suit and jacket ensemble and looking entirely too
satisfied with herself. She sat primly at her desk and started writing quickly
on the legal pad, filling page after page with her short hand script that
Castiel wished he could read. She wrote for approximately ten minutes,
Castiel's heart dropping heavier and heavier in his chest with every passing
moment, before she looked up at him with a small smile tugging at her lips.
"How is school going, Castiel?" The therapist asked conversationally and Cas
used every curse word he knew to damn his older brother to hell for being so
caring and concerned.
He should have known better really. Coming home from school over the last
couple of days, Castiel had been too happy, excluding the first day of school
when he had slunk home quietly choosing to walk the few miles home instead of
calling Gabriel to come and get him since he had missed the bus he was supposed
to be on with Anna.
He had kept the panic attack he felt coming on in the small stall in the locker
room at bay until he was sure that Dean had left, breathing shallowly to keep
from drawing in the wheezing gasps his body screamed for to ease his
constricted lungs. Once he was certain he was alone he had been racked by sobs,
the hot tears burning his faces as they flowed freely, dropping off is cheeks
to fall inaudibly on the tile floors.
The memories of his father watching as Raphael spat insults at him using the
righteous words of a God who Castiel had always secretly thought reviled him to
break down his meager defenses, flooded through his mind and caused his knees
to buckle, bruises from the impact showing in the shower later as he scrubbed
his skin raw to erase the phantom feelings of Daniel's deceiving caresses from
his skin.
The next morning, Dean had tried to explain away his confrontation with his
teammates using the same message passing that they had used to communicate the
day before, but Cas managed to artfully steer the conversation back towards the
other boy's taste in music and playing him things he thought he would like.
Luckily Chuck had kept them busy mapping out the basic form of a sonnet and
then going off on a tangent about why iambic pentameter was the most cliché
form of writing and how William Shakespeare was a hack.
Despite his unwillingness to talk about anything more personal than his
preference in pizza toppings, a discussion that began as a heated debate at
lunch on Thursday and ended that afternoon in the gym when Ash had a large
pepperoni and pineapple pizza delivered to the school in Coach Uriel's name,
forcing the other four to try a piece with threats that he would troll their
social network accounts if they didn't (though Cas hadn't understood what
trolling was and he had deleted his Facebook shortly after leaving Lake Forrest
he still felt suitably coerced enough to eat two slices), he had come home the
last two days in an substantially more cheerful mood than usual.
On their way to his standing Friday therapy appoint with Rachel, Gabriel had
taken Castiel's singing along softly with Lady Gaga on the radio as a sure sign
that something was different with his younger brother. "What's got you so
chipper, Cassie-bear?"
Castiel had just smiled ruefully at his older brother and given him a shrug
that spoke volumes to Gabriel about the improved state of the boy's demeanor.
He pushed, knowing it was the only way to get Cas to talk, he turned the radio
down slightly and poked his brother in that ticklish spot on his ribs. "Spill,
baby brother."
Castiel squirmed away from the touch, chuckling softly and started talking to
his older brother as they passed through the area of town close to the college
that was buzzing with students, but had the diner that they always went to
after his appointments. The words poured out of him in a jumbled mess, the
stories tangling together and confusing Gabriel as the driver tried to follow
along while also keeping an eye out for hipster kids on bicycles. He talked
about Jo and soft French songs played in the background of Pam's classroom and
Garth and mad, brillant Chuck and Dean and pizza and Ash showing him a program
to make personal ringtones for the contacts in his phone and Dean and card
games that encouraged you to curse and the scary ROTC instructor who had a
collection of antique knives in his classroom and Dean, going on and on until
they reached the parking lot of Rachel's office.
"Good," he replied coolly to the therapist. He always liked when she asked
questions that he could give one word answers to. Yes, No, Good, Bad. It made
keeping the mask in place that much easier and if he was lucky he could usually
get away with saying less than five or six actual meaningful sentences to her.
Rachel smiled at him brightly, unfazed by his behavior. She had gotten used to
it over the past few months of working with Castiel and she knew enough about
the boy from her conversations with his siblings and reading his background
information that she did not take his desire to keep her out personally. It was
normal for someone who had been through what he had been through to have trust
issues.
"Your brother tells me you have made some friends," She said, scribbling a
quick note at how his jaw clenched slightly as he nodded at her comment. "Why
don't you tell me about them?"
"They are just some people from my classes," Castiel replied, taking caution
with every word. Knowing that it was going to be picked apart and analyzed to
bits before their next session. Speaking of which, "I need to cancel our next
session."
He expected Rachel to react to that, get offended, tell him that he still had
so much work to do. "Why do we need to do that, Castiel?"
He hated, absolutely hated, when she said his name at the end of every damn
sentence. It was probably something they taught in grad school, something to
show your patients you cared about them as individuals or some other
psychobabble bullshit. He stifled the urge to snatch the legal pad out of her
hand and rip it to pieces in her smug, concerned face. "I have joined the ROTC.
They march with the band at games on Friday nights."
"Not a problem," she replied, pulling a small leather bound planner out of the
drawer of her desk and flipping through the pages with one manicured finger.
"We can just reschedule. I have open slots on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Whichever is more convenient for you, Castiel."
He griped his thigh painfully, his blunt nails digging into the black fabric of
the dress pants that he had worn with another white button down to school that
day. "I have plans on Wednesday. Thursday will work just fine."
He watched as Rachel arched an eyebrow at his response and immediately realized
his slip up. Damn, Nick Fury was so going to fire him.
"Plans?" Rachel said in an amused tone. "Are they with the people from your
classes, by any chance?"
"No," he lied smoothly, looking at the clock on the wall to his right. Fifteen
more minutes, he could do fifteen more minutes.
"Have you been taking your medication, Castiel?"
He thought about lying again, just to see what her reaction would be, but he
decided that it was just easier to please the woman. Maybe it would make her
drop the subject of his classmates and he could escape without giving her more
information that would only prove he was as damaged as everyone thought. "Yes."
"Fantastic!" he knew that would make her happy. Rachel's expression turned
suddenly serious and Castiel had a sinking feeling about where this was going.
She always pulled this shit when she thought he was making progress. He should
have lied to her. "Did Gabriel tell you that your father has been in contact
with him?"
Gabriel had tried to tell him about the email their father had sent him at the
beginning of the week, but Castiel could imagine the unapologetic, accusing,
business-like tone that his father had probably taken in the message. His
brother had not tried to stop him when Castiel had slammed out of the house
angrily and gone running down the street still clad in the jeans and t-shirt he
had been lounging around the living room in.
Scared little, Castiel. Running away from his problems again. You can't get
away.Castiel brought a hand up to rub at his temple where he could feel a
headache forming and knew that Rachel was watching his movements closely. He
didn't care. He couldn't be hearing voices while he was sitting in a freaking
shrink's office, she was going to know. She always knew. He could feel his
chest tightening and he needed to get out of there.
"Are we done?" Cas asked irritably. The mask was sliding, unable to grip on as
he broke out in a sudden sweat. His heart was pounding and the self-
preservation part of his mind was screaming that he should run, run, run even
though the only things chasing him were inside his head.
Rachel sighed, she could see the visceral reaction he was having at the mention
of his father and while it was a counselor's job to gently push their clients
to talk about their issues, Castiel was always so close to the edge that a
nudge in the wrong direction might cause him to do something rash. "Yes,
Castiel. I will see you on Thursday, same time. Remember you have my personal
number if you have an emergency."
The boy nodded at her curtly and was out of the office before she could say
anything more to him.
===============================================================================
Dean wrestled Sam out of bed early Sunday morning, plopping a box of Lucky
Charms down in front of the younger Winchester in lieu of a homemade breakfast.
John still had not turned up from the night before, but Dean was not very
concerned. Their father had a habit of disappearing for days, sometimes weeks
at a time when he managed to find the odd job out of town. Usually it was
construction, but sometimes he took jobs painting houses over the summer; jobs
that he could get done over the course of the weekend that would get him enough
money to keep him in alcohol for a while with some to spare to help Dean pay
bills if he was feeling particularly paternal.
The two boys headed over to Bobby's shop soon after breakfast taking the Impala
on the scenic route through the parts of town that bordered some of the nicer
parks. Dean noticed a small crowd gathered near one of the picnic tables at the
entrance of Stonegate Park as they passed and he slowed the car to a crawl
wondering if something had happened. Though he hadn't been to the small park
too often since Jo had finally, thankfully given up yoga, he still knew it was
too early for the gaggle of new moms with toddlers to be out or for a birthday
party to be setting up yet.
He stopped the car with a jerk, Sam mumbling in protest from the passenger seat
where he had began to doze off again. Dean pulled the car into one of the empty
spots at the edge of the park and watched with a small smile alighting on his
face as Cas poured some coffee out of one of those travel containers that donut
shops sold and handed the cup to a small blue, haired old woman in a vibrant
pink track suit. The younger boy was chatting excitedly with the woman as he
jumped up to sit on the top of the table he was at, legs swinging in a
lighthearted way. Dean noticed he was wearing basketball shorts and a sweat
soaked blue t-shirt, looking like he had just finished a lengthy run.
"I'll be right back, Sammy," Dean said quickly, hopping out of the car and
heading towards the smaller boy.
Castiel looked up at his approach, the smile he was wearing widening noticeably
when he saw Dean. Dean felt his stomach clench as he took in the carefree
expression on his friend's face, looking more content than he had yet seen the
boy even though his dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and he
must have had to get up at the ass end of night to go running and pick up
coffee for the Golden Girls. Despite the thick stubble dusting the boy's jaw
and the dark circles under his eyes, his skin was flushed with his recent
exercise and the color on his cheeks made his cerulean eyes look especially
bright in contrast.
The older woman Cas had been talking to looked back and forth between the two
boys who had yet to say anything to each other. They were each gazing at the
other with mirroring smiles on their faces, and she was reminded fondly of her
grandson's wedding pictures he had sent her recently. She patted Castiel gently
on the knee and excused herself, moving to join several other morning walkers
standing clustered farther into the park.
"Hello, Dean." Castiel said, breaking the silence.
"Hey, Cas." Dean replied, feeling suddenly very self conscious in the ripped
jeans and dingy grey shirt he wore to work which was ridiculous because Castiel
looked like he had just ran through a rainstorm and could the soft morning
light be making his eyes look any damn bluer. The milk in his cereal must have
turned because his stomach just wouldn't stop rolling and he really regretted
having that second bowl of Lucky Charms, but he had called dibs and letting Sam
have the last bowl again was just out of the question. "I'm….uh. Sam and I are
going to help out at our uncle's garage."
Castiel cast a searching glance over the other boy's shoulder and Dean turned
to see Sam standing at the open door of the Impala, shielding his eyes with one
hand to make out who his brother had stopped so suddenly for. A small smile
played on Cas's face as he slid his eyes back to Dean, "And you just decided to
stop at a park on your way to work?"
"No." Dean said his mouth going dry as he fumbled for a reason he could give
for stopping. Something beyond simply wanting to talk to Cas, wanting to feel
that wide, unrestrained smile turned on him after the awkward tension that had
been underlying their interactions since Wednesday afternoon. "Ash! We're going
swimming at Ash's house later. Around 2. None of us have your number so I
figured when I saw you I'd ask if you wanted to go."
The smile changed, turning mischievous and Dean struggled to keep from moving
closer to the other boy. "Are you asking for my number, Dean?"
Dean blinked in surprise. He wasn't used to this side of Cas who was now
leaning back on his hands on the table, his slim runner's body stretched out
like a contented cat in the sunlight filtering through the morning clouds. "No.
I..I mean, yes? I'll, uh, pass it on to everyone that way you know when we're
planning stuff."
Castiel laughed, like really laughed at that. Not the reserved chuckles that
slipped out of the boy unbidden when the rest of them were cracking up over
something stupid. This was the kind of laugh that made crinkles form at the
corners of Cas's eyes and caused Dean's breath to hitch unexpectedly in his
throat; the rich, trebly sound made him feel like he had just ran the fastest
mile, leaving his legs weak. God, maybe he had food poisoning or something. He
was really feeling off today.
Dean pulled his mobile out of his pocket and handed it to Castiel, hoping the
boy wouldn't make fun of him for his outdated flip phone. Castiel simply eyed
the device with a raised eyebrow before taking it and swiftly entering his
information. Dean watched him feeling increasingly uncomfortable, this felt
too… something, he wasn't sure what. Too normal, maybe? Letting Cas tease him
with confident gestures and that tilting thing he did with his head, like he
was letting Dean in on some secret joke that he hadn't known they shared.
Castiel handed the phone back to him, his finger's brushing Dean's slightly.
"Unfortunately, I have plans with my siblings today so I cannot join you."
Dean tried to not let his disappointment show on his features as he pocketed
his phone. "Oh, well another time then."
The other boy nodded at him, leaning back on his arms again and studying the
rugged face before him. Dean glanced back at Sam who was now scowling at him in
a frustrated way and decided that he had probably lingered for long enough.
"I've gotta run, Cas. But I'll see you later. 'Kay?"
Castiel gave him a slight nod and Dean had to tear his eyes away from the small
coy smile that was on the boy's face before he could jog back over to Sam and
the Impala. They were now running late to Bobby's and as they peeled out of the
parking lot Dean saw the group of chattering old ladies move back over to where
Cas was sitting, watching the Impala as it left the parking lot.
Bobby only complained slightly when the boys finally showed up at his shop and
Dean was thankful that the older man seemed to have gotten a couple of cups of
coffee in him before they got there. Sundays were notoriously slow and Bobby
had put Dean and Sam to the task of detailing cars that would be picked up by
their owners throughout the next week. It was fairly mindless and while Sam was
busy not working on cars (he spent the morning sitting on a nearby workbench
texting on his phone and giggling like a freaking girl) Dean still had plenty
of brain matter left idle to get lost in his own head as he polished and
vacuumed. Analyzing every aspect of his encounter with Cas from that morning
over and over in his head.
He didn't feel sick anymore so maybe it was some weird bout of stress-induced
acid reflux or something like that. Dean didn't know what it was, but Cas had
been acting weird too. Not bad weird, just like different. He had seemed more
relaxed in the park like he was in his element maybe that was why he liked
eating lunch outside even though it was so damn hot. And he looked different
too, Dean had seen him in t-shirts and stuff in gym, but those were baggy and
the button downs the boy had worn the last couple of days at school hadn't
hinted at the lean, muscular build that he had seen under the form-fitting blue
shirt Cas had been wearing.
The kid definitely needed to ditch the button downs, they weren't doing him any
favors. Dean figured with the right threads he and Cas could be real
ladykillers down at that bar by U of K. And the boy would probably make a
better wingman than Ash, bastard was always snaking girls out from under him by
saying their eyes looked like solar flares and swirling neutron gas clouds and
shit like that.
Dean dropped Sam off at the public library planning to go back over to Bobby's
house for dinner around 6, before heading to Ash's house over in the nicer part
of town. His dad was a real estate developer or something, all Dean knew was
that the guy had enough money to afford those douchey microbrews, but Ash still
drank PBR.
He grabbed his duffel bag containing his swim trunks and a change of clothes
out of the trunk of the Impala and headed around to the back of the house
through the side gate, knowing from experience that it was the best way to
bypass Mrs. Lindberg and whatever knew crazy hobby she had most recently picked
up. Last time he ventured through the house Dean had been cornered for twenty
minutes while Ash's mom had shown him what macramé was and why it was so
adorably practical.
"DEAN'S HERE!" Garth yelled from the deck of the pool as he came around the
corner of the house. Garth was clutching a beer can and teetering precariously
while he watched Jo lay out a platter full of hotdogs and some bags of chips on
the picnic table.
Dean waved at the boy and gave Jo a smile, wondering only slightly where Ash
was before he went into the small pool house and changed into his bathing suit.
When he emerged he was assaulted with a face full of beer lobbed at him from a
water gun that Ash was still clutching even as he rolled on the ground with
laughter.
"Beer soaker," Ash managed to get out in between gasps. "I'm a freakin' genius,
dude!"
"Yea, yea." Dean muttered moving over to the pool and sliding into the water,
dunking his head under to rinse off the gummy feel of the alcohol on his skin.
He paddled over to Jo who had taken up a post on a floating pool chair and
leaned his arms on the raft causing water to slosh over the sides and the girl
to huff in irritation. "Your mom make that pie for me?
"Ugh. Yea, it's in the house. Just go away, you're getting me all wet."
"Kind of the point of a pool, Jo." Dean replied smirking.
"Whatever, asshole."
The afternoon passed lazily. They ate hotdogs, bickered over what the best
flavor of chips were (food arguments were a commonly recurring theme over the
many years of their friendship), and cut Garth off after two beers because he
was a bit of a lightweight. It was the kind of sunny, summer day you saw
promoted in brochures for sleepover camp, but Dean still had the nagging
feeling that something was amiss. It was around the time that Garth tipsily
tackled Jo into the pool that Dean finally gave in and retrieved his phone from
the pocket of his discarded jeans, texting the person he had realized was
missing from the revelry.
Dean: Marco!
The reply came a couple of minutes later and Dean laughed when he read it. He
could almost picture the other boy's confused frown.
Cas: This is not Marco. I believe you have the wrong number.
Dean: You're supposed to say Polo, Cas.
Cas: Dean?
Dean: Yea. You're missing out. Jo just got dunked in the pool.
Cas: I burn easily.
Dean: It's called sunscreen….
Cas: I am also not a very good swimmer.
Dean: I wouldn't have let you drown.
"Who are you talking to, dude?" Ash asked sidling up to the him, hair dripping
onto Dean who was mostly dry causing him to shiver when the cold water hit his
bare shoulder.
"Cas," he replied. He didn't see the look Ash gave Jo and he assumed the squeak
he heard Jo let out was because Garth had just cannonballed back into the pool
with a large splash.
Cas:I am sure your CPR skills leave something to be desired.
Dean smirked and typed without thinking. It was only after pressing 'send' that
he realized the other way his message could be read.
Dean: My CPR skills are legendary. You'll see.
He breathed a sigh of relief when Castiel replied. It seemed the boy wasn't
very good with innuendo; a lot could be lost when something was said through a
text, after all.
Cas: I hope there is never a need for me to receive CPR.
His phone beeped again in his hand as he thought about his reply.
Cas: I have to go. A lady is giving me a very unkind look.
Dean: What are you doing?
Cas: I believe that using one's cell phone in a movie theater is frowned upon.
But it's only the previews. She is really overreacting.
Dean:Dude! Get off your phone.
Cas: I would if you would quit making it go off.
Dean:OMG turn it on silent too! Bye!
Cas:Goodbye Dean.
It wasn't until much later that evening that Dean received another message.
Bobby's burgers had been excellent as always, if the whole mechanic things
stopped working for him Dean thought he could always open a food truck and make
a killing. Ellen's apple pie was toasty from the oven and the ice cream was the
perfect degree of melty goodness.
They were watching Die Hard, again. The brothers were situated on Bobby's worn
couch and the older man was watching Bruce Willis with a fixed determination,
practically quoting the movie word for word as Hans Gruber monologued his way
towards his famous death scene.
Dean's phone chirped from his pocket and he rushed to silence it as Bobby
turned a murderous eye on him.
Cas: I think I would like to visit India.
Dean: ?
Cas: Eat, Pray, Love
Dean: Dude…
Cas:And I would like to try gelato.
Dean: If it goes good with pie, I'm down.
"Put the phone away, ya idgit!" Bobby growled, making an agitated swipe for the
flip phone in Dean's hand.
Dean avoided the assault easily enough and sent a message to Cas saying he had
to go before he pocketed the phone again. When he crawled into bed that night
he was too tired to do more than smirk at the other boy's response, writing off
the roiling feeling in his stomach to the ungodly amount of food he had
ingested throughout the day.
Cas: It's a date.
===============================================================================
Chapter End Notes
     So it's been a shit week and all I want to do is write something
     happy and silly. My birthday is on Thursday and I'm considering
     writing something short and fluffy that looks at some other
     character's POVs but still ties into the story. Let me know if you
     would like to see something like that and I will post it up as a
     birthday present to myself on my b-day along with a regular chapter
     on Friday. As always thanks for reading and let me know what I can do
     to make the story better.
***** Let's Go to the Mall *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Jo was the one who brought it up almost as soon as Cas finished divesting
himself of the bags of leftover donut holes in his backpack and doling them out
to his new acquaintances, explaining that the drizzly morning had caused the
women he normally brought them for to avoid the park. His blue silk tie was
rain-splattered and droplets of water still beaded his hair from where he had
jogged into the building, missing his opportunity to share Anna's umbrella
because Gabe had kept him in the car to apologize for betraying his confidence
to Rachel.
His older brother knew that trust was a big thing for Cas and had felt terrible
for going behind his back to the therapist, he didn't want his younger brother
to feel like he was just going to hurt him like everyone else had. And Castiel
had forgiven Gabe without a second thought, hell he even understood why his
brother had told Rachel about the acquaintances he was making at school.
Probably would have done the same thing himself if it were either one of his
siblings trying so hard to hide something that resembled progress from the
person attempting to make them whole again.
It had been a close call to make it to class, but Jo had saved him a seat and
he had gladly accepted the cup of coffee and handful of sugar packets that Dean
had produced from the pocket of the beat up brown leather jacket he was
wearing, hoping the hot beverage would fight off the chill that was setting in
his bones as the cold air of the classroom hit his damp clothing.
"Cas," Jo began as she watched him empty a surprisingly hefty amount of the
paper packets into his cup. "Why do you always dress like you're interviewing
for a job at the Gap?"
"What is wrong with the way I dress? I think I look nice." he asked gesturing
to the button down he was wearing paired with a lightweight grey blazer, his
tie, and one of his nicer pairs of jeans.
"You do." Dean said taking in his outfit from head to toe with a smirk.
"If you're meaning to look like a yuppie extra from the Social Network then its
great, don't change a thing." Ash supplied drily from the seat in front of Jo.
"Don't you have any t-shirts or anything?" she continued, ignoring the other
two boys in favor of keeping Castiel from becoming sidetracked by references he
didn't understand.
"I have a few. They are what I go jogging and do yard work in and stuff, but I
am used to wearing more formal clothes to school. At my old one, we had to wear
uniforms so it is nice to be able to wear jeans here."
"Uniforms? That sucks, Cas." Dean said as he made up an answer on the Algebra
homework he was supposed to have finished over the weekend.
"You just need some more color or something." Jo said waving her hand
abstractedly around in the air. "I'm gonna take you shopping."
"You are?"
"Yes. We'll go afterschool today."
Castiel stuttered a bit at Jo's sudden offer before finding his voice again, "I
have an ROTC meeting afterschool today. I will be busy."
"And I have young Democrats and Dean has football and Ash and Garth have zombie
survivalist's club. We're all busy, Cas, but we make time to hang out with each
other outside of school because we're friends. Do I really have to spell this
out for you?"
Castiel tilted his head at the girl and thinned his lips. Jo sighed in
frustration and reached out a hand across the aisle to playfully ruffle his
hair.
"I want to go shopping with you because we are friends, honey. And when you
come over for movie night on Wednesday, Garth's mom will make you a root beer
float because that's what she does for her son's friends. Dean will do every
oil change your car will ever need forever because it's the only thing he knows
how to do for his friends. Ash probably already has you down as medic or
something for his stupid apocalypse contingency plan because he is your friend,
get it?"
Castiel looked between Ash and Dean, searching for a confirmation from them
that Jo wasn't just being overly enthusiastic in her duties as self-appointed
head of Lawrence High's welcoming committee. Dean looked up from his homework
and flashed a smile in affirmation and Ash muttered something along the lines
of, "Medic? Dude's totally the weapons expert."
He felt warmth settle in his chest at their reactions. Castiel had thought that
surely he had to have been misinterpreting the gestures of these people who
were so kind to him. They were only being nice to him because he was new and
pathetic and they would soon get bored of him and abandon him, just like
everyone else did. The voices in his head had been giving credence to his fears
all weekend, telling him he was worthless and disgusting, and asking why he
couldn't have just ended it when he had the chance without fucking that up too.
Returning to school on Monday had been a test of wills for Cas because really
all he had wanted to do was pull the covers back over his head and block out
all the noise noise noise that his life had become.
The boy smiled at Jo and experimentally tousled her hair in return causing her
to giggle and bat his hands away. She made it seem so easy and he swallowed
lump that had unexpectedly formed in his throat. It was just like messing
around with Anna. Castiel chanced a glance at Ash who was watching his
interactions with Jo with a smile on his face and then at Dean who was
furiously scribbling at his homework and grumbling darkly to himself
unconcerned with what was going on around him.
He decided he might be able to admit that the affection he was starting to feel
for Ash, Jo, and Garth was something resembling how he felt around his
siblings, but what about Dean?
Castiel was pretty sure that you didn't spend your free time ogling your
friends. Imagining what it would feel like to hold their hand, how the warm
weight of their fingers laced with your own as they leaned over an assignment
in Chuck's perpetually dimmed classroom would quite possibly be the most
perfect experience ever. Or looking at their lips when they talked or smiled or
frowned or hell, did fucking anything that involved that perfect mouth and
wondering if the perpetual stubble on Dean's jaw would be just the right about
of abrasion to cause him to break out in goose bumps if it brushed again his
neck.
Dean glanced up at him suddenly, causing Castiel to jump slightly in his seat
as he was snapped out of his thoughts about the other boy that were definitely
straying towards more R-rated than brotherly areas. The rational part of him
knew it wasn't possible; he had overheard a couple of the stories about Dean's
colorful history with the opposite sex; a few of the girls in his Calculus
class had been rather loud the week before when they had been talking about
their exploits at various parties over the summer. He had snapped a pencil in
half on accident when one of them, a curvy, pretty brunette had started going
into great detail about how the freckles he thought made Dean look so innocent,
weren't just contained to the other boy's face.
In the harsh fluorescent lighting of the classroom, it was easier to feel
ashamed about how he had practically thrown himself at Dean at the park. He
didn't know where the sudden burst of confidence had come from. He had cried
himself to sleep on both Friday and Saturday nights, the inevitable nightmares
that often came after his therapy sessions strayed into unwanted areas, of his
father and Raphael and innocuous looking pill bottles and ropes that frayed
when he touched them painted scarlet pictures in his psyche.
He had jerked himself awake in the early hours of the morning and run off the
adrenaline that was pumping through his veins in the park, leaving his muscles
trembling and lungs burning painfully. A part of him hated Rachel for bringing
up his father when she knew it was the one thing he didn't want to talk about.
A smaller part of him knew that she was just doing her job, which was to help
him learn to trust others again. But, damnit! Couldn't she just let him do it
on his own fucking terms?
Almost as if to prove to his therapist that he was capable of normal human
interactions, he had acted like any teenager with a crush would when they saw
the boy they liked alone and looking like a Greek god come to life in his
ripped jeans that showed tantalizing glimpses of the skin on Dean's thighs and
that worn grey t-shirt that was definitely going to make an appearance in some
of Cas's more explicit fantasies from now on. He had smiled and flirted and he
didn't care how anyone else looked at him or what they might whisper about him
behind his back.
And it had felt good. Ordinary even. Dean had made it so easy to feel in
control with his adorable stammers and blushes that for a minute there Cas had
thought maybe his feelings for the other boy weren't entirely outrageous. But
then Dean had gotten suddenly uncomfortable when he had made the joke about
asking Cas for his number and the other boy had ran away as fast as his big
black car could carry him.
And maybe that was best, he wasn't really in the best mental state to be
pursuing a relationship with anyone. Especially when that relationship was with
the biggest ladies man he had ever met and it was pretty much doomed from the
start. Or at least that's what Castiel had to keep telling himself. So, mostly
because he felt like he desperately needed to get out of his own head, but also
partially because he was still holding out hope that maybe one day someone
could look at him and feel the same kind of want that he felt for his oblivious
friend he agreed to meet Jo at her beat up old truck after his ROTC meeting
that day and let her take him shopping.
===============================================================================
Virgil Sanz was not the kind of man that you took lightly. He was very
passionate about three things, first the Marine Corps, which he staunchly
believed was the best branch of the United States military and he had been
known to regularly voice his displeasure at the annual faculty Christmas party
over the fact that Lawrence High School only offered the Army branch of ROTC
training and even then as just an extracurricular activity and not a full-
fledged class as it should be. Second was that Spanish should be nationally
recognized as the official second language for the country (it was spoken by
over 30 million people after all) and anyone who chose to taken Pam Barnes's
French class over his own foreign language course had to be slightly touched in
the head. Third was that a man took care of his weapons like they were his
family; kept them clean, maintained, and safe so that they did not fall into
the wrong hands.
He surveyed the students in front of him with a mixture of resignation and mild
surprise. Out of the forty six students who had approached him the week before
about being part of the ROTC, twenty two had actually shown up for the meeting
to discuss the requirements of the 'club' (Virgil shuddered inwardly at having
to use the same term as the introverted, acne-ridden boys who made up the
Asian's admirers club to describe something that he thought deserved much more
respect). Of the twenty two that were at the meeting, the instructor knew from
experience that at least three would never show up for another of the required
gatherings and that one or more would probably quit the first time they burst
into tears after being reprimanded for not pressing their dress slacks or
polishing their shoes correctly.
Virgil picked up the stack of slim textbooks on the corner of his desk and
moved briskly through the room, depositing a copy in front of each of the
students. "These are the handbooks that are to be used while you are enrolled
in the ROTC program here at Lawrence High. You will treat them like they are
your most prized possession, your Bible if you will. And you will be expected
to complete assignments and essays over the material by the due dates I will
provide for you."
He stopped in front of Adam Miligan and noticed with some pride that the boy
still had his copy of the handbook from the prior year and while it looked like
it had been read several times over it still was clean and untorn, indicating
that the boy had taken him at his word and treated it with reverence. The
sophomore was also sitting with military straight posture and looked unfazed by
the anxious whispers coming from most of the other students in the room. In
fact, only one other person seemed unconcerned by the amount of work that being
a member of an ROTC unit entailed.
Novak. A new student from Illinois who Virgil had discovered through some not
exactly school-board approved snooping had left his old school on rather
dubious terms, but had been awarded several ribbons after his departure that
marked him as a distinguished cadet and an expert marksman. Lord knew they
could use more experienced members on their rifle team if they wanted to
outshoot those girls at Lawrence Free State so Virgil had decided that he
couldn't be too picky when it came to his cadets. Don't ask don't tell seemed
to work pretty well for the regular Army, so he figured at least adopting the
same policy would make the experience as realistic for his high schoolers as
possible.
Virgil moved back to the front of the classroom and stood at military rest
until the students sitting before him began to quiet down. "We will meet three
times a week after school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Mondays we will
talk about your assigned reading, civics, and leadership. Wednesdays will be
for physical training as well as drill and rifle training for those of you who
choose to participate in the less academic activities that ROTC offers. Fridays
will be inspection day; you will wear your dress uniforms and turn in any
assigned work. Those who are on the drill team and color guard will join the
band at halftime of all of the football games. You will be expected to keep
your grades up and like any other extracurricular, no pass no play will be
strictly enforced."
A petite girl with curly brown hair at the back of the classroom raised her
hand timidly and the teacher acknowledged her with a sharp nod.
"My brother told me that ROTC did a lot of community service, when will we have
time for that, sir?"
"He was right, we do a lot of service projects and each of you will be expected
to participate in a minimum of fifty hours of volunteer work each semester.
However, you are encouraged to do more. I will be taking suggestions for group
services projects we can do after homecoming and most of those will take place
on the weekends. Are there any other questions?"
He noticed that some of the students were shifting uncomfortably in their
seats, probably already planning how to leave the classroom without offending
the stern, ex-Marine. "I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Being in the ROTC is
demanding, both physically and of your time. It's not for people who want to
party all weekend and it's not for people who are just looking to round out
their college admissions applications."
He looked pointedly at Kevin Tran as he said the last part, making sure that
the freshman knew that Virgil knew why he was really here. Tran broke the stare
first and opened the text book in front of him with shaking hands. The
instructor fought to keep the smile off of his face at the boy's reaction even
though part of him hoped the kid was in this for the long haul.
"If there are no other questions you are dismissed for today. I want you to
read the first chapter of the handbook which outlines the history of ROTC and
be prepared to discuss it on Friday. Anyone wishing to take part in the color
guard or drill team please speak to me before you leave."
Virgil was unsurprised when Miligan immediately approached him about being on
the drill team again this year; he was probably hoping to lead it since he was
one of the few returning cadets who had also been on it the year before. The
small girl who had asked him about service work (her name was Gilda DuPont)
showed an interest in being on the color guard, as did Tran which made the
instructor happier than he had expected. He noticed Novak slowly gathering his
things as several other students spoke to him and he was glad to have a moment
to talk to the boy alone once the others had left.
"Novak," Virgil began stiffly as the cadet approached his desk. "I've heard a
lot about you from your old squad leader."
The boy winced at the comment, "I'm sure some of it was less than exemplary,
sir."
"There was some information that was…" Virgil searched for the right word,
something that wouldn't sound too judgmental. "Disconcerting."
Castiel lowered his eyes and nodded seriously, his shoulders hunching as if he
were preparing for a blow. "Sir, I can assure you that I will not be engaging
in any behavior that would reflect poorly on you or the ROTC if you give me the
opportunity to be a part of your unit. I have learned my lesson."
"I'm glad to hear that, but I have no concerns about your ability to conduct
yourself with the appropriate decorum. You seem like you have matured greatly
since your discretions and I know from experience that people can change. I
would be happy to have you in our unit, cadet."
"Thank you, sir." The boy seemed terribly relieved. Like he had been expecting
a much different answer and granted, if this were the actual military he
probably would have been court marshaled and discharged. But this was high
school, not the battlefield and Virgil was understanding of that fact, despite
what he knew was said about him amongst his students.
He cleared his throat and snapped a quick salute at the boy who was once
battalion commander of the ROTC at Lake Forrest, something that Virgil felt
couldn't just be stripped away, Novak had earned it."I expect to see you at
drill practice on Wednesday. Now get out of here, son."
The cadet returned the salute and then quickly turned on his heel and left the
room.
===============================================================================
Once inside the cool, circulated air of the mall, Castiel immediately felt
overwhelmed by the noise and the advertisements and all of the people who were
moving together in a messy jumble, grazing and bumping into each other like
mindless fish in an overcrowded tank. It was too much after the calm,
discipline of his ROTC meeting and part of him wished it had lasted longer so
that he could cancel the shopping trip without looking like a jerk.
He was so focused on making himself as small as possible in order to avoid
being jostled by the people around him that he almost didn't notice Jo slipping
her small, cool hand into his own clammy palm and tugging him towards one of
the less busy stores, a trendy shop that specialized in washed out replicas of
vintage t-shirts, pearl snap button downs, and jeans that fit entirely too
snugly on the mannequins displayed in the windows.
The lone employee looked up from his perch behind the register where he was
reading a book and eyed Jo and Castiel with a bored expression on his face. He
told them to ask if they needed any help and then promptly went back to
ignoring them. They meandered around the shop; Castiel had no idea where to
begin. He had been wearing uniforms since junior high and it had been
comforting to have the guesswork knowing what to wear to successfully navigate
the social hierarchy of being a teenager taken out of his hands. Luckily, Jo
seemed confident in her abilities to personal shop for her new friend and soon
she was unceremoniously shoving him into a dressing room with an armful of
shirts and pants to try on.
"You need to let me see it before you veto something," She called to the
bewildered boy as she settled into a chair near the room and pulled out her
phone.
"Yea, yea," she heard Castiel wearily reply from behind the curtain separating
them.
When the boy emerged a couple of minutes later Jo couldn't stop herself from
gawking. The white button down had been replaced by a black and blue buffalo
check shirt and dark jeans that fit the muscles of Cas's legs tighter than any
of the other pants she had seen him in yet. Jo smiled roguishly and raised her
phone to take a quick picture of the outfit, firing it off in a message to get
a second opinion.
"Well?" he asked glancing down nervously at himself and pulling on the hem of
the shirt.
"You're a total hottie, Cas!" Jo exclaimed, motioning for him to do a spin.
Castile did a slow turn; he could feel his cheeks heating at the girl's praise,
before he slipped back into the dressing room and continued trying on the
various articles of clothing Jo had chosen. They decided together that blues
and greys and black were what looked best on him since they highlighted his
eyes and his pale skin, but he did pick out a burgundy cardigan that Jo hated
and special ordered several brightly colored band t-shirts at another store
farther down the mall. He worried for a while that Jo was getting bored and
decided to buy her a pair of impractical looking high-heeled shoes that he had
seen her looking at to thank her for taking the time to help him.
They settled into the spacious food court of the mall with fresh baked
chocolate chip cookies and Coke slushies, the bags from the various stores
surrounding them taking up a majority of the table they sat at as well as the
two unoccupied seats at their side.
"That last cashier was checking you out." Jo stated plainly around a mouthful
of cookie as Castiel toyed with the pair of aviators that he had picked up at
his friend's insistence from the store they had just left.
Cas frowned as he thought of the pushy auburn haired girl who had written her
number on his receipt before handing it to him. She had been pretty in that
overly painted trying too hard kind of way that some women had when they were
advertising their availability to the opposite sex. He had never understood why
girls put so much effort into covering up any naturally attractive qualities
they might possess with make-up. Maybe that was he liked guys, they didn't put
as much effort into hiding their less desirable traits, what you saw was
usually what you got. It made the whole courting thing seem so much less
dishonest sometimes. Sometimes.
Castile shrugged, "She was not really my type."
"So you don't like red heads, got it." Jo said with a laugh, her expression
turning suddenly impish as she pointed out a busty blonde girl standing in line
at the Panda Express near where they were sitting. "What about her?"
He glanced at the girl, more to humor Jo than anything else, and shifted
uncomfortably in his seat. "Yea, not so much either."
"Oh-kay," Jo said glancing around the crowded food court. "Then what is your
type? Short? Skinny?"
"Um…" Castiel wondered how much he could say without giving himself away to the
girl. He had not expected his tastes in romantic partners to be the subject of
conversation when he agreed to go shopping. "I like brunettes. Tall. Someone
who can make me laugh. Knows about music."
"That really narrows it down, Cas." Jo stated sarcastically. She waved her
hands as she spoke, her cookie crumbling to little bits on the table between
them. "So someone tall, dark haired with a sense of humor and decent taste in
music….hmmmm."
Her phone beeped on the table and while Jo was distracted Castiel excused
himself to go to the restroom.
Away from Jo he took a moment to calm himself. When he talked about Dean, even
in the most abstracted of ways, his heart would start beating rapidly in his
chest and his palms would begin to sweat. It was similar to how he felt when a
panic attack was coming on, but it lacked the nauseous unpleasantness that
accompanied his anxious breakdowns. He peeked out of the hallway that led to
the restrooms and pulled is phone out of his pocket.
Cas: Does Jo enjoy making people uncomfortable?
He waited for a tense couple of minutes and wondered how long he could use the
restroom as an excuse before his companion started to think he had IBS or
something.
Dr. Badass!:Is she doing that thing where she points out girls and asks if
you're into them?
Cas: Yes.
Dr. Badass!: Ignore it. She'll do it until you're dating someone.
Cas: And if I never date anyone?
Dr. Badass!: You learn to tune her out.
He ran a hand over his face and steeled himself for more awkward questions from
his friend before he went back out to join Jo, who was poking around in
Castiel's shopping bags with her phone in one hand. She looked up guiltily at
him as he sat back down and quickly shoved her phone back into her purse.
"So I have this friend that I want you to meet."
"Jo, I appreciate the offer, but I do not think—" Castiel began trying to stop
the set up he was afraid had been coming.
"Her name is Meg and she is a riot. She'll be at my party next week and I think
you'll really like her."
"Jo…"
"Cas, hear me out. You don't have to go on a date or anything. I just think -
" Jo explained leaning forward in her seat and putting a hand on his arm.
"Jo, I'm gay." He blurted it without meaning to. And as soon as it was out he
wished he could take it back, snatch the words out of the air and bury them
back inside himself where all of the other unspoken things he wanted to say
resided.
Jo sat back heavily in her seat, looking slightly shocked for a moment before a
soft, comforting smile lit up her face. "I know that, you idiot."
"You know?" Castiel asked in a whisper. His vision was beginning to swim and he
wished so badly that he knew what her knowing meant.
Did it mean she thought he was revolting? An abomination? Or did she think he
was a novelty? The token homosexual in not so small town Kansas? Is that why
she took him shopping? Was she looking for a gay best friend that she could
gossip and share catty opinions with?
Because Cas didn't want to be any of those things and that's part of the reason
he didn't tell people. He had never wanted to be some tired old stereotype of a
gay man. He liked guns and kung fu movies and autobiographies about Abraham
Lincoln. But he also liked Elvis in a way that admittedly wasn't entirely
platonic and he had let Gabriel talk him into regularly using moisturizer
because it really did help when his skin got all dry from being outside so
much. Jo didn't know any of those things though and it would kill him if he
lost a friend because of something she thought that she knew about him.
"Oh, honey," Jo said getting up and coming around the table to wrap him in her
arms. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad by pointing out those girls. I just
didn't want you to know that I knew because I didn't want you to feel awkward.
You didn't have to tell me and now I've gone and made you upset. I'm sorry,
sweetie."
Castiel felt laughter bubbling up in his throat and he wasn't sure if it was
from relief or from the hilarity of the situation. Less than a week ago he had
wanted to pull Jo's hair like the worst drama-fueled queen imaginable because
he had a crush on the boy he thought she was dating and now she was apologizing
to him because she thought she had forced him out of the closet. The thought
struck him that he had never actually 'come out' to anyone. His family just
knew, it was kind of an unintended consequence of what had brought them to
Lawrence in the first place. And anyone else who cared enough to discuss his
sexual preferences was probably only doing so to feed the gossip mill at Lake
Forrest.
He didn't know what exactly had possessed him to spill his biggest secret to
Jo. Maybe he was tired of feeling like he had to be defined by this one little
thing about himself or of being scared of what might happen if the wrong people
found out. But the wrong people had already found out and anything horrible
that could have happened already had. The people in his life that he stood to
lose were already lost and the ones who were worth hanging on to had proven
that they didn't care who he wanted to like or kiss or love.
The boy held on to his friend and let her rock him in a soothing way until he
felt certain that he wasn't going to have an awkward outburst of emotion in the
middle of a freaking food court. People were starting to give them strange
looks, but Castiel didn't care. Right now he had someone who he trusted for
reasons he couldn't even explain to himself, someone who could see the tip of
the iceberg, but decided to stay on a collision course anyway. He cleared his
throat and pulled away from the embrace, giving Jo a shaky smile that he hoped
would alleviate the concern he could see in her eyes.
"I am not upset with you. I told you because I don't want to hide who I am;
keeping secrets has never served me well in the past. Someone always ends up
getting hurt." Cas explained as he held his friend at arm's length.
Jo nodded and moved back around the table where she began to gather up their
scattered purchases. "So are you going to tell the others?"
He stood and brushed the cookie crumbs from his shirt front, considering how he
could answer the question without seeming like a hypocrite. "Do you think they
will be okay with it?"
The girl reached out and grasped his shoulder tightly, a serious look on her
face as she searched his features. "Probably more okay than you think."
===============================================================================
Dean:Please tell me you made him buy that shirt.
Jo received her second opinion on the picture of Castiel that she had sent
about six stores too late for the other boy's statement to actually be of any
use to her. But she couldn't help herself from doing a little happy dance after
her shopping buddy had left to go to the bathroom as she re-read it.
Broanna: Of course I did! He looked like hot buttered sex in it.
Dean:Sure, whatever you say. It's better than the tax accountant getup for
sure. He is going to be fighting girls off. You're too good, Jo.
She smiled at the compliment, thinking about the conversation she and Castiel
had been in the middle of right before he left. Even without Garth's insight,
she probably would have figured out that her new friend wasn't exactly batting
for the home team after seeing how he had barely reacted to that cashier
practically flashing him as she had leaned over the register to hand him the
receipt for his sunglasses.
Broanna:Dude, he did get a number like ten minutes ago!
Dean:awesome
Broanna: I know! He said she wasn't his type though.
Dean:Uh, boobs? What more of a type does he need?
Broanna:He said he wants someone who can make him laugh and he has things in
common with, like music.
Dean: Too bad Sam's not a girl because I would school him in awesome tunes just
so he could have a chance with Cas. He's like the nicest guy I know.
The happy dance was for sure getting some mileage today and Jo figured that she
probably only had about half as much work to do as Ash and Garth thought she
did before she finally got their friends happily settled. She just had to get
them to stop being so ignorant of each other first.
Broanna: True, whoever gets him is going to be hella lucky. Want to see what
else we got?
Dean:Hit me with it, bro.
Jo glanced around to make sure Cas wasn't near before she reached over slyly
and started rifling through some of his shopping bags. She pulled out a couple
of the studlier shirts that she had picked out and snapped quick photos of them
before sending them off to Dean. She purposely avoided the horrible maroon
sweater the other boy had bought because she still hoped she could talk him
into returning it before they left the mall. Jo wished she had gotten some more
dressing room candids because the jeans just didn't look as good folded in the
bags as they had when Castiel had actually been wearing them.
As she waited for Dean's final verdict, she mused about who else she might be
able to enlist to help with Operation Headinthesand. Ash and Garth were on
board, they both liked Cas and they hoped that his level-headedness might rub
off on Dean; make their old friend realize how dumb he was being by trying to
practically raise Sam on his own.
Sam would probably help too, Jo knew that he was having a hard time with not
being able to have close friends and if Dean had someone he could relax around
then he wouldn't keep such a tight rein on who his younger brother spent time
with. Hmmm…Becky? She was fairly good with computers like Ash and Jo knew that
she was not opposed to some hot boy on boy action. Who else? Maybe someone Dean
didn't know very well, or at least someone he didn't really get along with that
would help her with making Cas look desirable. Hester was crazy intense and
Leah was a bit of a, well suffice to say she might enjoy Castiel's shyness a
bit too much.
She didn't realize her phone was still in her hand until she saw her friend
returning from the bathroom and Jo rushed to put it away before he realized she
had been taking pictures of his stuff. He had expressed his excitement to her
earlier in the day about showing off his new clothes to everyone else at school
the next day. Jo looked at his worried expression and suddenly knew who would
be the perfect mix of overtly flirtatious gestures and scheming subtlety to
make it look to the casual observer that she was interested in Cas.
"So I have this friend that I want you to meet."
Chapter End Notes
     So remember how I said I might post something short and fluffy
     yesterday? Well, when I sat down and started writing the fluff it
     turned into a full blown chapter that I had never had planned for the
     story (kinda a lot like this one, but it served its purpose I hope)
     and it will really fit in better with the rest of the story if it
     comes after this chapter. But because I feel bad for not posting
     yesterday like I hinted that I would, i'm going to post the next
     chapter a day early on Monday. Yay! Hopefully that makes up for me
     letting myself be bullied by the characters.
      
     Special thanks to 1223rhys for providing me with thoughtful reviews,
     you're ah-mazing! Thanks to everyone who is reading, bookmarking, and
     subscribing to the story, don't be shy let me know what you're
     thinking!
     Also, yes, the chapter title is a HIMYM reference. Sue me.
***** Enterlude *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Sam paced the floor of the living room in the tiny apartment anxiously,
clutching his second hand phone from Bobby tightly in one hand. He flipped it
open every couple of minutes to check that no, there were no new messages. He
sighed heavily and ran a hand through his long, messy brown hair before he
plopped down on the couch and buried his face in his hands.
"Why did I think this was a good idea?" he groaned to the empty rooms around
him.
John had just been leaving when Sam had arrived home from his debate club
meeting, headed out to catch the mid-week specials at whatever dive was dumb
enough to still give the older Winchester an open tab. Naturally, Sam had taken
advantage of the empty apartment to continue his texting with one infuriatingly
appealing Gabriel Novak.
At the beginning of the summer, he had been annoyed to have the older man
sitting next to him in class. The guy always seemed to need something, a pen,
some paper. A couple of times he even forgot to bring his textbook to their
shared sociology class and had leaned way into Sam's body space in order to
follow along in the book with whatever their teacher was talking about that
day. And then one day about halfway through the semester he wasn't at class and
Sam had been left staring at the extra pen he had already pulled out of his bag
in anticipation of Gabriel needing one, wondering when the person next to him
had stopped being so frustrating and instead started being an irritating, but
welcome feature of his college experience.
When Gabe showed up to class for their next session, Sam had silently offered
him a Hershey bar along with a scantron for the test they were taking that day
and Gabriel had told him that his brother had needed his help and that was why
he had been absent earlier that week. For the first time, Sam decided to wait
for the other man to finish his own test instead of leaving immediately once he
was done. They had sat in the hallway outside of the classroom, sharing the
candy bar and talking for the remainder of the time until Dean had called
saying he was there to pick up the younger Winchester.
Sam had found it difficult to leave the company of the floppy haired man
sitting next to him and had been extra grumpy to his older brother that day,
Dean had written it off as the test Sammy had to take being harder than the
younger boy had been expecting. After that day, he found himself seeking out
Gabriel as soon as he walked into their class, which was silly because they
always sat in the same seats anyway. Sam felt his heart beating quicker when
the other man smiled at him or let him in on one of the pranks he was planning
to pull on another one of his instructors or a student.
In the infamous Skittle and whoopee cusion caper of 2010, Sam had proven
himself more than useful as a distraction while Gabriel rigged up the
complicated apparatus he had come up with that would shoot Skittles at the
students in the front row of his history class while also adding the charming
sound effects that came from his instructor's chair which had been hijacked
with a whoopee cushion. He had waited in the hallway at the beginning of Gabe's
first class and less than ten minutes later he had burst into laughter when the
teacher had unceremoniously expelled his breathless friend. The older man had
taken his hand and they had run down the hallways before they collapsed on a
bench outside the student bookstore, laughing until their sides ached and tears
streamed down Gabriel's face.
That was the first time Sam had wanted to do something that he knew wouldn't
line up with The Plan. Dean had come up with The Plan one spring break when
they were much younger. Their mom had been gone for a couple of years, but John
had already started his descent into alcoholism, which to hear his older
brother tell it was less of a downward spiral and more of an inevitability that
Sam just hadn't seen coming until their mom had left, and the elder Winchester
had decided that the only way they were going to make it through their teenage
years with their sanity was to have a plan in place.
It had always seemed very self-sacrificing on Dean's part to Sam and the
thought of deviating from The Plan for his own selfish reasons made him almost
physically ill when he thought about how much his older brother was giving up
to make sure Sam succeeded. Dean had always thought he wasn't as smart as his
younger brother and a significant portion of the scheme hinged on Sam powering
through school while Dean put his own ambitions on hold to support him.
They had both agreed that romantic relationships were a liability, not only did
they distract from the ultimate goal which was to make their lives as
uncomplicated as possible despite their father's lack of concern for their
well-being, but they also meant uncomfortably awkward situations like going to
a romantic interest's house or meeting their family which were not things the
Winchesters could reciprocate since keeping nosy social workers off their backs
was a constant and very real concern.
So they kept their relationships with other people at a friendly, distance.
Close enough that asking for help wasn't unexpected by the other party, but not
indulgent to the point that someone other than family (which included Bobby,
Jo, and Ellen by default since they had been privy to the downfall of John
Winchester from the beginning) would become emotionally invested enough to want
to save them. And yea, it had been hard.
Dean had coped by having a seemingly unending stream of one-night stands and
meaningless encounters that left the other participant hating him more often
than not when he stopped returning their phone calls and started avoiding them
at parties. Sam went the opposite route when he saw how emotionally self-
destructive his brother's behavior was and decided to avoid situations and
places where he might have the urge to become closer to another person. That
meant that he spent a lot of his time at home, the library, or at Bobby's shop.
Nothing killed an erection faster than reading about genocide or listening to a
surly old man's complaints about how he couldn't eat spicy food like he used
to.
But something about Gabriel made Sam want to throw away all of the years that
he and his brother had spent working towards eventually having a normal, apple
pie life; a goal that came complete with white picket fence, 2.5 kids and a
golden retriever. The feelings he felt around the older man made normalcy seem
really overrated and frankly, boring.
So when he had decided to never see Gabriel again after their last study
session together on the day of their final exam because he was already
struggling with being too close too comfortable around the other boy, it was
made all the more difficult when Gabe had causally reached over and brushed
behind his ear the hair that had fallen into his face as he was bent over his
textbook. Even now he could feel how the other's fingers had lingered on his
face; trailing lightly over his jaw before Gabe had blushed scarlet and fled
the library with a murmured apology. He had sat as far away from Sam as
possible during their exam and disappeared as soon as he had handed his own in.
Sam spent the week between his college courses ending and his junior year of
high school beginning trying to get back into a familiar routine that didn't
involve him cramming for tests or pining over someone who made him question why
following The Plan was the only way he could be happy. He buried memories of
how easy it had been to smile and laugh around Gabriel and resigned himself to
another school year of debate and National Honor Society and kissing the ass of
every teacher he had so that they wouldn't automatically assume he was as much
of a slacker as his older brother was sometimes. It was what he had been
wanting after all, right? To have it end?
The first day of school they had been late because both he and Dean had slept
though the lame excuse for an alarm on Dean's cell phone, but as soon as Sam
had seen the car he knew who it belonged to. He had walked Gabriel to his car
several times after class and they had joked about how it was the type of
vehicle that 1950s teenagers went 'parking' in. That was fairly early on in
their friendship and by the end Sam had often caught himself hoping that the
other boy would offer him a ride home or something just so he knew what the
interior of the car felt like, smelled like; details that he could use to
improve the daydreams he had started having about spending time with Gabriel
where they didn't only talk about conflict theory or Karl Marx.
He had assumed that the older man had let his siblings borrow his car to get to
school that day and fought to keep himself from lashing out at Dean when the
bitterness of what he had let slip though his fingers started to weigh down on
him. Sam would one day look back fondly on how he had literally been knocked
off of his feet when Gabriel unexpectedly reentered his life, but at the time
he had just been so embarrassed by his own klutziness that he didn't realize
that he had somehow gotten the other boy's phone number scribbled onto his palm
until he made it to homeroom less than five minutes before the bell rang for
the next class.
Sam hadn't waited until school let out that day before texting Gabriel and by
the time the weekend had rolled around it was like they had never stopped
sitting next to each other in the murky amphitheater that housed their shared
class. He noticed that Gabriel never brought up the moment that had passed
between them in the library on the last day of class and Sam followed along
with the unspoken agreement that they wouldn't discuss it. They kept their
conversations light, though Sam thought that there was always an undertone of
coyness coming from the other boy that was hard to not reciprocate.
His phone buzzed loudly on the coffee table in front of him, where he had
tossed it down in frustration when he had settled on the couch. He reached out
a shaky hand to check the message and let out a strangled whimper when he had
read it.
Gabe: What was your apartment number again?
And there it was the thing that had Sam rushing to the bathroom to make sure
his hair wasn't doing something weird and cupping his hand over his mouth to
check that his breath wasn't horrible before typing in a reply with trembling
fingers.
Sam: 237
Several minutes later there was a knock on the door and Sam cast one last
glance around the sparse apartment to make sure that it wasn't absolutely
disgusting before opening the door.
His breath caught in his chest as he took in the sight of Gabriel leaning on
the doorframe on one arm with a playful smile on his face, looking every bit
the adorable muchkin that Sam had privately started to think of him as. Oh,
yea. That's why this is a good idea.
He looked very at ease in loose fitting jeans, a faded black Michael Jackson
shirt and a light-weight olive jacket and the older man unabashedly raked his
gaze over Sam before his golden eyes returned to the taller boy's face and he
cleared his throat with a small pointed cough.
"So are you going to invite me in or did I get all prettied up for nothing?
"R-Right," Sam said quickly stepping to the side to provide room for Gabriel to
enter the apartment. "Come in."
He watched nervously as the shorter man gambled around the small space, poking
into cabinets and running his fingers lightly over the framed pictures that
Dean had put up on the walls during a slightly drunken bout of sentimentality.
Gabriel lingered on a picture of a pretty blonde woman being kissed on either
cheek by two small boys, one with close cropped dark hair and another with
slightly overgrown lighter locks.
"Your mom?" he asked looking over at Sam who hadn't yet been able to tear his
eyes away from the first person that wasn't family to ever set foot in his
home.
"Yea," Sam said clearing his throat, it was one of the last pictures they had
taken before his mom had left for good when he was 9 years old.
"It's nice that you have pictures," Gabriel replied giving him a sad smile as
he moved to sit on the couch, clasping his hands on his knees in front of him.
Sam didn't know what to say to that, they had never really talked about their
families outside of their respective siblings and he wondered if maybe they had
each avoided bringing up their parents on purpose. He moved towards the fridge,
just wanting to have something to do that might temper the awkwardness of the
situation. He just had one thought which was; now that he had Gabriel here what
was he going to do with him?
"Do you want a drink?" he asked lamely.
"Water's fine."
He grabbed two bottles of water and went to sit by his friend, taking a
tentative sip as the silence of the room began to weigh oppressively on the two
occupants.
"Where's your brother?" Gabriel asked conversationally moving so that he was
sitting with his back against the armrest of the couch, his legs crossed on the
cushion in front of him and he was facing his host.
"Probably the same place as your brother. Movie night." Sam replied
unconsciously mirroring the other boy's position, which made for a pretty tight
squeeze, since the couch wasn't exactly big and Sam's legs weren't exactly
short. There was about two inches of space left between the two men as they
regarded each other, a fond smile alighting on Gabriel's face at the mention of
his younger brother.
"Yea. Not that I don't love the kid, but I'm happy that he has a reason to get
out of the house now. Y'know, besides running himself into an early grave or
playing army men."
Sam smiled, from what Gabe had told him about his younger brother, he could
probably learn a thing or two from Dean about how to relax. He just hoped his
older brother wasn't too terrible of an influence on the other boy.
"So what do you want to do?" Sam asked stretching his arms above his head, he
noticed how Gabriel's gaze immediately went to where his shirt rode up on his
stomach and he couldn't help himself from drawing the movement out longer than
was probably necessary.
"Um, there's this diner Cassie and I go to after his – every now and then. It's
like right around the corner." The older man was blushing furiously and almost
vaulted over the back of the couch as he spoke in his haste to get to the door.
"Sounds great," Sam rose from the couch fluidly, his confident gestures hiding
the fact that inside he was a squealing, nervous mess.
He stepped close to Gabriel, reaching over his shoulder to grab his own jacket
off of the hooks by the door. Close enough to smell the Juicy Fruit gum that
the other man was chewing and to feel the body heat radiating off of him. Every
one of his senses felt like it was on high alert, he wanted to absorb every
small detail about Gabe just in case he suddenly took off again deciding that
this, whatever it was, was just too much, too weird, too perfect.
The diner was only a couple of blocks away and Sam was more than slightly
disappointed that it wasn't far enough to justify taking Gabe's car which was
parked in the spot usually reserved for the Impala.
Gabriel noticed the younger boy looking at the vehicle forlornly as the set off
away from the apartment complex and he couldn't help himself from chuckling as
he bumped his friend conspiratorially with his shoulder. "Easy tiger. You'll
get to ride in her eventually."
"Am I that obvious?" Sam said ducking his head bashfully as they walked down
the street.
"Yeah," Gabe replied with a shrug. "But I like obvious, it's cute. In case you
haven't noticed I'm not so good with subtle."
Sam bit his lip and seemed to consider the other man's words for a moment. He
stopped Gabe with a hand on his shoulder right as they reached the front of the
diner and spun him around to face him. The younger man hesitated for just a
moment before leaning down and placing a soft chaste kiss on the other's cheek.
Gabe's lightly stubbled face made his lips tingle and his heart felt like it
was about to pound out of his chest in fear as he regarded the surprised
expression on his crush's face.
"I'm not good with subtlety either," Sam declared before he entered the diner,
leaving the other man on the street as the shock turned into a dazed, contented
smile and he let out a little huff of air.
Wow. Gabriel thought to himself as he slid into the red vinyl booth across from
Sam and picked up the laminated menu with unsteady hands.
"What's good?" Sam asked, his brow furrowing in concentration as he tried to
decide what on the menu would kill him the slowest. Everything was battered and
deep fried, the only vegetables being the ones that came on the various
burgers.
"Well, I always get the monte cristo with the sweet potato fries," Gabe offered
with a glance at the younger boy.
"That's like a deep fried sandwich, right?"
The older man nodded, "And it comes with powdered sugar on top and raspberry
jam on the side. It's so good."
Sam made an adorably disgusted face at him and all Gabriel could think about
what how he shouldn't be doing this. This was so not okay and he was definitely
going to go to hell for all of the impure thoughts he had been having about the
cluelessly sexy minor sitting across from him.
Because no matter how much he may want to jump across the formica table
separating them and kiss the hell out of Sam Winchester, the other boy was
still only sixteen. Sixteen; younger than his own brother was.
So granted, Sam looked like he could easily pass for eighteen, was male model
level gorgeous, and had an amazing voice that made his toes curl even when the
other boy was talking about social contract theory, but Gabriel was the adult
in the situation and he should be trying much harder to keep this relationship
from becoming something that would have Sam's dad or worse his older brother
showing up on his doorstep with a loaded gun.
He wasn't afraid of the whole gay thing or how his family would take it if he
were to bring a boy home for dinner or anything. Well, Anna and Cassie at any
rate. Even when he had been living at home he hadn't been dumb enough to let
his father or older brother catch on to the fact that the 'friends' he stayed
over with a lot of the time were really much more than that. His only regret
about Pontiac was that he hadn't noticed his younger brother trying and failing
miserably at having to hide who he was as well.
No, the problem here was really the age thing. If he had met a 16 year old girl
in his sociology class and taken a liking to her, well then her parents might
be slightly surprised but not overly scandalized by the fact that he was a 20
year old college freshman and guardian of his two siblings wanting to steal
their darling child's virtue. He didn't dare allow himself to hope that Sam's
gruff looking older brother would be quite as accepting of the fact that a
manther was lusting after his baby bro.
"Hey Gabe," his regular waitress, Barb, said sidling up to the table with a
wide smile on her face. "Where's that handsome brother of yours?"
"He's got a hot date with his friends tonight, Barbie doll." Gabriel replied
winking at the plump older woman.
"Well, he's not the only one. What's your name, sugar?" the waitress turned to
address Sam who was looking at the woman with the biggest, most innocent
looking puppy-dog eyes Gabriel had ever seen.
The taller boy reached out a hand in greeting and Gabriel was reminded of
another reason why he couldn't get Sam out of his head, he was just so damn
polite. "Sam, it's nice to meet you."
Barb's mouth turned into a surprised 'O' and she shook the younger man's hand
enthusiastically. "You're Sam. Of course you are good lookin' fella like you.
I've heard a lot about you."
Sam gave her a confused look before turning to Gabriel who was doing his level
best to resist the urge to kick his favorite waitress and probably closest
friend in Lawrence in the shin.
"Thanks, Barb." Gabe muttered, blushing furiously and feeling like he could
melt into a puddle of embarrassment right there on the floor.
She cleared her throat and suddenly the woman was all business again, hoping
that if she kept her trap shut maybe her boy could still save face and salvage
his date. "What can I get you crazy kids?"
"I'll have the turkey burger with a side of chips and guacamole. Coffee to
drink, please ma'am."
That was Sam; chivalrous despite the discomfort Gabe knew he had to be feeling.
Now that he knew that the older man had been obsessing over him practically
since they met and talking about him to other people on top of that, the other
boy was probably really regretting that little public display of affection he
had shown outside.
"For you, Gabe? The usual?"
"Yea, doll. Double chocolate shake this time, extra whipped cream." He replied
trying to keep the sudden despondency out of his voice.
Barb scribbled a quick note on her ticket pad and gave the shorter man a
comforting squeeze on the shoulder before moving away to get their drinks and
put their order in.
Gabriel stared resolutely at the salt and pepper shakers on the table and taped
his fingers anxiously in an effort to keep from biting his nails. His father
used to say he had a hand to mouth fixation when he was a kid and had plied
lollipops and candy on him to keep him from biting his nails to the quick. Now
he had the worst sweet tooth and could get really grumpy when the older Novak
got what Anna called 'the sugar shakes'. Thank god he had never taken up
smoking.
"So your usual is probably the most artery clogging thing on the menu and you
get a chocolate coma shake to wash it all down with? You're going to have
diabetes like tomorrow if you keep that up." Sam said in a good-natured tone,
causing the other man to look up from his brooding.
"Well, you got coffee. Aren't you afraid you're going to stunt your growth
there, Yao Ming?" Gabriel replied, not being one to miss an opportunity to give
as good as he got.
"Are we really going to bring height into this?" Sam asked quirking his eyebrow
and smiling teasingly as he reached across the table to still the other man's
frantically tapping fingers.
That small voice in his head that sounded like his sixth grade science teacher,
who in turn had sounded an awful lot like Severus Snape fighting a very bad
head cold, told him to pull his hand away. This was not a date. This was two
friends, catching up face to face after not having seen each other for awhile.
And holding hands. They could hold hands and this still wouldn't be a date,
right?
And when had he started questioning doing anything. Not that long ago the name
Gabriel Novak had been synonymous with doing whatever the fuck you wanted
whenever you wanted. But that had been before he had 'adult' problems and
'real' responsibilities, like making sure your little brother was actually
taking his antidepressants and not flushing them down the toilet again or
warning your baby sister away from being just another teenage pregnancy
statistic. He was going to go gray just from thinking about how randy he had
been when he was a freshman and imagining those same kind of hormones
assaulting sweet little Anna. He would never for a second regret buying her
that travel-sized pepper spray to keep in her backpack.
"I guess not," Gabriel replied smiling back at his friend and letting himself
relax back into his seat, twining his fingers through the other boy's
instinctively.
Barb brought over their drinks and gave her favorite regular a wink when she
noticed their clasped hands on the table top.
The two men talked amicably about what they had been up to since their college
course had let out and shared little silly stories from their childhoods until
their food came. They ate in comfortable silence and Gabriel even managed to
get Sam to try a bit of his 'death sandwich', Sam's designation for the grease
dripping, preserve slathered concoction that the older man had held enticingly
in front of his mouth until the smell of the food had made him give in and take
the bite off of the end of the fork at his lips. He had groaned in appreciation
and made a mental note of the wanton look that had crossed Gabriel's face at
the sound.
They both opted to not get dessert and while Sam stepped out to take a call
from his brother, Gabriel paid for both of their meals, still resolutely
telling himself that this dinner was not a date. He gave Barb a hug on his way
out of the restaurant and promised that he would talk to her soon, the man
usually stopped in after classes to study over a plate of fries and a
milkshake.
"Dean called," Sam said pocketing his phone when he saw the older man emerge
from the diner. "Said they're watching sequels tonight and then he's gonna give
everyone a lift home after so he won't be back until late."
"So I won't have to pick up Castiel, great." Gabriel said with a wry smile.
"What now?"
The younger boy seemed to ponder the question for a moment and then he
shrugged. "We could go back to my house, watch a movie or something. We'll have
plenty of time to finish it since they don't even start movie night until the
pizza gets there. Dean said they just ordered so we've got a couple of hours
easy."
"Won't your dad be home by the time we get back?"
Sam's expression darkened and he turned his face away from the other boy as
they began the short walk back toward the apartment complex. "No. If he comes
home at all it won't be until way after Dean gets back."
"Oh." Gabriel replied not knowing what else to say with the information. Maybe
this explained by Dean seemed so protective of his younger brother, their dad
was a deadbeat.
The trip back to the apartment was filled with a tense silence and more than
once Gabriel considered just getting in his car and going home to a hot shower
where the only Sam Winchester he had to worry about was in his head and more
than willing to skip the awkward 'getting to know you' stage.
But as tempting as that sounded, the older man knew that he would regret
leaving whatever was going on between the two of them on such uncertain terms.
He needed to do something, make a decisive move that wasn't coy or teasing and
would let Sam know exactly how he felt. Because he was pretty ready to tell the
consequences to go fuck themselves as he climbed the stairs to the second floor
apartment behind the younger man, the view was just amazing.
Gabriel stood awkwardly in the small hallway inside the door of the apartment
as he waited for Sam to retrieve his battered lap top from the bedroom he
shared with his brother and wondered if it would be too forward of him if he
just scaled the taller boy like a mountain and kissed him senseless.
"What are we watching?" he asked the younger boy who was perching on the edge
of the couch and going through the files he had stored on his computer with a
small smile on his face.
"You said you like Downton Abbey and British stuff, right?"
"Yeah…" Gabe replied warily as Sam settled back on the couch and clicked the
play button on the small screen of the laptop on the coffee table in front of
them.
The older man laughed out loud when the opening strains of Pride and Prejudice
started and gave his friend a pointed look. "You dangling Matthew MacFayden in
front of me is going to win you all of the favors, Winchester."
"Yea, I like him too." Sam said blushing slightly as he turned to face Gabriel,
propping one leg up on the cushion separating them. "We don't have to watch it
if you don't want to though."
"If we get tired of it, we can turn it off." He replied with a shrug before he
slid down to curl up on his side on his half of the couch, head laying on the
armrest. "I've seen it like a billion times."
The evening light started to fade as they watched the movie and neither man
bothered to get up and turn on the lamps that sat at either end of the couch.
By the time it got to the scene where Lizzie and Mr. Darcy were finally getting
their heads out of their asses long enough to dance with each other at the
Netherfield ball, Gabriel's arm had started to go numb from where he was laying
on it and he was shifting uncomfortably.
Sam let out a loud sigh and moved so that he was sitting turned more towards
the other man, draping an arm across the back of the couch as he went. "Come
here."
Gabriel hesitated for less than a second before he dove across the space
separating him and Sam and firmly nestled himself into the larger man's side,
wrapping his arm's around the other boy's torso and placing his head on the
broad, flannel covered expanse of chest underneath him. Sam laughed at the
older man's actions and leaned down to drop a kiss into Gabe's hair. The
smaller man sighed in contentment and vowed to himself that he was going to
remember everything about this night, even if it was the only one with Sam that
he ever got.
When the movie drew to a close, Sam jostled Gabriel slightly to make sure that
he had not fallen asleep as he turned on the light next to him and was startled
when he saw the usually mirthful golden eyes filled with tears.
"What's wrong, Gabe?" He asked in a worried tone, drawing away slightly from
the other boy so that he could take in his whole expression.
"It's nothing really. I'm just being a big stupid girl." Gabriel said drawing
in a shaky breath and wiping furiously at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
It was too much. He had never wanted to see Gabriel sad, would give anything to
make sure that the man in his arms never had to cry again. Would tear the world
apart if it meant he could hear the other's infectious laugh every day for the
rest of his life.
"No something is wrong. What is going on? Why are you crying?"
Gabriel shook his head and tightened his grip on Sam, not wanting to let go,
but knowing he should. He should be going, this was wrong. "I just don't want
tonight to end."
"Is that all? You really are a big stupid girl." The other boy replied with a
chuckle.
"Be serious, Sam." He was angry. Sam was going to force him to be the bad guy.
"How is this ever going to work? It won't work, it can't work."
"And why the hell not? Who's to say that we can't do this, watch movies and
cuddle and eat food that's going to end up killing us? This," Sam gestured
between the two of them, when had they moved so far apart? "Is is no one's
business but our own."
"I'm too old for you. I can't be serious about anything for more than ten
minutes. I am raising my siblings, Sam. That's like some real fucking shit. If
anyone were to find out about us, they could be taken away from me. Anna could
go back to my dad, I can't let that happen."
"I can handle the serious stuff, my life isn't perfect, Gabe. I can't see
anything I don't like about you. All of that stuff you think is bad is just one
more reason why I'm crazy about you."
"But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things about me that
piss you off. Make you regret fucking up your life for someone like me. And
I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me."
Gabriel was almost shouting now. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest
again, only now it was painful, not exciting like it had been when Sam had
kissed him earlier in the afternoon.
"Ok." Sam said plainly, grabbing Gabriel's wrist tightly to anchor him to the
conversation so he couldn't run away again. If he ran again then the younger
man knew that it would be over, before they even got a chance.
"Ok?"
"If you piss me off, if I find something about you that I think isn't
absolutely adorable I'll tell you. And if you get bored, I'll let you go. I
can't promise it won't kill me if you do, but I just want you to be happy."
Sam's voice was serious and Gabriel found that he couldn't look away from the
penetrating gaze of the boy's dark brown eyes. "But my only regret will be not
trying; giving up on having something amazing just because it's not easy."
The shorter man exhaled loudly, not even realized that he had been holding his
breath while Sam had been speaking and felt his mouth forming a trembling
smile. "Alright then."
Sam nodded in agreement and tentatively reached out to cup Gabriel's face with
his free hand, adjusting his grip on the other man's wrist so that their
fingers were linked together. He leaned forward, closing the gap that had
formed between them and softly brushed his lips against Gabe's.
It was time-stopping and innocent and heart-wrenchingly sweet and everything a
first kiss should be. When they pulled away, Gabriel rested his forehead
against Sam's, looking at the other boy who still had his eyes closed, but
who's expression had settled into one of dazed contentment.
It was something that no one else had ever seen and the older man let his
worries and fears evaporate for the time being as he moved forward for another
kiss, knowing at the back of his mind that the problems would still be there
when time started up again, but savoring the present too much to care.
Chapter End Notes
     So my original title for this chapter was 'Interlude' since I meant
     for it to be short, sweet, and just something quick I would write in
     between chapters, but it kinda got away from me.If you're familar
     with The Killers you'll notice that the title is similar to what I
     had originally planned, but is a song reference off of the album
     Sam's Town. I think its pretty appropriate.
     I was worried that I couldn't write cutesy stuff and I'm still pretty
     worried about slash, but I guess I will cross that sexy bridge when I
     get to it. This is the second chapter in a row that wasn't ever meant
     to be longer than 1K words or so, but I hope that can only mean that
     I am enjoying writing this so much that it feels like its writing
     itself.
     Anyway, here it is a day early! Next chapter will not be up until
     Friday so please let me know what you think of this one and as always
     thanks to everyone who is reading, commenting, and just being
     generally amazing at being a human.
***** Bang Bang *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Cas luxuriated in the hot spray of water pouring down on him in the long
communal showers of Lawrence High's locker room. His muscles in his back and
arms ached pleasantly in ways that they hadn't in months and he smiled as he
thought of how the mock rifles of the drill team members, painted black with
striking red accents for the school's colors, had sailed high into the air the
precision only slightly off since they weren't yet used to the timing of the
routine that Sanz had created to go along with the songs that the marching band
would be performing at half time.
They had started the meeting by running a mile, something that Castiel had done
easily since it was only a fraction of what he did every morning anyway. He had
been left waiting on the sidelines of the track that surround the football
field for the rest of the ROTC cadets to finish and had taken the opportunity
to observe the football team practicing plays in preparation for the first game
of the season the following week. He watched Dean but he was really trying not
to.
Football wasn't something he was very familiar with even though Raphael had
tried to explain it to him several times when they were younger before getting
frustrated with Castiel's repeated questioning of the rules and intricacies of
the game and telling his younger brother to leave him alone. No, the sport was
something that his father and oldest brother had always bonded over and he and
the rest of his siblings had quickly learned to make themselves scarce when a
game was on or risk their father's wrath if they disturbed the pair.
He hoped that by watching the team practice then maybe he could pick up enough
on how the game was played to be able to have something to discuss with Dean
besides music and how crazy Chuck was. Not that their conversations weren't
generally the highlight of his day, but he wanted to know more about the boy,
be able to have his own stories that they could share with the rest of the
group since neither Jo, Ash, or Gath were involved with a club that took part
in the Friday night rituals of the football team, band, and ROTC. He wanted to
have inside jokes with someone that would have other people looking as confused
as Cas sometimes felt before a member of their group explained the story behind
the what the rest of them found so funny.
Dean had spotted him leaning against the chain link fence separating the track
and football field from the bleachers and waved at Cas excitedly, taking the
opportunity to do so while Coach Uriel was busy shouting direction to the
defensive linemen. Castiel had noticed that Dean's own position on the team
usually meant that he was running and catching the ball that was thrown at him
by Alistair. Though the two boys weren't on friendly terms it seemed that they
could put their differences aside for long enough to successfully get the ball
to the end zone.
The smaller man smiled at his friend, blushing at having been caught staring by
the object of his affections. Luckily, Sanz had chosen that moment to come over
and start talking about the marksman competitions that would be taking place
for the ROTC in the spring semester and asking if he felt confident enough to
demonstrate to the others how to field strip a rifle when they met on Monday.
Castiel had agreed to the older man's requests readily and then volunteered to
go and retrieve the mock drill rifles from the closet that their equipment was
stored in. By the time he returned, Uriel had the offensive line up running
plays against the defensive part of the football team and Dean's face was once
again safely obscured from his scrutiny by his helmet.
After finishing what the instructor informed them would be their standard
workout (consisting of the mile everyone had run, jumping jacks, push ups, and
sit ups) at Wednesday meetings, ten students had remained to begin learning the
marching program Sanz had created and Cas was pleased that the other cadets
seemed as dedicated to achieving the perfection required for the routine to
happen with no one getting knocked out by one of the study replica guns as he
was. He noticed that Adam especially was worried about someone getting injured
and thought about how the younger boy's considerate nature might fair if it
were to be matched with Jo's own need to mother all of the guys in her life.
The drill practice ended and Sanz dismissed the cadets with a sharp salute.
Castiel walked behind Adam and Kevin on the way back to the locker room,
listening to Tran complain about how he didn't have the muscle mass to keep up
with the other boys on the squad.
"Man, it's not about muscles." Adam said patting the freshman comfortingly on
the arm as they headed towards where they had left their street clothes on one
of the benches when they had changed for the meeting. "It's about endurance.
The rifles aren't that heavy so you just have to learn how to pace yourself.
Your tosses don't have to be as high as you're trying to make them."
Cas had just stayed in his gym clothes since the ROTC had met right after his
last class of the day anyway and headed towards his locker across the room to
gather the things he had brought with him to take a shower before going over to
Garth's house for movie night.
"He's right," Castiel agreed softly, pulling out his towel and tucking his
moisturizer safely out of sight before he turned back to the other boys. "If
you just use your left hand to push down as you're flipping up with your right
it uses the muscles in your shoulders more than your wrists. You'll get the
same height and those muscles are already some of your strongest."
Kevin rubbed his wrists experimentally and winced when he put pressure on them.
"I just don't see how I'm ever going to be as good as you two are."
"I'll do some extra practice with you if you want," Adam offered. "I know you
have a lot of schoolwork and stuff, but I'll make the time to do it if you
will."
"Thanks, Adam." Kevin said shoving his clothes into his backpack. "I've got to
run, my mom is supposed to pick me up for my cello lesson. Bye, guys."
The two boys watched as Kevin darted out of the locker room and then smiled
awkwardly at each other as they moved around getting their things together.
"You're friends with Jo Harvelle, right?" Adam asked suddenly causing Castiel
to stop on his way towards the showers at the back of the locker room.
He nodded at the other boy though part of him was acutely aware that it
couldn't possibly be this easy to set two people up. It had never been that
easy for him.
"Just friends?" the younger boy asked uncertainly.
"Yes." Cas replied with a small laugh.
Adam bit his lip and twisted his discarded workout shirt tightly around his
hand; he looked up at the senior embarrassed. "Because you like guys?"
Castiel froze, the last time another boy had said that sentence to him he had
ended up with two cracked ribs and a hairline fracture in his skull. He thought
very carefully before he answered and took the time to study Adam's body
language. The sophomore didn't look like he was about to jump him, didn't look
offended or agitated. And the way Adam had asked spoke volumes. Because he
hadasked, not spat it at him like an accusation.
"Do I have a sign on my forehead or something?"
The younger man's shoulders relaxed and he smiled warmly at Cas. "Nah. I'm just
perceptive about that kind of thing. I have a cousin, Michael who's…y'know. I
could introduce you to him if you want."
"That's ok. I sorta like someone else, but I don't know…" he trailed off and
Adam made a small hum of understanding.
"Well, um. About Jo. Do you think she might be interested in um, me? I mean
she's always really nice to me and everything, but she's nice to everyone so
it's really hard to…."
"Her birthday is next weekend." Castiel stated in an effort to stop the boy's
painful blabbering.
"It is?"
"Yes and she is having a party at her house. I think she would really like it
if you came. You specifically."
"Really?' Adam asked hopefully.
"Yea," Cas said with a smile, this matchmaking stuff was easy. "You should talk
to her."
"I will man, thanks." Adam slung his backpack over his shoulder and went to
leave the locker room. Castiel was stopped again as he continued towards the
showers by the younger man clearing his throat. "And Cas, if you ever need to
talk or anything…"
The older boy had taken in the sympathetic face that the freshman was wearing
and nodded.
As Castiel stepped into spray of water, he figured he had about twenty minutes
until football practice ended and he wanted to be done and dressed before the
team came in, he thought about how he seemed to getting that 'poor you' face
from a lot of people lately. Jo hadn't meant to do it when they went shopping
he was pretty sure of that, but Becky Rosen made that face at him practically
every day when they were leaving English class, and though it might have been
what Dean called one of his 'bitch faces' he was pretty sure his friend's
younger brother had worn the same expression when the pair had caught up with
Cas as he had entered the school the day before. However, that introduction had
been very brief since the younger Winchester had claimed that he needed to go
to his locker before homeroom and dashed off leaving Dean to compliment and
gawk over Castiel's new wardrobe.
Cas smiled into the water hitting his face and quickly sloughed soap onto his
body, that had been nice. Seeing Dean's stunned expression as the other boy had
given him a long look, it almost felt like he was being checked out, but he
knew that couldn't have been the case when less than five minutes later he had
seen Dean looking cozily cornered by a leggy blonde girl who he was pretty sure
was a cheerleader. He really should let the whole crush on his so hetero it
hurts friend go, maybe take Adam up on his offer, but every time he wrote off
the other boy as a lost cause Dean did something or said something that made
him have to start digging himself out of those beautiful green eyes all over
again.
He rinsed the shampoo out of his hair and stretched his muscles one last time
under the hot water before turning it off and wrapping his towel around his
hips. He grabbed his workout clothes and went to get the clothes he had been
wearing earlier in the day, but was stopped short when he saw that the locker
room was full of tired, hulking football players. They were very quiet,
shucking off their shoulder pads and helmets and hardly looking at each other.
He moved cautiously through the group, like a gazelle that had accidently
stumbled into a pack of dozing lions, to his locker sparing a glance at Dean
who was leaning up against the locker next to him with his head in his folded
arms.
"You ok?" Cas asked quietly, quickly snatching his jeans and shirt and holding
them close to his chest.
Dean's reply was muffled and he didn't bother looking up at his friend. "Yea.
Wisdom just tore us a new one about not being ready for the game next week."
The other boy pulled back suddenly and wiped his hands over his over his face
and hair in an agitated way, causing his sweat drenched hair to stick up at odd
angles. Castiel jumped slightly at the action and glanced around nervously at
the other players who were still ignoring him as they moved around gathering
their things. "I just don't know what else to do! Nothing I ever do is good
enough for anyone."
"Dean," Castiel said softly, adjusting the bundle in his arms so that he could
pat his friend on the shoulder causing Dean to look at him for the first time,
eyes widening slightly as he took in the other boy's lack of clothing. "I am
sure he wasn't talking to just you. You can't take responsibility for the whole
team, just do your best. That's all anyone is going to ask."
"Thanks, Cas." Dean murmured.
"Anytime," he replied and then moved as quickly as he could back to his
favorite stall to change, he could feel eyes on his back as he moved and he
hoped that no one noticed the scars.
"That thing you do with the gun," Dean said moving his hands in a juggling
motion as he drove, steering the Impala with his knees for a moment while they
were on a straight stretch of road leading to Garth's house a short time later.
"It's really freakin' cool."
"It's nothing," Castiel said looking out the passenger side window and noticing
that his other friend's house was in generally the same area as his own.
"No, dude. It's badass. I wish I could do something like that.'
"Dean, it's the same thing as twirling a baton and then people would just make
fun of me. So what is the big deal?"
"I bet you could make a baton look very macho. Dress it up with some camo and
army boots and you'd be the hottest twirler out there. Girls would throw
themselves at you." Dean said with a chuckle.
He hadn't yet seen Cas in fatigues or his dress uniform, but he figured that
the sharp lines of military dress would probably suit the smaller boy. And Dean
had always had a thing for uniforms, he'd even considered the Army for himself
for a while. Cas scoffed when Dean mentioned girls and ran a hand through his
now dry hair.
Dean noticed the motion and once again allowed himself to admire how much
better the other boy looked in more normal clothes. He was wearing a dark red
cardigan over a black shirt for a band that Dean had never heard of with light
blue jeans. Jo had made a point at lunch of telling everyone that she had not
approved of Cas's choice in outerwear, but Dean liked it. It was a nice
contrast to his friend's eyes and more than once he caught himself staring at
the other boy when his attention was turned elsewhere.
Now Dean had never been one to begrudge another guy good looks, Harrison Ford
had pretty much been his idol as a kid and he had always thought the scruffy,
badass hero thing worked pretty well for the guy; it's not like the actor did
badly with the ladies. After having met Cas though, he was ready to amend his
traits that he thought all girls should find attractive to include scruffy,
badass, nerdy, shy, softspoken, gorgeous, funny amazing and nice.
It was like someone had delved into his dreams and taken all of the sweet
qualities of Kaylee from Firefly mixed with the brains and looks of Indiana
Jones and came up with Castiel Novak. This unassuming high schooler who had
dropped so unexpectedly into his life and was fearless enough to stand by him
against a group of meatheads on his first day, crazy enough to throw guns in
the air and not bat an eye, but too shy to change clothes in a locker room and
had the most quirky, self-deprecating sense of humor that Dean couldn't get
enough of.
He pulled into Gath's driveway and felt a small pang of regret that the ride
from the school had been so short. Part of him liked to keep Cas all to
himself, most days he couldn't wait until their English class and he liked
having things that just he and the other boy could talk about, even if it was
just homework. Dean liked that the other boy would let him listen to his iPod
with him during their downtime in the class and he was finding that he enjoyed
a lot of the music that Cas was introducing him to, but it felt awkward to talk
about it in front of the others, like it was something private going on between
the two of them. Like the songs they listened to had some deeper meaning that
if he just paid more attention to he would understand what they were trying to
tell him.
Today for instance, Dean had asked Cas about his shirt and the other boy had
excitedly pulled up a song; as it played the larger boy felt like he was
looking at a younger version of Cas sitting in a large sparse bedroom,
listening to his iPod turned way down in the middle of the night his face
illuminated only by the small glowing screen of the media player. Every time
that his friend shared those headphones with him it was like Dean was seeing
another part of him, peeling back the layers of what had made Castiel into the
amazing person sitting next to him one at a time. He had taken to making a list
of the songs and artists Cas talked about in the back of his spiral so that he
could look them up later on Sam's laptop at home and try to figure out what
their secret language was saying.
Dean walked right into Garth's house, not bothering to knock since he knew that
Gath's mom would be expecting them. Cas trailed slightly behind, examining the
comfortable rooms as he went smiling at all of the personal touches that made
this building a home for his friend. Mrs. Fitzgerald stopped them on their way
down stairs to the basement, greeting Dean with a kiss on the cheek and a hug
and shaking the hand that Cas offered by way of introduction before the older
woman managed to pull him in for a short, tight hug too.
"Finally," Jo grumbled from the worn arm chair she was sitting in, messing
around on her phone with a disinterested look on her face. "You guys took
forever."
"Well, we could've shown up all sweaty, Jo." Dean said, flinging his jacket
down onto the back of the couch and ambling over to where Garth and Ash were
playing ping pong on the scratched table with a dented ball. "But we didn't
want our pheromones screwing up your chances with soldier boy."
"Adam says hello, by the way." Cas added pulling the DVDs he had brought with
him out of his bag.
"Oh really, he say anything else?" Jo asked archly.
"Nothing that he won't say to you tomorrow I'm sure."
Jo's face dropped in disappointment slightly before she smiled breezily at the
assembled boys in the room. "So what are we watching, Cas?"
Castiel looked down at the movies in his hand; he had deliberated for the
better part of the evening before about what he should pick to watch. He wanted
something that the rest of the group would like, that would appeal to
everyone's personalities, but the film collection in the Novak household was
pretty sparse, consisting of what had been bought since their move at the
beginning of the summer and the three siblings tastes ranged wildly between
Gabe's obsession with period dramas, Anna's arthouse films, and Cas's
preference for classic kung fu movies.
So he had picked the film in his collection that was the most recent and
grabbed its sequel for good measure. I mean, it's not like it was ever really
meant to be a sequel, right? It's just like a continuation of the first movie.
He held up the yellow and red cases and looked around the room anxiously. "Kill
Bill?"
"Hell yes, dude!" Garth yelled climbing over the back of the couch and
snatching the boxes out of Cas's hands. "I haven't watched these in like two
years."
"So can we order some pizza now? I'm freaking starving!" Ash said taking up a
post on the other end of the couch and Jo moved to settle happily in between
the two boys, already dialing Papa Keno's on her phone.
That left just the armchair vacant and Dean looked at Cas tensely before both
boys made a mad dash for the last comfortable seat in the basement. The trio on
the couch watched in amusement as the two boys wrestled around in the chair,
both were fairly evenly matched. Dean had the more obvious strength, but Cas
was wiry and eventually managed to wedge himself underneath the large boy and
use Dean's own body weight against him to shove him onto the floor. The smaller
boy smiled triumphantly and snuggled himself down deeply into the armchair as
Dean snatched the throw pillow out from under Cas's head just as he plopped it
down heavily onto the armrest.
"I want meat lover's," Dean grumbled as he pulled out his own phone. "Let me
check in with Sam and then I'll put the movie in."
"Hey, Sammy" Dean said settling his back against Cas's chair, he could feel the
other boy's breath on the back of his neck and he shivered slightly. "Yea. No,
I just got here. Practice ran kinda long. Nah, we're just now ordering. Gonna
be late tonight, buddy. Yea, I'm gonna make sure everyone makes it home and
stuff. Okay. Hey, don't spend all night doing homework; maybe try to relax for
once? Okay. See you later."
Dean cleared his throat and snatched Vol. 1 off of the upturned milk crates
that served as the basement's coffee table and crawled to Garth's Playstation
to put the disc in. He maneuvered the controls until the opening scenes began
and Ash jumped up to turn the lights off and grab sodas for everyone from the
fridge in the corner of the basement. He tossed one to Cas and the boy caught
it without tearing his eyes away from Uma Thurman's bloody face on the screen.
"He wrote this script for her as a birthday present, y'know." Cas murmured
softly into Dean's ear causing him to jump.
"Who?" Dean whispered, glancing back at his friend. From where Cas was laying,
their faces were less than a foot apart and Dean took the chance to unabashedly
stare at the boy who's attention was so focused on the screen.
"Tarantino." Cas said, his eyes flicking over to Dean for a moment before the
sound of a gunshot brought his attention back to the movie. "I love this song."
The credits played on the screen, casting the room into almost complete
darkness and Dean was so caught up in listening to the song that when the
chorus came in, Castiel's singing softly along made him close his eyes in
amazement. The other boy's voice would have been lost to him if he had managed
to get his normal seat on the couch.
"Bang bang. He shot me down, bang bang. I hit the ground , bang bang. That
awful sound, bang bang. My baby shot me down."
His voice just sounded so sad and resigned and wrecked. Dean hugged the throw
pillow tightly to his chest to resist the urge to turn around and comfort his
friend. He looked around at Jo, Garth, and Ash who were sitting obliviously on
the couch and didn't seem to be able to hear what he was hearing; surely if
they could they would be having the same reaction to the deep voice whispering
in his ear that he was. He didn't know if he wanted to track down whatever
asshole it was that had made his friend so sad or if he wanted to do something
drastic to make Cas forget that he had ever had anything but happy memories to
associate with this song.
When it was over Castiel let out a soft sigh and the hot, damp air on his neck
made Dean turn around to see his friend smiling softly. "How many times have
you seen this?"
"It's pretty much my favorite movie, Dean."
He relaxed at that, if this was Cas's favorite movie then maybe it was just
that song that made him sad and his friend wouldn't spend the rest of the night
wishing he were somewhere else, with someone else. Whoever the girl was that
could let a guy like Cas go had to be a stone cold bitch. Dean felt more
determined than ever to make sure that his friend met a nice girl, a girl who
deserved someone so awesome.
The pizza arrived and Garth paused the movie long enough to dart up the stairs
and pay the delivery boy and gather some plates so that everyone could eat
while they finished the first movie. Dean ate almost half a pizza by himself,
which wasn't too much more than normal, but he was famished from the long,
grueling practice that Coach Uriel had put them through earlier in the
afternoon. He felt sleepy and full and the only thing keeping him awake was the
trivia about the movie that Cas kept whispering in his ear.
When the other boy got up to change the disc, Dean stealthily slipped into
recently vacated seat that was still warm from its previous owner's body heat
and he settled into it with a pleased smirk on his face. Cas shot him a dirty
look as Dean made himself comfortable, sprawling out in the chair like he
himself had been doing moments before; legs draped over one arm and head
resting on the other. He offered the throw pillow back to Dean who took it
gratefully and used it to prop his neck up.
To his credit, Dean made it all the way through Pai Mei's big scenes before he
finally dozed off, tossing and turning in the cramped chair until he was lying
on his side and one arm was hanging lazily off of the chair next to Cas.
Castiel kept letting his gaze wander over to the hand next to him. It was so
close that when he breathed deeply, Dean's thumb would brush against his side
and he could see the rough calluses on his sleeping friend's fingers and palm.
He swallowed nervously and tried very hard to not think about those fingers
playing with his hair or running over his collarbone. God, it had been hard
enough when he had been sitting in the chair himself to not reach out and run
his hands over the wide set of Dean's shoulders or lean forward to kiss the
freckle-free spot of skin behind his ear.
The more time he spent in the green-eyed boy's company the worse his little
crush was getting. If only he knew for sure that Dean wasn't interested then he
could let it go, bury that tiny spark inside of him that thought he wasn't too
far gone to deserve something as wonderful as the person sleeping behind him.
It helped when he took his meds, they somehow suppressed the voices in his head
that made it hard for him to wake up every morning, made getting dressed or
eating seem like an exercise in pointlessness and they allowed him to focus on
and appreciate the little things that he knew were going right for him. Like
his friends and his classes. He hated that he had to take them, that he was
weak enough to need them, but he knew that it was better when he did.
His favorite part of the movie was coming up, the part where Bill talks about
Superman and how Clark Kent is the hero's critique on the whole human
condition. Cas wondered if he should wake up Dean, he knew that his friend
liked superheroes. Dean shifted in his sleep and Castiel heard his breathing
quicken, like he was running. The hand next to him disappeared and he was
shocked a moment later when it landed on the back of his neck. He tensed
slightly before the boy behind him muttered something incoherent and Cas
realized that he was still asleep. The warm weight of Dean's hand felt nice and
he couldn't bring himself to shake it off.
He wanted to stop Jo from turning on the lights when the movie ended, if only
it would mean that Dean would never take his hand away. Cas felt like he could
keep pretending that his friend thought of him, felt for him in the same way if
the world were always dimmed slightly.
The nightmare had been horrible, not as bad as some of the ones that he had
about his mother or about Sammy, but man. It had been rough. He had been
watching as if from a great distance, that younger version of Cas that he had
seen earlier shaking and crying as darkness closed in around him and he just
kept singing and singing that sad fucking Nancy Sinatra song, like the melody
could keep the monsters in the shadows away and Dean had wanted to protect him.
Tell him to close his eyes and cover his ears like he used to do with Sammy
when he didn't want his younger brother to see their mom and dad fighting. Like
that thing you do when you're a kid and you pull the covers over your head
because if you can't see the monsters then they can't see you.
It had been bad enough to startle him awake in the last couple of minutes of
the movie, but he had kept his breathing even and steady, his eyes cracked just
enough that he could see that Castiel was still sitting in front of him, was
fine. He didn't know when he had reached out to grab the other boy protectively
but the feel of the other boy's warm skin was enough to calm him down. He could
smell the clean, minty scent of Cas's shampoo and wondered if his being so
close was making his friend uncomfortable.
If asked, Dean would never admit it, but the thing he wanted most was for
someone to want him enough that they wouldn't mind sticking around the next
morning; wouldn't cringe away when he wanted to hold on to them. But the harsh
light of day usually helped the girl's he went home with see through all of his
charming bullshit and realize that he was selfish and needy and could never
give someone as much as he asked of them in return.
When Jo flipped the light on, he made a big show of stretching and rubbing his
eyes blearily like he had just woken up. He didn't know why he felt like he had
to do that, but some part of him stopped him from just continuing to hold on to
Cas as the smaller boy turned to look at him curiously even though the hand he
had had on his friend was tingling slightly, like he had just touched an
exposed wire.
"Sorry guys," Dean said with a yawn. "I must have been more tired from practice
than I thought. So Ash I'm giving you a ride home right?"
"I'm riding with Jo," Ash said stacking up the empty pizza boxes and heading
for the stairs.
"I thought you were taking Cas home?" Dean asked looking over at Jo who was
giving Garth and Cas hugs goodbye.
"I figured you could take him home 'cause I need to grab some books and stuff I
left at Ash's house." Jo explained trailing up the stairs after Ash. "I'll see
you later Cas. Bye Garth."
Dean looked over at Castiel and shrugged, grabbing his jacket and sliding it
on. He waved at Garth and popped into say goodnight to his friend's mom on
their way out of the house, the smaller boy following along silently behind him
looking lost in thought.
Jo waved one last time as her old Ford rumbled out of the driveway. She was
starting to get really frustrated. "They are both morons."
"Yep." Ash drawled seeing Dean move around to the passenger side of the Impala
as they drove away.
Dean opened the passenger side door and motioned for Cas to get in the car. The
other boy stood on the sidewalk leading up to the front door, wringing his
hands together and looking forlornly across the street to the park entrance
that faced Garth's house. Dean felt a sinking in his stomach when his friend
made no move to get into the car and he knew it was because of him. Son of a
bitch! He had fucked up; made the one person he wanted to be around most feel
awkward and uncomfortable.
"Come on, Cas." Dean said trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.
"I think I'm just going to walk Dean. My house is right though the park if I
cut across."
"Dude, it's like eleven at night. You can't go walking through a park by
yourself." Dean said closing the door. "I'm gonna come with you."
"I walked around by myself at night in Pontiac all the time." Cas said starting
towards the park. He stopped carefully at the street and looked both ways.
"I bet you left your front door unlocked too," Dean said jokingly as he jogged
across the street ahead of his friend, jacket flapping around him. It was
finally starting to cool down now that they were edging into September.
"How else am I supposed to get in, Dean?" The other boy sounded exasperated.
"Cas," He said seriously putting out a hand to stop his friend who was pulling
his lightweight cardigan around himself tightly as he adjusted his bag on his
shoulders. "Is your house unlocked right now?"
Castiel shrugged and shivered, walking slowly through the park and looking up
at the stars that were shining brightly in the clear night sky. "Maybe. It
depends on if Gabriel beat me home."
Dean laugh/groaned at his friend's naivety and the pair continued to walk
through the empty park in silence. It was kinda nice, there were no kids
screaming at each other as they passed the playground or hippies playing hacky
sack in the open spaces at the center of the park. Cas continued to watch the
skies more than his feet and more than once Dean had to steady him as he
stumbled over the uneven patches of ground that he couldn't see in the dark.
"I wish I knew astrology," Cas said suddenly, stopping by one of the few picnic
tables that wasn't situated under the large oak trees that the park sported. He
hopped up onto the table top and leaned back so that he was lying down with his
feet hanging off of the end and his head was close to the center of the wooden
table. "You know, more than just the North Star or the Big Dipper."
The larger boy watched his friend and smiled as he was reminded of another day
when Cas had been sitting on a picnic table, before he had started noticing all
of the small little quirks that were specific to his blue-eyed friend. Dean
hopped up onto the opposite end of the table and laid back so that his head was
next to the other boy's, legs falling off of the end of the table. It wasn't
very comfortable. Dean striped off his jacket and rolled it up, motioning for
Cas to lift his head up and sliding half of the makeshift pillow underneath. He
settled back again and shifted until he had his own portion of the jacket
mashed into a comfy position.
Dean reached a hand up and pointed out a cluster of stars. "That, right there.
That's Andromeda."
"Where?" The other boy asked shifting closer. "There?"
"No." Dean said moving Castiel's pointed finger slightly to the left.
"Right…there. She's The Chained Lady."
"Why is she called that?" Cas asked softly.
"Well, the story goes that she was like really pretty. And her mom was going
around bragging that Andromeda was prettier than Posiden's daughters. I guess
they lived by the ocean or something, I dunno it's a Greek thing. Anyway, the
bragging pissed Posiden off and he flooded their crops. Well, they found out
the only way to make him stop ruining everything was to sacrifice Andromeda, so
they chained her to a cliff by the sea."
"That's terrible!" Castiel exclaimed propping himself up on one elbow so that
he could look down at Dean.
The other boy laughed and felt a blush creeping up his neck under the other
boy's scrutiny. "Nah. She gets saved by this hero guy, Perseus, showed up and
rescued her at the last minute."
"Did her mom get what was coming to her? For treating her daughter like shit?"
Cas asked sounding very bitter.
"Yea, her mom's up there too; chained to her throne upside down as punishment.
There's a lot of Greek constellations. Some are heroes like Perseus and
Hercules and stuff and some are bad people being punished for pissing off the
wrong deity."
"I bet the girls like all of this, you can probably spin it to be really
romantic. Just talk about the damsels in distress and leave out the crappy
parents." Cas said plopping back down onto the table.
"It doesn't really come up," Dean said wanting to change the subject. He did
not want to talk about those other girls with Cas, felt like his friend
deserved something more than hearing him rattle off a list of his conquests.
"My mom and I used to go out and look at the stars. That's how I know so much.
Sammy and I kept at it for a little while after she left, but then you know we
grew up I guess."
"My mom died," Cas said quietly. "Anna was probably two? Three? My dad was
never the same after. It changes you I think, losing the person you think
you're going to spend the rest of your life with."
"Yea," Dean replied thickly.
They sat in silence for a while, neither really noticing much more besides the
other's breathing and the chirping of the few crickets still brave enough to
come out in the chilling weather.
"Do you ever think that there has to be something else out there?" Castiel
asked, it was barely a whisper, but Dean heard the misery in his friend's voice
and looked over at him.
"Like God or something?"
"Like anything. I mean there has to be something out there, right? Something
bigger than all of this. It is arrogant to think that we are all alone. That we
are all there is."
"I dunno," Dean said noticing how Castiel's eyelashes stood out starkly against
his cheekbones and feeling like his insides were a buzzing hive of bees. "My
mom used to say there were angels watching over me and Sammy, but then she left
and I always kinda hoped that our angels went with her. Y'know to keep her
safe."
"Do you miss her?" he heard from near his ear.
"Do you miss your mom?" Dean snapped back, instantly feeling guilty for getting
so defensive when he was finally getting past the mask that the other boy
usually wore.
"I hardly remember her." Castiel replied softly, getting up from the table in
one smooth motion. Snatching his bag up from where he had sat it down on the
bench seat when he had first climbed onto the table.
"Cas!" Dean called, scrambling off of the table and almost falling in his haste
to reach his friend who was striding away quickly across the darkened park.
"I'm sorry, man."
The other boy turned on him and Dean stopped short, grateful for the moment to
catch his breath. "There is nothing to be sorry for. It was insensitive of me
to ask about something so personal. We can talk about something else."
"Okay," Dean said clutching his side. "What else do you want to talk about?"
"Girls." Cas said plainly.
The smaller boy needed to hear Dean talk about something that would hurt him.
Something that would make the urge to fight or fuck go away. Because right now,
he didn't know which one he wanted more. To punch the boy for bringing up his
own painful parental shortcomings or kiss away the pain that he had heard in
his friend's voice when he had talked about his mother abandoning her family.
His own mother had died and he hadn't even been left with any pictures to
remember her by thanks to his father, but while it was still hard to talk about
it was much more final than if she had simply left one day and he had been left
to wonder what had been so horrible about him that she couldn't bear to stay.
"Weird segway, but ok." The larger boy said steering the two of them back onto
their route across the park. "Um, were you seeing anyone in Pontiac?"
Dean wasn't sure he really wanted to hear the answer to that question. What if
Cas was pining over someone else he had left behind in his hometown or worse,
what if the soft spoken boy he had unintentionally placed on pedestal was just
like him; leaving behind a trail of broken-hearted one night stands and waking
up in strange beds with no one beside him, smelling of unfamiliar fruity
perfumes and nursing a hangover? He didn't know what it would do to him to hear
something like that.
"There was someone," Castiel began carefully. "But not in Pontiac. At my old
school, in Chicago."
"Was it serious?"
The other boy shrugged and stared resolutely at the ground in front of them,
seemingly looking for more roots or holes he might trip in. "I thought it was.
But, they were kinda dating me as a joke or maybe a bet, I think. I never
really knew the whole story."
So he had been right, some heartless girl had hurt his friend for what? A
stupid joke? Dean didn't understand how someone could be anything but grateful
to have someone like Cas. He would do anything to have a person as wonderful as
Cas. "That's fucked up, man."
"It's ok. It's not like they made be vibrate or anything. But I thought that
maybe they could, one day."
"Vibrate?" Dean said waggling his eyebrows at his friend. "That's some kinky
shit, bro."
"That is not what I mean, Dean." Castiel said blandly. "It's like…having a
current flowing under your skin or um, when you strum a guitar and can feel it
reverberate in your chest. Vibrate."
"I think I know what you mean, Cas."
"Have you ever had that?" the smaller boy asked as they rounded the last bend
that would lead to the park exit nearest his house.
Dean shook his head, he knew that he hadn't, but he thought he might be able to
imagine how it would feel. Maybe a bit like driving Baby on the long stretch of
highway between Lawrence and Kansas City, watching the speedometer climb and
feeling the wind whipping through the open windows. It may feel a bit like
being invincible.
"Maybe we'll get lucky some day." He said laughing off the serious moment and
giving his friend a parting clap on the back. "Anyway, I think you can make it
from here, man. I'm gonna go back and get my car."
"Thank you for walking me, Dean."
The green-eyed boy shoved his hands in his pockets and awkwardly shuffled his
feet. "Anytime, man."
Castiel watched his friend turn and walk away, standing just outside the circle
of light cast by the streetlights at the entrance of the park until Dean's
leather clad back was no longer visible. The thrumming under his skin hadn't
abated. He just wished that the other boy felt it too.
Chapter End Notes
     Can I just talk about how tired I am for a second without sounding
     super whiny? Because I feel like I am dying. With that being said, do
     you guys see how each chapter is getting longer and longer?! It's to
     the point that I want to go back and combine other chapters together
     just so they don't look so wimpy compared to this one.
     Anyway, as glacial as the build in this thing is I can promise you
     that it is going to be worth it, just stick with me. As always, you
     guys are wonderful and I love you and you're the only reason I keep
     brushing my hair every morning. Please review and let me know what I
     can do to improve the story or if there is something you'd like me to
     address.
***** Time After Time *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"I want to try something different," Rachel said as Cas settled himself into
his favorite chair in front of her desk.
The therapist opened one of the drawers in her desk and pulled out a slender
Moleskine notebook that was decorated with a green cassette tape on the cover.
She slid the journal across the desk to Castiel who made no move to take it
from her. He was still mad at her from their session the week before.
It was right after his first movie night with the gang and he had walked into
the office feeling like maybe that today was the day that he would give Rachel
a break, finally talk to her about the things that were bothering him. Maybe
start small, talk about how Calculus was stressing him the fuck out and then
eventually he could work up to the big stuff.
But one look at the older woman's face and Cas had known that this was not
going to be the session that made him open up to her. She must have been
talking to someone, the lawyers or his father maybe, but he knew that she
wouldn't tell Revered Novak anything, patient confidentiality and all that. She
had this serious look on her face and her no-nonsense reading glasses on.
Gabriel had been hinting that he needed to start getting his thoughts together
for the deposition, but every time he tried to think about it he would feel
like his skin was being peeled off and he would just end up in the shower,
crying until the hot water ran out and his arms ached from scrubbing away at
the filth that wouldn't come off.
And of course that's what Rachel had wanted to talk about. Lake Forrest and
Daniel and his father and oldest brother and all of the messed up bullshit that
landed him in the hospital. She had prodded and pushed him until he felt like
pulling his hair out and he had been a mess of tears and snot and vulnerability
that had to be practically carried out of the therapist's office by Gabriel.
The older man had wanted to skip their trip to the diner, thinking it would be
too much stimulation for the red-eyed Castiel, but the younger boy had insisted
that a peanut butter milkshake and Barb's good-natured banter were the only
things that would make him feel better.
"Your brother told me that you like music," The woman began gently, placing a
pen on top of the notebook.
"It's my 'coping skill'," Castiel replied sarcastically, using the term that
the therapist had insisted upon when they had first met and talked about the
things he did to help himself calm down, when running wasn't an option.
"Great. Well, I was wondering if you have ever tried writing a song?"
He shrugged. Cas supposed that everyone tried their hand at writing at some
point. Most of the things he had written had been for Daniel, angsty little
love poems that he had slipped under the other boy's door at Lake Forrest. But
since moving to Lawrence he had kept his more poetic notions to himself,
smirking when thoughts of comparing Dean's smile to a summer's day floated
through his head.
"Do you think that maybe you could write something for me?" Rachel asked, her
smile faltering only slightly when Castiel hesitated before he shrugged at her
again. "That's wonderful. It can be about whatever you want. This isn't
homework or anything. It's just something that you can do when you have the
time or when the mood strikes. Now, did you have anything you wanted to talk
about today?"
He shook his head and looked down at his hands in his lap. Castiel thinned his
lips; he was not going to talk to her. He would write in her stupid fucking
journal, but he was done talking to her.
Rachel sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I know you're upset
with me, Castiel. But I need you to understand that you are never going to move
past all of this if you don't talk to someone. It doesn't have to be me, but
you need to find someone that you can let everything out to. It's not healthy
keeping all of your emotions bottled up all of the time. Eventually you're
going to have another episode."
Episode. That was the P.C. term for trying to kill yourself these days. He had
seen it written on countless police reports and heard Gabriel's hushed
explanations when he was enrolling Cas and Anna for school. He couldn't stomach
the pity he saw in people's faces when they heard about his past and then the
curiosity that followed as they tried to figure out exactly how he had tried to
do it; searched his arms for scars or wondered if he were the type to swallow a
bullet instead. If they had the nerve to ask, he would have told them, but no
one ever did.
He shook his head, still not meeting the intense gaze of the blonde woman
across from him. "No. I won't. You know that I won't. My episode wasn't exactly
what you would call textbook. It's not going to happen again."
"You still need to talk to someone." Rachel did something that she never did,
she came out from behind her desk and knelt in front of Castiel, twisting her
neck until her own blue eyes met his. "I worry about you."
Cas looked for a trace of insincerity in the counselor's face and found none.
He swallowed and let out a shaky breath. "School's going good. Calculus is hard
though."
Rachel smiled and patted him on the hand before she moved to the other armchair
next to his. Maybe this was what he always needed, someone to show that they
actually cared more about what was going on with him now than what had caused
him to fall so far in the past.
"Have you thought about tutoring?" She asked amicably.
The younger boy nodded and pushed up the sleeves of the sweater he was wearing.
"I have this friend who is in that class with me, Ash, he's really smart. Way
smarter than me. I'm terrible at math."
"A friend? That's a big deal, I'm sure he wouldn't mind helping you if you
asked him."
"I'll probably do that." Cas said turning in his chair to face the therapist.
"I have a couple of friends now. It's really weird. I never thought that
someone could like me without wanting something in return. But we watch movies
and pick on each other and it's really...easy."
"That's great, Castiel." Rachel beamed; this was why she had spent all of that
time huddled over textbooks late at night as her son slept. So that she could
reach someone who was drowning and pull them back from the edge.
"I'm going to my first football game tomorrow."
"Excited?"
"Nervous." the boy admitted, blushing slightly. "One of my friends is going to
be there and I don't want to mess up in front of him."
Rachel hummed in response, leaving the conversation open for Castiel to expand
on his statement if he wished. Sometimes silence was the best way to get
someone to talk about what they were thinking.
"I think I might like him."
"This is the first time since Daniel, right?" she asked quietly, not wanting
the younger man to shut down again like he had so many times before when she
brought up his former classmate.
Castiel bit his lip and nodded slightly. For him, there had never been anyone
else besides the charming, enigmatic rugby player at his old school. And for a
while, despite the betrayal that ended their tenuous relationship he had just
assumed that there never would be anyone else he could have feelings for.
He'd held on to the memories of Daniel's soft smiles and gentle kisses all
summer even when the more recent actions of his almost-boyfriend threatened to
crowd out the warmth that the only romantic inclinations he had ever had for
another person made him feel. Those stolen moments and the few notes that he
had saved from the other boy, pressed into the back of a thick Elvis biography
that Anna had gotten him for his birthday the previous November, were the only
solid pieces of evidence that he had that he hadn't just imagined their time
together.
Castiel had almost not packed the book when he was gathering his things at the
house in Pontiac, but dread had filled him when he had thought of his eldest
brother finding the notes and giving them to someone who could hurt Daniel.
Even after all the other boy had put him through, part of him still felt a
fierce protectiveness and the rest of him pitied his classmate for not being
brave enough to stand by him when things had gotten difficult. So he had
brought the notes with him, but had not been able to read them, the book sat at
the top of his closet gathering dust and he felt guilty when Anna asked him if
he had lost it.
"And how do you feel about that?" Rachel said reaching out to move his hands
from where they were griped tightly together.
He absently looked at the crescent shaped marks his nails had left on the back
of his right hand from where they had been digging in without him realizing it.
Castiel took a slow deep breath, like he had been taught to do by the staff at
the hospital, gathering his thoughts and trying to organize them into what was
pertinent to the conversation at hand and what were things he couldn't control,
change, or dwell on. As he exhaled he tried to let the negative thoughts and
emotions go with the carbon dioxide burning in his lungs. He didn't really feel
better, all of that new agey, focus your chakras self-healing stuff didn't
work. But his head felt clearer and he thought maybe he could talk about this.
"It's…scary." He began slowly, tilting his head and looking at the therapist
who was leaning forward in her chair slightly like her whole body was focusing
in on what he was saying. "But, something about how Dean looks at me makes feel
like maybe it would be different than last time."
Rachel nodded in understanding, "Have you told him about how you feel?"
"No." Castiel said quickly, shaking his head vigorously from side to side. "He
doesn't…most of my friends don't know I'm gay."
"Most?"
"I told this one girl, Jo."
"And what did she say?"
He smiled slightly as he thought of that day in the mall and how Jo had been
surreptitiously pointing out cute guys to him since, giving him knowing nudges
and winks when Castiel stuttered and blushed in Dean's presence. That damn girl
was just too observant for her own good. "She said she already knew."
Rachel chuckled at that, "Sounds like she is doing my job for me."
"I think she knows I like Dean." He admitted. "I don't know what to do. Should
I tell him before she does?"
"Do you want him to know?" the therapist asked.
Castiel thought about that for a moment, what it would be like if Dean knew
that he liked him. He could see it going a couple of different ways: Dean could
completely reject him, call him a faggot and never talk to him again. He could
give him a sincere, pitying apology about how he wasn't into guys and then
things would be awkward between the two of them and their friendship would be
ruined, that was what Castiel was most sure was going to happen.
Or maybe, and he only allowed himself to think of this possibility when he was
alone with the other boy, catching the looks Dean gave him when he thought
Castiel was doing something else or sitting just a little too closely when they
looked at the old yearbooks in the library with Jo during study hall, maybe
Dean would smile shyly at him in a way that was entirely different but just as
breath-taking as the confident smirks he threw around so easily for the girls
at school and it would be different, better than it had been with Daniel.
"I don't know." He answered lamely.
"Well, when you feel ready I'm sure you will find the right way to tell him.
You deserve to be happy Castiel."
"Yea," He said picking up the notebook off of the desk in front of him and
running his fingers over the cover. "I'm starting to think I do."
===============================================================================
Football is dumb. Castiel decided as he watched the Lawrence Lions huddle up
with Coach Uriel who was gesturing wildly with a clipboard and seemed to be
yelling. The man's booming voice was lost to him though because of the
chattering of the fans and the soft trumpeting racket of the band sitting next
to him.
It was the first game of the season and the boy could only hope that the away
games would be more interesting. There at least would be a change of scenery
and other people to talk to; maybe he would get chatted up by someone from
another school. That's seemed to be the thing to do.
He watched Dean who was smirking at the other team's cheerleaders who had
crossed over to the home side of the track to have a mock tug of war tournament
with their own red-clad pom-pomettes. We're you even allowed to flirt with the
other team's cheerleaders?
Jo laughed at something Adam was saying to her nearby and Castiel huddled
farther into the jacket of his dress uniform miserably. He was thankful it had
cooled down as the sun had set because he had been sweltering in the heavy
olive green fabric all day. The ROTC had its second inspection of the year that
afternoon before the game and Virgil had been more impressed by the cadets than
he had the week before when many had been missing the ribbons and stripes that
attached to the outer jacket and showed what rank each person had attained.
Dean had gawped at him again this week, whistling softly at the figure Castiel
cut in his uniform and after his conversation with Rachel the day before he had
decided to start mentally comprising a track list in his head full of stuff he
knew Dean liked. Songs that would make him happy while also putting into words
how Castiel felt about him. He would have to get some cassettes, and borrow
Gabriel's tape deck since his friend refused to upgrade the stereo system in
the Impala to something that would play CDs or had an auxiliary port.
The reasoning behind this decision was the major topic of discussion as Dean
had driven them to Garth's house for their second movie night together where
Ash had chosen The Fifth Element to watch. Castiel had really liked the movie,
thought that the underlying love story was cute, but that hadn't stopped him
from joining Jo and Ash as they had teased Garth and Dean mercilessly for
getting starry-eyed during the romantic climax of the film.
He glanced at the scoreboard and cynically thought that if the players paid
more attention to the field and less attention to what was on the sidelines
then maybe Lawrence wouldn't be trailing by more than ten points as they neared
the close of the second quarter. With less than five minutes on the clock,
Virgil signaled that it was time to line up on the track in preparation for
their half time performance. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jo lean down
and give Adam a peck on the cheek, brushing some lint off of the other boy's
jacket and he resolved to let go of his pettiness for long enough to be happy
for his two friends.
Castiel tugged his jacket straight and unfolded himself from where he was
sitting on the cold metal bleachers, lollygagging enough that he got stuck
behind the tuba players who were carefully trundling down the stairs in front
of him. By the time he reached the track, Dean was making a last mad dash for
the end zone at the opposite end of the field before the clock ran out and the
cheerleaders for the other team were returning to their own side. He noticed
that they were giggling and whispering to each other behind their hands as they
passed the ROTC and he felt more than one pair of eyes on him.
The clock ran out with a loud buzz and he heard the announcers change topics to
the marching program that the band would be performing, three songs off of that
popular banjo-y album that had come out earlier in the year. Castiel had heard
the songs playing on a fairly heavy rotation on the radio and could sing most
of the words to them to himself when he had practiced the marching routines on
his own after his early morning runs in the park.
He breathed steadily as the songs began to play around him once they were on
the field, in through his nose and out through his mouth so that he wouldn't
get winded and careless in the middle of their program. There was only one
hairy moment when Gilda fumbled with her rifle and it bounced heavily across
his shin before she could retrieve it.
Castiel knew there would probably be a bruise there in the morning, but shook
off the girl's apology once they were heading towards the concession stand
during the third quarter, telling her she could just buy him a Gatorade and
they would be even. He made a mental note to buy more of the rock climbing
chalk he used to keep his hands from sweating for the rest of the squad so that
they wouldn't have the same problem in the future. The routine wasn't perfect,
but it was something that he and Adam both agreed that they could build on.
Castiel wasn't very surprised when the lions won the game, he had heard the
fight song blaring out from the band so many times that night that he had a
headache and all he wanted to do was go home, down some Tylenol, and listen to
soft quiet music until he fell asleep. Despite his tiredness, he allowed
himself to be swept along by Jo and Garth, who had appeared suddenly during the
last quarter of the game with Becky Rosen in tow and laughing off the sight of
Adam and their friend cuddled up together on the bleachers like it didn't
bother him, down to the writhing mass of spectators who had flooded the field
in exultation.
Cas kept catching glimpses of red clad shoulder pads suspended under tan skin
and light brown hair and his heart leapt in his throat every time even though
it kept turning out to be some other player and not Dean. The longer he milled
through the crowd getting separated from his friends in the process, the dumber
he felt for being so silly, but something about the excitement of the fans
around him and the buzzing of the stadium lights made him feel like he was
living in a sappy, romantic comedy and any minute now the hero was going to
sweep him up and they would kiss triumphantly, the camera panning out until
they were lost in the crush of the crowd surrounding them.
"Cas!"
He spun when he heard his name called, finally spotting Dean near the bleachers
for the visiting team seemingly oblivious to the dirty looks he was getting
from the golden-clad players and parents milling around despondently as they
gathered their things to make the drive back to their own school across town.
Castiel didn't notice the unfamiliar girl until he was almost right upon the
pair, he was just so focused on Dean and how perfect he looked in his uniform
even though he was all sweaty and dirty and ruffled.
When he did notice her, he couldn't help appraising her for what it was that
his friend saw in her, his stomach twisting in anxious unfamiliar jealousy when
he saw that Dean had that look on his face that he got when he was trying to
charm another person. It looked fake and he wondered how none of the girls that
were allowed to pass through Dean's life, be close to the other boy in a way
that he wasn't able to be, didn't see that they were only getting a glimpse at
the wonderful, amazing, sincere person behind the smirks and flirtatious
compliments. Maybe he should just be grateful that he got the genuine part of
Dean even if he never got anything else.
"Hey man," Dean said pulling him in for a one-armed brotherly embrace. "This is
Cassie. She's going to a party. Wanna come with?"
Castiel looked at the girl in front of him. She looked like she wanted to
correct Dean, tell him the invitation wasn't meant to be extended to his
friends, but was just too polite to say so. He supposed she was pretty, with
caramel colored skin that practically glowed in her gold and black cheerleading
outfit and tightly curled hair pulled up into a high ponytail, probably very
nice too, but that still didn't stop him from hating her just a little bit.
"That's ok, Dean. You go. Have fun." He shrugged off the arm on his shoulders
and started to make his way back towards the parking lot on the home side of
the field, he had asked Jo to give him a lift home and he knew that she got
snappy when she had to wait on someone.
"Hey, wait." Dean said jogging after him.
Castiel stopped closing his eyes and willing his heart to stop pounding in his
chest, there was not going to be a movie moment. Stop being stupid. He forced a
smile on his face and spun on his heel, nearly colliding with Dean and the two
stood chest to chest for a moment, looking at each other before Dean took a
hesitant step back, running a hand over the back of his neck and glancing
behind himself at Cassie.
"You're going to Jo's birthday party tomorrow, right?"
"Of course I am," Cas replied tersely not bothering to hide his irritation at
having been asked such a pointless question.
Dean nodded thoughtfully looking down at the ground and the smaller boy shifted
on his feet with annoyance. "Just making sure. I'll text you later, ok? After I
get home? Is that okay?"
Castiel was irritated; he didn't want to talk to Dean about whatever it was
that he was going to do with Cassie at some stupid party where his friend was
sure to not know anyone else except for the girl who was looking longingly at
Dean's jersey clad back. But he didn't think his friend was the type to brag so
maybe he would be spared the specifics of whatever it was that Dean got up to
with the girl's he cavorted around with.
"It's fine, Dean. Do whatever you want." He replied shortly and felt bad when
Dean winced as it came out sharper than Castiel had intended it to.
He strode off and didn't look back to see if Dean went back to the girl waiting
for him. He already knew that he had.
When Cas got home that night the first thing he did was plug in his cell phone,
it was almost dead from being off of the charger all day and if Dean did bother
to try to contact him, he didn't want to miss it because of something dumb like
a dead battery. Then he turned on some music, Kate Nash went a long way towards
cheering him up usually and he cranked the speakers on his laptop loud enough
that he would be able to hear the singing in his ensuite bathroom while he
showered.
His thoughts turned back to how he had chosen to tell Dean about how he felt.
After tossing and turning for most of the night Castiel had pulled out the
journal Rachel had given him and stared at the blank lined pages inside. He had
meant to start writing a letter, something that he would never send and
therefore would be a way that he could get all of his feelings out without
risking losing his friend. But nothing had come.
Eventually he gave up and went and rifled through his CDs for something that
would put him to sleep, when he came across an old mix CD that Gabriel had made
him when he was trying to instill an appreciation of 80s music in him that
would never ever exist, he had the idea. He used music for so many things, to
hide from the world, to help him deal with his nightmares and self-doubt; maybe
it could help him with this too.
When he checked his phone on his way to bed, making the touch screen flash at
him as he turned off the lamp that sat on his bedside table he was surprised to
see he had several missed texts from Dean.
Dean:This party sucks.
Dean: I wish you were here so that I had someone to talk to.
Dean: Are you asleep already? Dude, that's lame.
Castiel smiled as he read through the messages and settled on his back, arms
above his head as he typed out a reply.
Cas: I am not asleep yet.
Dean: Yessssss. I left the party, it was boring.
Cas: You ditched your date.
Dean:Who? Cassie?
Cas: Yea her
Dean: Not a date. I don't date.
Castiel chose to ignore the second part of that text, surely if Dean were to
miraculously decide he was madly in love with him then their situation would be
different.
Cas: Jo's party should be better.
Dean: Dude, you have no idea. Her parties are insane and her mom is super cool
about the drinking thing.
They talked for a while about the party and how Ellen, Jo's mom, usually
required any minors who were drinking to turn their keys over to her and they
would be returned in the morning over pancakes and bacon. Castiel didn't think
he would be drinking, but it would be interesting to stay the night over at
Jo's house. With Dean.
When Cas fell asleep, it was deep and dreamless, probably the first time it had
been so since leaving Pontiac when most of his nights were spent having
terrifyingly familiar nightmares or uncomfortable dreams he couldn't remember
but left him nauseous when he woke from them. His cell phone was forgotten,
lost in the blankets that wound around his sleeping form and it buzzed several
more times after he slipped off before finally it went black.
===============================================================================
Dean was drunk and he knew that he was drunk. He had long ago passed the point
where his back teeth felt pleasantly numb when he clicked them together, his
patented test that he was still sober enough to drive home and probably hadn't
said anything embarrassing yet. He felt like that at one point he had been
drinking with the express purpose of getting hammered, that he was ticked off
about something, but he couldn't really remember what.
He felt a warm body pressed up against him and looked over from where he sat on
the couch to see a girl plastered against him, her legs draped over his knees
as she talked in a voice that sounded like the teacher from Charlie Brown. All,
whaghwhaghwhagh and distorted.
Cassie his swimming brain supplied.
When he had left her party the night before he had promised to call, but she
hadn't let him go until he had made solid plans with her. So Dean invited her
to the only social event that he was going to where he could shrug her off
without seeming like a complete asshole. Jo had friends from a lot of different
schools, a hazard of the part-time job she had at the public pool as a
lifeguard over the summer and all of the volunteer work she did with the Young
Democrats and Dean figured there would be at least one person he could foist
Cassie off on.
He nodded at the girl and took a swig at the lukewarm beer he had been thrilled
to find that he was holding onto. Dean knew he had left her party for a reason.
What had it been?
That's right, Cas. He had felt weird for going when it seemed like Cas was mad
at him and despite Cassie's best efforts all he could think about was the look
on his friend's face as he had walked up to him talking to the girl after the
game. Like he was hurt and then he had snapped at him and Dean had been
terrified that he had done something that would make Cas not want to be friends
with any of them anymore. If anyone were going to do something like that, Dean
was pretty sure it was going to be him. No one could stand to put up with his
bullshit for too long unless they were special.
Dean smiled blearily at his beer. Cas was special. And smart. And funny. And,
god, when he did that tilting thing with his head, he was just so fucking cute.
Whoa. Weird place to go with that.
He craned his neck and looked around the room, hoping to spot one of his
friends so that he could laugh with them about the silly, ridiculous thoughts
he was having. All of these people were his friends, or they said they were. He
spotted several guys from the football team, no Alistair or Azazel, a couple of
underclassmen hovering around that Tran kid, Sammy was over in the corner
talking to Cas's brother who was far from being the oldest person in attendance
and that better be soda in the red plastic cup the younger boy was holding. No
Jo, No Garth, No Ash.
No Cas.
Where the fuck was everyone?
Dean pouted for a moment and finished off the last warm dregs of his beer. He
debated for a second before he decided with a nod that, yes, he needed another
drink. That felt like the best idea he had had all night. He pushed himself to
his feet unsteadily, ignoring Cassie's cry of disappointment as her legs fell
back to the floor and waving her off when she made to follow him.
"Be right back," he slurred and set off towards the kitchen.
He struggled to walk in a straight line and not bump into any of the people who
were standing in small clusters and talking over the music that was playing
from Jo's stereo system. Once he made it to the doorway of the kitchen, having
only been waylaid once by Sam who told him that Gabriel was going to give him a
ride home when he left, he leaned heavily on the doorframe and took in the
scene before him.
There they were!
Jo was seated at the kitchen table, dishing out pieces of birthday cake to
anyone who wanted one with the help of Adam who was hovering over her shoulder.
Ash was playing quarters at the kitchen counter with some guys from a couple of
other schools that he knew from the skate park. Garth was chatting with Anna
Novak amicably as he poured her a glass of soda and Cas, well that's what the
problem was wasn't it?
He suddenly remembered why he hadn't stopped drinking after they had sang happy
birthday to Jo, which had been his original plan since he wanted to keep his
wits about him enough to be able to avoid Cassie once he finally got rid of
her. Dean felt his stomach turn and hoped that he wouldn't be sick in front of
everyone like some freshman who couldn't hold his liquor.
Meg fucking Masters
Of all of the people that Jo could have set Cas up with, why did it have to be
Meg Masters? The girl was not right for him at all, she was obnoxious and
aggressive and she would surely make Cas uncomfortable with her innuendo and
the way she draped herself over anything male that stood still for longer than
ten seconds. Dean had never liked her and when he had first seen Cas with the
girl at the beginning of the night he had hoped that Jo was playing an unfunny
joke on him.
Cas was looking cozy with Meg at the far edge of the room, standing silhouetted
in the open arch of the back door and talking to each other intimately.
Dean clenched his fists at his side as Meg's gaze flicked over to him, a sly
smirk settling on her face as she pulled Castiel by the edge of the navy blue
cardigan the boy was wearing to whisper something in his ear. The other boy
looked up at her and Dean thought he had an expression of surprise and fear on
his face before he turned and looked straight at Dean.
He felt his breath catch in his throat as his friend's blue eyes settled on him
and he forced a shaky, intoxicated smile on his face. As much as he may think
Meg was a manipulative self-serving bitch, he really did just want Cas to be
happy and damnit, if that harpy was what did it for him then Dean was going to
fucking be supportive.
Dean swallowed hard and sauntered over to Cas with as much steadiness as he
could muster. The light coming through the doorway made Castiel look like he
was glowing, every eyelash standing out sharply and each tiny movement
magnified a million times over for Dean. The way the other boy licked his lips
nervously as Dean approached made him feel like the breath had been knocked out
of him and his fingers tingled in a way that was similar to the pins and
needles feeling of blood rushing back into a limb that had fallen asleep.
"Hey Cas," he said trying hard to keep the slur out of his voice as he spoke.
"Hello, Dean." Castiel said turning towards his friend.
Dean racked his brain for some excuse he could use to get Cas away from Meg. He
probably shouldn't be interfering, but he felt all the way down to his toes
that the other boy deserved something better than the short, dark-haired she-
devil he was standing with.
"I need your help with something," Dean managed in a burst of what his alcohol
addled brain thought was brilliant spontaneity.
"I'm kinda busy right now," Cas replied, the gaze of his blue eyes flittering
over to the girl at his side who still hadn't stopped with that annoying
fucking smirk.
"C'mon, Cas." Dean whined, reaching out and grabbing hold of his friend's hand,
tugging slightly to break the loose grip that Meg still had on Cas's sweater.
"It'll take five minutes."
He dragged Castiel away from Meg, taking a moment to be pleased that his plan
had worked so flawlessly as he navigated around the crush of bodies in the
small house and searched for somewhere he could stash Cas until he told Jo that
Meg needed to get lost. Dean focused on moving in a straight line and the warm
grip of the other boy's hand helped ground him, bring him back from being too
far gone to realize how much he liked the feel of Castiel's smooth skin against
his own.
Dean stopped outside of a small door and debated for a moment, it wasn't the
best option, but he was pretty sure that at this point in the night most of the
other rooms would have amorous couples in compromising positions and he didn't
want to subject Cas to something as awkward as that. He looked over his
shoulder at Castiel and gnawed on his lip before pushing open the door and
pulling the other boy inside.
"You need help with…laundry?" Cas asked incredulously looking around the room
Dean had dragged him to.
Dean walked over to the dryer and hopped up to sit on it, smiling widely at
Castiel and thumping his feet on the metal sides of the machine.
"I…" He said drawing out the word and twirling a finger at his confused looking
friend. "Rescued you."
"Rescued me? From what?"
"Meg Masters." Dean said seriously, steadying himself with his hands on the
edge of the dryer. He felt like he was sitting really high up and giggled
slightly when he thought of Cas catching him and rescuing him back.
"Meg? I didn't need rescued from her, Dean." Castiel replied crossing his arms
over his chest and milling around the tiny room, stopping to lean against the
space next to his friend and watching carefully as Dean swayed and laughed to
himself.
"Well if you would rather talk to her," Dean complained feeling suddenly stupid
for dragging Cas away from his date. He was stupid so very stupid, of course
his friend would want to talk to a hot girl instead of his drunken friend. He
gestured wildly towards the door with both hands, tilting forward precariously.
"Then go ahead. No one's stopping you."
Castiel moved suddenly, reaching out a hand to steady him and moving until he
was standing between Dean's legs and holding him up.
"You're drunk." The smaller boy declared as he observed Dean who was still
smiling but staring at him intently now.
"And you're pretty." Dean blurted before he could stop himself.
He immediately felt the blush starting on his neck and ears as it creeped up
his face. He had not meant to say that out loud. It was supposed to be one of
those weird little things he had been thinking about the other boy all night to
himself. Things that were true, but that he probably wouldn't remember in the
morning.
Castiel froze and Dean felt the fingers on the hand that was holding him up
tighten on his arm for a second.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. This was it, this was the thing that was going to make
everything awkward and why couldn't he have just kept his big dumb mouth shut?
A small smile twitched at the corners of Cas's mouth and Dean released a breath
he hadn't realized that he had been holding.
"Men are handsome, Dean. Not pretty."
Dean burst out laughing and allowed himself to fall forward onto his friend
catching the smaller boy in a tight hug that would've been a lot more
uncomfortable if he had stopped drinking when he had intended to. His face fell
naturally into the crook of Castiel's neck and he couldn't help himself from
inhaling that minty, spicey scent of the other boy's body that he had noticed
lingering in the locker rooms when he came in from football practice and the
other boy was doing up the laces of his shoes, never having allowed himself to
be caught even partially disrobed around the football team again.
Castiel reached up the hand that had been on Dean's arm and draped it across
the larger boy's back, returning the hug with a comforting pat. Dean laughed
until he couldn't remember what had been so freaking funny and allowed the
sound to dissipate until he was just holding onto Cas, letting the other boy
shoulder most of his weight and not wanting to let go.
It started out as a faint trembling in his legs, something that he hardly
noticed and then it moved up to his stomach and arms until he could feel the
faint buzzing inside his skull. If his life had a soundtrack, Dean figured that
something sappy would be playing right about now and the knots he had had in
his stomach since the first time he had seen Cas with Meg earlier in the night
finally eased.
"Hey, Cas?" He mumbled into his friend's neck. He could feel his lips brushing
against Cas's skin as he spoke, they were so close. It would be so easy to—
"Hmmm?" Castiel replied sounding sleepy and content.
"Remember that thing you asked me about the vibrating?"
"Yea," his friend replied and Dean felt the other boy turn his head slightly
above him until his mouth was right next to Dean's ear.
"I think I get it," he said softly. "But I feel it mostly in my legs. Is that
weird or what?"
Castiel sighed heavily and Dean felt the huff of air against his hair as the
smaller boy pulled away from the embrace. He immediately noticed the cold that
seeped in when Cas pulled back and he allowed his hands to slide down to his
friend's forearms in an effort to keep him close for reasons he wouldn't be
able to explain if anyone asked him.
"That's just my phone." The other boy replied, sounding slightly defeated as he
reached for the device in his pocket.
Dean didn't know why he did it. Maybe he wanted to prove something, to himself
or Cas he didn't know, but he rushed his own hand into Castiel's pocket before
the other boy could and pulled out the buzzing phone. He brought the device to
his ear, his gaze stayed locked on and challenging as he answered.
"Castiel's phone. He's a bit busy right now, can I take a message?"
"Who is this?" A hysterical sounding female voice said into his ear, she
sounded like she was crying and Dean pulled the phone away from his ear in
confusion for a moment. "Where is Castiel? I need to talk to my brother, put
him on!"
Dean held out the phone for Cas, confusion and concern warring across his face.
"I think its Anna."
Castiel took the phone out of his hand quickly and held it to his ear.
"Anna? What's going on?" His gaze flickered up to Dean for a moment before he
frowned deeply and turned away, putting his back toward the larger man and
moving towards the doorway of the laundry room. "No. You did the right thing.
Just get him in the car. Yes. Yes. I'll be right there. Just lock the car. I'm
coming."
He whipped open the door and Dean stumbled to his feet off of the dryer to
follow. Castiel held out a hand to stop him and he moved until he felt the flat
of the smaller boy's palm pressed against his chest. It helped to steady him,
the touch of his friend once again making him feel like the world was less dull
around the edges and he hoped like hell that he would remember this feeling in
the morning.
"Dean. I have to go, something's happened with my brother and…well. I've got to
take him home."
Dean nodded dumbly, he could understand family obligation. He swallowed hard.
"Are you coming back?"
"I'll try," Castiel said running a hand anxiously through his hair. He bit his
lip indecisively and his eyes widened slightly when Dean took another step
closer to him. "Just…fuck. I'll try, ok?"
"Ok," Dean said steadily, his legs still felt like they were tingling and he
was starting to think it was something more than the alcohol or numbness or a
cell phone vibrating.
Castiel tapped his fingers on his chest once and darted out the door,
disappearing down the hallway and out the front door of the house before Dean
even fully realized that he was gone.
He took a shaky breath and looked down at his hands. What was all of that? Not
just Castiel leaving so suddenly, but all of that stuff about him calling Cas
pretty and Cas not freaking out about it? And… wanting to kiss Castiel's neck.
NO! He couldn't go there. And now Dean was freaking out about it. What the fuck
was going on with him? God, he needed another drink.
===============================================================================
Gabriel was a fucking mess, angry looking smears of blood and dirt tracked
across his face and he had a decently sized tear in his favorite Cyndi Lauper
t-shirt. Castiel did his best to mop him up, pulling out the small first aid
kit that his older brother had first bought for the house when they had moved
to Lawrence. Cas had assumed that if any of the supplies inside ever had to be
used it would be on him since he tended to get hurt the most, but he was able
to figure out what antiseptics would be best for Gabriel's cuts without too
much trouble.
Sam hovered worriedly over his shoulder, refusing to let the cut on his
forehead be looked at until he was sure that Gabe was going to be ok.
Cas dabbed at the small cuts on his brother's mouth and eyebrow, noting that
the amount of blood on the other man's face made the damage look a lot worse
than it actually was.
"Cassie, I'm fine." Gabriel groused underneath him, giving Sam apologetic looks
over his younger brother's shoulder. "Go back to your party. Sam and Anna will
help me."
"No." he replied firmly, dabbing on the liquid bandage gunk he found in the kit
and then helping his older brother prop up better from where he was mostly
lying down on their living room couch. "Are you going to tell me exactly what
happened?"
He looked back at Sam who was wringing his hands nervously and giving Gabe a
pleading look.
"I told you," Gabriel growled, grudgingly accepting the ice pack that Anna had
gone to fetch for him and placing it against the bruise that was forming on his
jaw with a wince. "Some asshole was hitting on Anna. Wouldn't take no for an
answer so I stepped in. Did my brotherly duty."
"Bullshit." Castiel said simply rising up from where he was sitting on the
coffee table and moving to throw away the used cotton balls in the waste
basket. "Try to remember who you're talking to for a minute, Gabe."
He watched as his older brother's jaw clenched and Gabe's eyes turned onto Sam
who gave him a small nod and a shaky smile. Gabriel reached out a hand to the
younger man and Sam moved quickly to sit on the edge of the couch next to him,
taking the hand and bringing it up to his mouth for a soft kiss on the older
man's bloody knuckles.
Castiel nodded stiffly, "That's what I thought. Anna isn't even upset except
about you being hurt and both of you look like you got the shit beat out of
you. Who was it?"
"Just some idiots from the college I think," Sam said breaking eye contact with
Gabriel for a moment to look at Castiel. "Are you going to tell Dean?"
"I don't really think it's my business to tell. Why? Do you think he will have
a problem with it?"
Sam shrugged, adjusting Gabriel's icepack so that it covered more of the
rapidly darkening skin. "Probably not. If anything it will be because Gabe's
older."
"You used that pepper spray like a pro, Anna-banana." Gabriel said smiling at
their younger sister who was lingering teary-eyed in the doorway of the living
room.
Castiel couldn't help but agree, he didn't think he would ever be prouder of
his little sister than he had been when he had ran out of Jo's house to see her
standing over three men twice her size just outside of the Cadillac, wielding a
small pink can of pepper spray and shouting the most colorful obscenities he
had ever heard anyone use.
"Thanks guys," She said quietly, biting her lip to keep it from trembling. "I'd
do it again. In a fucking heartbeat."
"You should go back, Cas." Sam said standing and taking his jacket off before
sitting back down next to Gabe and lifting the older man gently to help him
remove his own coat. "You can keep the story from becoming too out of control."
"Yea," he sighed running a tired hand over his face. Cas figured he should
probably do damage control, especially if he wanted to help Sam out by allowing
him to tell Dean in his own time, a luxury that hadn't been afforded to Castiel
when everything came out.
He grabbed Gabriel's car keys from where he had dropped them in the bowl by the
door and turned the monstrous car back towards Jo's house. Cas pulled up in
front of the residence, noticing that there were considerably fewer cars, but
that Dean's sleek black Impala was still where it had been all night parked
next to Jo's truck.
Castiel crept into the house, ready to be assaulted with all kinds of wild
stories that were probably mostly true about what had happened to make Anna
mace three frat boys. It was eerily quiet and he followed the soft noise of
music to find Jo and Adam curled up on the couch in the living room, watching a
movie with sleepy eyes. Ash was sprawled out in a nearby armchair, still
clutching a can of PBR in his hand as he snored open-mouthed with his head
thrown back. There were several people he didn't know spread out on the floor
with pillows and blankets, snoozing in a gentle alcohol-induced slumber.
He went over to the couch and nudged Jo gently until she cracked a bleary eye
at him.
"Where's Dean?" he asked quietly.
"Somewhere," she mumbled. "Check the guest bedroom."
"Which is where?"
"Down the hall, second on the left." She replied gesturing vaguely towards the
hallway.
He nodded and crept down the hallway, fumbling one-handed against the wall so
that he wouldn't trip over any of the bottles and cans that were scattered
around on the floor. Castiel stopped at the second door on the left and started
to open the door.
"Dean," he heard a breathy, feminine voice carry out of the room. "Yes, right
there."
His heart stopped. Nononononono
"Cas, you're so beautiful." Dean's voice groaned softly from around the door,
now that he was paying attention he could hear it. The tell-tale creaks of old
bedsprings and the soft slap of skin on skin.
Castiel shut the door quickly and fled down the hallway, fighting the tears
that were welling up in his eyes.
He had thought that Dean was trying to tell him something before he left to
help Gabriel. It had felt so good, so right to hold onto him and when Dean had
asked him if he was coming back Cas had allowed himself to believe it was
because his friend wantedhim to come back; wanted him in a way that was more
than just because the other boy was obviously drunk.
Cas stumbled out of the back door and fell down the stairs that led from the
porch to the yard. He landed on his face, palms stinging as he caught himself
from busting his lip open, clutching at the ground until he could feel the
grass ripping up under his fingers and letting out shaky sobs that were so
painfully familiar. He was so tired of letting himself be fooled into thinking
that other people cared about him.
No one cares, you're disgusting. A deviant. I told you before, God doesn't let
people like you be happy.
NO. He needed to calm down. Castiel refused to let the voices tear him down
even farther, he could control them. He had to control them. He sat up and
pulled his knees to his chest, trembling as the sobs became steadily less
violent and he felt like he could start thinking about getting up and driving
himself home.
"You okay there, Clarence?" A female voice called out to him from the dark.
His head whipped up and he saw a hammock slug between two trees that were
standing about ten feet away from where he was sitting. A dark head popped up
over the edge and he sighed when he saw that it was Meg.
"I'm fine." He said hollowly, feeling emptier inside than he had since school
started.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really," Castiel got to his feet, dusting off the dirt and grass that
clung to him and then inspecting his hands, grimacing when he saw how much
filth was under his nails.
"Well, come on then. We don't have to talk." She flapped a blanket at him.
Castiel crossed over to the hammock and watched as the small woman scooted over
and he climbed in the swaying seat beside her. He gratefully took the portion
of the blanket that she offered him and shivered from things that he couldn't
attribute to the cold. They lay shoulder to shoulder and Castiel thought back
to the one time he had been invited to a sleepover when he was younger. This
wasn't really what he had been expecting when he had been messaging Dean the
night before. A strangled sound escaped him and he felt a small warm hand wrap
around his own shaking fingers.
"He doesn't know what he's missing," Meg said softly beside him and he closed
his eyes as he felt a surge of emotion course through him.
She had had him pegged from the first moment she met him and the small
outspoken woman had called him on his feelings for Dean within two minutes of
seeing both boys in the same room together. How anyone could be that
perceptive, he had no idea. But he liked that she spoke her mind, it was
refreshing. He didn't have to guess or question if she had ulterior motives,
she had told him that she was going to make it look like she was flirting with
him to make Dean jealous. He had thought it was funny and pointless and had
just let her get on with it, not expecting it to work. And he guessed it had
worked a little bit.
Castiel squeezed her hand and let all of the emotions he had felt throughout
the last couple of days course through him. He was so very tired. The pair
stared up at the stars that they could see through the branches of the trees
until their breathing deepened and sleep overtook them.
===============================================================================
Chapter End Notes
     I promise I don't do this on purpose, okay that's a lie. I just want
     to write something that's genuine, no one's life is perfect and a lot
     of times things get fucked up before they get better. Don't be sad,
     everything is going to work out. I promise.
     As always, that you for reading, reviewing, and being generally
     awesome.
***** Don't Wanna Miss a Thing *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Ellen, where's the pancakes?" Dean asked as he shuffled into Jo's crowded
kitchen. "Bacon?"
The group of people crowded around the dining room table had fallen silent as
he entered the room and he figured he must look like hell to get that kind of
reaction, his mouth tasted gritty, like dirt and sand and the stuff you find
stuck on the bottom of ashtrays. He had found out a little too late to protest
that Cassie was a smoker and now he felt like he reeked of tobacco and had
spent the night in bed with the Marlboro Man. Though when Ash had woken him up
with a sharp kick to the mattress he was laying on he never would've known that
he had spent the night with anyone because the space next to him was empty.
He shrugged off the abandonment and tried not to let his face show how much it
bothered him, which was surprisingly a lot less than it had bothered him when
Cas had left to help with whatever it was that Anna and Gabriel had needed him
for.
Dean could remember blurred images of hanging out with Cas in a laundry room
and the phantom feeling of a broad hand on his chest, but that was about it. He
had the distinct feeling that something important had been happening or about
to happen, but then Cassie had pounced on him as soon as he had reentered the
living room and he had drank until all he could remember was warm skin and dark
hair and moans and the smell of minty perfume.
"We're eating kolaches and donuts," Ellen said from where she was pouring out
cups of coffee into what looked like every mug in the house and then getting
another batch started.
"Aww, mom." He said affectionately moving over to snag his favorite Batman mug
and drop a kiss on Ellen's cheek. "You spoil us."
"Well, it wasn't me," the older woman said pushing Dean away with a wrinkled
nose. "Cas and Meg went and got them for everyone before I was even awake. You
stink, honey."
Dean frowned, not because his friend's mom told him he smelled, he was already
pretty sure he stunk of all of the beer and whisky he had sweated out in his
sleep wrapped up in mentholated cigarettes and stale body spray, but because
Cas had come back. For Meg.
Now, he couldn't remember much of last night, but the parts that he did
remember were predominately centered around Castiel and the other boy telling
him that he would come back or at least try to so that he could hang out with
Dean. When had Cas come back? It had to have been after he had gone to bed with
Cassie because he would've noticed the boy's return otherwise, he had been
waiting for him, refused to leave the living room for almost an hour so that he
could watch the front door.
"Cas and…Meg?" Dean asked looking around the room to see if anyone else found
the pairing as ridiculous as he did.
Jo's expression was stony and Ash's wasn't much better. Adam was giving him a
sympathetic look, but kept glancing at the blonde next to him to see if she was
going to notice. Garth was the only one who spoke up and what he had to say
just made the bottom fall out of Dean's stomach.
"Yea, they were asleep in the hammock out back this morning."
"Is Cas still here?" he asked. Half of the room looked at him like it was the
most inconsiderate question he could ever utter.
"I think they're on the back porch." Adam said grimacing when Jo dug an elbow
sharply into his side. "OW!"
Dean walked quickly over to the back door and looked out through the screen;
Castiel and Meg were sitting on the porch swing, backs leaned up against the
armrests and talking to each other softly. Cas was smiling at something Meg was
saying and when he replied the small woman reached out to give him a playful
slap on the arm.
He pushed open the door and stepped out on to the porch, Meg's eyes widened
when she saw him approach and he heard her say, "Here he comes."
So they had been talking about him, probably laughing about something stupid he
did last night when he was drunk and god, didn't that thought just hurt Dean
more than it should. He was always doing and saying dumb things at parties, why
should it make any difference that Cas was laughing about it with some girl he
had known for less than twenty four hours.
"Hey Cas," Dean managed to choke out as he stood in front of the porch swing,
ignoring Meg and wishing his friend would look over at him instead of staring
down at the chipped green mug in his hand like it held all of the fucking
answers of the universe or something.
"Dean," Cas greeted him sounding different, harder and more brittle towards him
than he usually did.
"Um," He searched for something to say, squinting out at the sunlit grass and
rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "You came back."
Castiel nodded at his coffee cup and Dean could feel Meg's eyes burning into
the side of his face. He glanced over at her and felt his blood run cold at the
look she was giving him. Like she wanted to push him out of a very tall
building and watch him fall onto a bunch of pointy things that would hurt him
in sensitive places.
"I must have been asleep or something. I didn't know you were back." He said
with a nervous chuckle. Dean saw a crease appear in between Castiel's eyebrows
and when his friend spoke again it came out broken sounding.
"Yea, or something."
"Listen, Brett Farve can you leave us alone? We were kinda in the middle of a
conversation." Meg said her voice sounding dangerous and laced with venom.
"I'll go if Cas wants me to go." Dean said giving her a nasty look, one fucking
date and the girl was already being a jealous, possessive bitch.
There was silence for a second as both he and Meg looked at Castiel who was
picking at his nails and biting on his bottom lip so hard that Dean was worried
it would start bleeding if he didn't stop.
Please just look at me, he thought desperately. Just look at me so that I know
that I didn't say something stupid to make you not want me around anymore and
I'll leave you alone with your new girlfriend. Fucking look at me, Cas!
"Can you go, Dean?" Cas asked softly still not meeting Dean's eyes as he looked
off past him somewhere out in the yard. "Meg and I were talking."
"Fine," he spat and stormed off the porch, tossing his Batman mug out into the
tall grass at the edge of Jo's yard and hoping it broke into a million fucking
pieces.
He slammed angrily into the Impala and peeled out of Jo's driveway, gravel
spitting up behind him and pinging off the side of the house and the cars that
were still parked around the front yard. Dean pulled out his phone and dialed
Sam's number; he needed to see if his little brother had made it home last
night. Focus on something that would take his mind off of the empty feeling in
his chest.
"Heeey brother,"Sam crowed at him through the phone. "What's up?"
"Gabe get you home alright?"
He heard the sharp intake of breath over the sound of his car's rumbling engine
and immediately knew something was up. "Actually, um…I'm over at his house
right now. Do you think you can come and get me? I need to talk to you."
"Yea, what's the address."
Sam rattled off the address and Dean knew it was near Stonegate Park on the
opposite side from where Garth's house was so he headed in that direction and
kept his eye out for the street name that his younger brother had told him.
He pulled up to a nice looking two story house, it was painted a off-whiteish
cream color with cheery looking blue shutters and a novelty mailbox of a
mermaid next to the walk leading up to the front door. It wasn't really what he
had imagined when he had been trying to think of what Castiel's house would
look like, maybe he had been hoping it wouldn't be so homey and inviting
looking.
Dean parked the Impala on the street and walked up to the front porch, noticing
that there were several hummingbird feeders hanging up and a muddy pair of
running shoes that could only belong to Cas sitting by the front door. He rang
the bell, expecting Sam to just come out and meet him and they would talk in
the car on the way home. So he was kinda surprised when Anna greeted him at the
doorway and invited him in.
"Take your shoes off, "She said pointing at a shoe rack near the doorway. "Gabe
likes to think that we keep an Asian household."
"Whatever that means," Dean muttered toeing off his boots and stacking them
next to a pair of shoes that he recognized as Sam's.
"I know," Anna said rolling her eyes affectionately as she led him into the
living room.
Dean looked around the space noticing that there were a lot of family pictures.
Most of them seemed pretty recent, one on the mantle above the fireplace that
caught his attention showing a wan looking Cas standing in front of the house
with Anna and Gabriel on either side holding a realtor sign that said 'SOLD' in
big black letters on it. There were a couple more, grainy older ones that
looked like they had been printed off from a computer showing Anna at a ballet
recital and Gabriel wearing a birthday party hat tipped at a roughish angle and
Cas in his ROTC uniform, smiling widely and holding a large trophy.
"Do you want something to drink or anything?" Anna asked picking up a book off
of the coffee table and moving towards the doorway. "Sam'll be down in just a
minute. I think he was getting dressed or something."
Why the hell was Sammy running around the Novak house undressed? He couldn't
possibly be hooking up with Anna and he was way too big to fit into Cas's or
Gabe's clothes if he borrowed something to sleep in.
"Um, bathroom?" Dean asked feeling weird about just being left alone in the
living room to wait on Sam.
"Upstairs, to the right. Across from Castiel's room, it's the one with the big
Elvis poster on the door. You can't miss it." Anna replied already cracking her
book back open as she wandered away.
Dean waved a hand at her in thanks even though the younger girl wasn't paying
attention to him anymore and made his way up the stairs. He stopped when he saw
the black and white poster covered doorway and managed to hesitate for a couple
of seconds before his curiosity won him over and he cracked the door to his
friend's bedroom with a furtive glance around the hallway.
He was immediately hit with the clean, spearminty scent that always seemed to
hover around his friend and he leaned into the room as his eyes adjusted to the
dim light that managed to make its way around the edges of the thick dark
curtains that hung over the widow. Dean could make out an unmade bed, a
decently sized stereo sitting next to a mountainous pile of haphazardly stacked
CDs on a desk, posters for bands on the walls, and clothes scattered around on
the floor.
In short, it pretty much looked like every other teenage boy's room that Dean
had ever seen, but this was Cas's room and he just knew that somewhere in the
space lurked the answer to why he thought his new friend was so awesome, so
different from anyone else he had met before.
Castiel didn't pretend to like things just to make other people happy; he was
genuine to the point of bluntness in regards to his opinions. But he was still
willing to try anything once, he ate the mystery surprise meal that the
cafeteria dished out once a week and declared it 'not bad'. Cas got Dean's
cheesy jokes and looked at him with this serious deadpan expression when he
thought Dean was being a jerk. He called everyone on their bullshit, but was
just so nice about it that no one could bother with getting mad.
And he liked Meg.
Where the hell had that come from? Dean thought he knew enough about Cas to be
able to pick the kind of person his friend would like, but did he really? He
never would've put Meg and Cas together, but based on what he had seen on the
porch earlier it seemed to be working out. He would ask his friend what he saw
in the girl, but Cas was mad at him and Dean just wished he could remember what
he did to drive his friend away.
"Dean, what are you doing?"
"Sonofabitch!" Dean said jumping about a foot in the air when he heard his
little brother's voice behind him. He turned around guiltily to face the other
boy, letting Castiel's bedroom door swing shut behind him. "When did you get so
stealth, Sammy?"
His brother was giving him a weird look and Dean started running through
excuses he could give for why he was trying to sneak into his friend's bedroom
when the other boy wasn't home.
"I-I uh was just looking for the bathroom. No toilet here."
"Whatever," Sam said, running a hand through his shaggy brown hair. "Can we
talk now? It's kinda important."
"Yea, let's head home. I need some coffee and Captain Crunch is sounding pretty
good right about now," Dean wrapped an arm around his little brother's
shoulders, having to reach up slightly to do so and started to head towards the
stairs.
"Actually, there's coffee here. C'mon Gabs is making french toast."
"Who the fuck is Gabs?"
"Oh, uh..that's my nickname for Gabriel because y'know, he talks so much."
"Quiet, moose!" Gabriel snapped from where he was setting out plates for three
and on the dining room table that was already piled high with breakfast foods.
Anna meandered past with her own full plate balanced on her book and holding a
glass of orange juice heading back in the direction of the living room. She
gave Dean an encouraging smile as she passed and he really wished Cas was here
because all of this felt really Twilight Zoney and foreign to him.
"This is awesome Gabriel," Dean said sitting down with wide eyes and snatching
up a bowl of cinnamon sugar that he was planning to use entirely on his own
stack of French toast.
He looked up at the older man and noticed for the first time the large dark
purple bruise that was on the older man's jaw and the angry red cut that was on
his eyebrow.
"What happened to you, dude? Sammy been hitting you. That's domestic violence
right there, you should leave him." Dean laughed at his own joke and went back
to building the perfect log cabin out of cut up pieces of the breakfast Gabriel
had made.
"So you didn't hear about what happened?" Sam asked brushing the hair out of
his eyes, revealing his own gash on his forehead near his hairline.
"You guys get in a fight or something?" Dean asked gesturing between the two
men with his fork.
Gabriel gave Sam a loaded look and Dean felt like there was a silent
conversation going on between the pair. He shrugged and kept eating, this was
one of the best home cooked breakfasts he had ever had.
"Not…with each other," Gabriel supplied. "There were these guys at the party
last night. They kind of jumped us, Anna went all causal pepper spray cop on
them and Castiel brought us back here so that we could get cleaned up."
"Why did they jump you?" Dean asked suspiciously, he knew Sam wasn't the type
who went out picking fights and Gabe didn't seem like the kind of person who
boxed in his spare time so something else must be going on.
Sam cleared his throat and drew idle circles in the puddle of syrup pooled on
his plate with his fork. "Have you ever heard of the Kinsey scale, Dean?"
The older Winchester shook his head and tried to figure out what was going on.
"Well, it's this scale um…" Sam was blushing like crazy and looking anywhere
but at his older brother. "It um…measures a person's degree of
um….bicurushnish."
"What?" Dean asked.
"Oh for fuck's sake," Gabriel said slapping his fork down with a loud clatter
and giving Sam an annoyed look. "We're all big boys here. It measures how much
interest a person has in the same sex. Like homosexuality."
"And what does this have to do with you two getting beaten up?"
"On the scale," Sam continued looking between Gabriel and Dean. "Zero means
you're like one-hundred percent hetero. The thought of being with someone of
the same sex has never even remotely cross your mind. Six means…"
"Six means you're singing show tunes and camping out in a line to buy tickets
to a Streisand concert. You have matching poodles and go to equality rallies
and stuff. Yea, I think I get it, Sammy. What does this have to do with you
getting in a fight with some of Jo's douche bag party guests?"
"I'm like a four, Dean." Sam said looking at his brother steadily and then
glancing over at Gabe with a small smile on his face. "Maybe a four point
five."
Dean let out a heavy breath and leaned back in his chair. He looked between the
two guys in front of him and tried to reconcile the image he had of his younger
brother with this new, overwhelming information.
"So, you two…" He said gesturing between Sam and Gabriel and rubbing a hand
over his jaw. "Are like together?"
Sam nodded and Gabriel reached over and grabbed his hand in an affectionate
way. He watched how the two of them looked at each other and something inside
of him melted a little bit. Dean had never seen his little brother look at
anyone that way, hell he didn't think he had ever looked at anyone that way.
Dean nodded slowly and reached for the carafe of orange juice on the table,
topping off his glass and taking a slow drink to finally wash away that acrid
taste of tobacco that had been lingering in his mouth all morning.
"How old are you, Gabe?" he watched the older man squirm under his scrutinizing
gaze.
"Twenty," Gabriel said defensively. "Listen, I'm not some pervy old man scoping
out jail bait, okay? This just kinda…happened, but I'm glad it did because your
brother makes me happier than anyone else ever has and I'm not going to let you
make him feel bad about this. He is still the same person."
Dean smirked at the other man's speech. Nothing like that had been going
through his head, he had just wanted to make sure that Gabriel wasn't going to
getting Sam wasted all of the time when the younger man should be focusing on
school.
"And you're sure about this, Sammy?" he asked turning back to his french toast
and deciding that it needed another layer of cinnamon sugar.
"So fucking sure," Sam replied not tearing his eyes off of the man sitting next
to him.
"Okay, then. Welcome to the family, man." He offered Gabriel a hand across the
table and the two shook hands amicably. "Just uh…maybe you shouldn't tell dad,
Sam. Not for a while. We'll have to get him used to the idea. And, no making
out on my bed! Or the couch! I will burn it, I swear."
"You're being really cool about this, Dean." Sam said wonderingly, looking at
his brother with something that resembled astonished amusement.
"Yea, Dean-o." Gabriel said his eyes twinkling mischievously. "Maybe you're not
a total zero yourself. Where do you think ol' Kinsey would rank you?"
"No, I'm a zero." Dean said quickly, feeling his stomach do a weird little flip
as he tried not to think about the comforting smell of mint, and blue eyes that
changed color as often as the summer sky, and shy smiles in darkened
classrooms.
===============================================================================
"A mixtape?" Meg asked as she drove them over to the apartment she shared with
her boyfriend over near the U of K campus. "Who are you? Lloyd Dobbler? This
isn't a freaking 80s movie, Cas. This is your love life. Why don't you just go
up to Dean and kiss him and see what he says?"
It was Thursday night after his therapy appointment with Rachel and for the
first time he had ducked out of dinner with Gabriel to allow his older brother
some time to spend with Sam. Apparently the pair had told Dean about their
relationship and the older Winchester hadn't freaked out about the whole thing.
He had gone all week saying as little as possible to Dean, even managed to
convince Becky to switch seats with him in English class for a while so that he
could avoid having to sit next to his friend. Every time he was near the other
boy his mind would start circulating through images of them in the laundry room
together, how Dean's mouth had been right up against his neck and he had been
right, the stubble was so fucking hot, before it went straight back to painful
scenarios of Dean wrapped up in that cheerleader, kissing her and calling her
gorgeous. It didn't help that come Monday, Dean was still sporting a faint
hickey that was vaguely shaped like West Virginia.
Cas had kept a buffer between him and the other boy as much as possible,
usually Jo or Garth once he even got Kevin to help him avoid Dean when he had
been cornered at his locker by making up a story about a last minute ROTC
meeting Virgil had called that the freshman had corroborated. He knew that he
owed Dean an explanation for why he was acting the way he was, but he was
hoping that the tape he was planning on making would be enough to make it clear
to the other boy why he was upset.
"Because I don't want to get punched in the face," Castiel said pulling his
feet down from where he had them propped up on the dash as they pulled into the
parking lot. Meg's apartment was right near the diner so it hadn't taken them
very long to get there after she picked him up from his therapy appointment.
"What if he doesn't punch you?" Meg asked putting the car in park and hopping
out with her friend trudging along behind her. "What if you're just psyching
yourself out and Dean's like secretly, madly in love with you?"
"Yea, right." He muttered.
Meg and her boyfriend lived on the second floor so instead of waiting for the
elevator they opted for the stairs and Cas tried to steer the topic to
something other than Dean. He felt like his pointless crush was all the girl
wanted to talk about sometimes.
"So, your boyfriend. What's he like?" he asked as her keys jangled while she
unlocked her front door.
"Oh, you'll love him. Luc should be home around seven, his last class is over
at six thirty and he rides his bike to and from campus to avoid all of the
traffic."
"How did you two meet?" Cas asked as Meg pulled out a large stack of take out
menus and started shuffling through them, making faces at some of them and
putting others in front of the younger man for him to look at.
"It's kind of funny actually," Meg said a small smile alighting on her face.
"Lucy was my TA my first year at U of K. It was a religious studies class; he
was actually thinking about going into seminary school before we met. I guess I
sorta threw a spanner into those plans."
"He's Catholic?"
"Yea, his mom was like super religious, named him after an angel. That's how I
knew what your name meant, Clarence. He was a bit obsessed with like angel lore
and stuff when we first met, now he's thinking of doing political science." Meg
shrugged. "I think we should do Chinese. I'm craving eggrolls."
"Wait," Castiel said trying to suppress the giggles that he could feel coming
on. "Luc. Lucy. Your boyfriend's name is Lucifer isn't it? Your boyfriend is
the devil!"
"Don't make a big deal out of it," Meg said slapping him on the hand. "It's a
bit of a sore subject, just call him Luc. I didn't make fun of you for saying
Dean had a cute butt!"
"I told you that under duress," Castiel said laughing to himself as he watched
his friend place an order for a delivery of Chinese food. He waited until she
was off of the phone to continue their conversation. "Why doesn't everyone know
you have a boyfriend? Are you guys like, swingers or something?"
"Eww, no." Meg wrinkled her nose in distaste and went to sit on the couch; legs
pulled up to her chest and patted the seat next to her. "He's just older and
some people think it's weird we met when he was basically my assistant
professor. It's not strictly against the rules for us to be dating, but it is
frowned upon by some of the bigwigs on campus, so we keep it on the DL."
"Here I was thinking only queers had to hide their love in the closet." Castiel
said mostly to himself. "And he's okay with you going to parties and flirting
with people?"
The woman waved a hand at him dismissively, "I thought I was doing you a favor
and besides that's how relationships work. He doesn't ask me about the parties,
it's not like I'm a cheater or anything so he doesn't really have to worry, and
I don't ask him about his plans for world domination. Don't get me started
about that."
They were quiet for a couple of minutes and Cas took the time to think about
relationships and what he would give up knowing about or needing from another
person in order to make something work. He gave up a lot for Daniel, but the
other boy hadn't been willing to make any sacrifices for him in return. Would
Dean give up anything for him if Castiel asked him to or was that a
conversation that you just didn't have with your friends?
"So," Meg started innocently, picking up the remote and idly flipping through
the channels on the television even though the volume was pretty much
nonexistent. "The tape. You're just going to ignore Dean for a week and then
give it to him, that's going to work out real well."
"I'm not ignoring him." Castiel snapped causing Meg to arch a shrewd eyebrow at
him.
"What happened during movie night with the Scooby gang again?"
Oh god, movie night. It had been horrible. Cas had skipped his shower after
ROTC practice to run out his frustration on the way to Garth's house. It also
meant he could avoid an awkward, silent car ride alone with Dean because the
other boy had been texting him and trying to talk to him all week and he just
couldn't, if he said more than three words to his friend he felt like he was
going to break down and start spewing all kinds of love-struck word vomit and
embarrass the hell out of himself.
Dean had slammed down the stairs to Garth's basement, looking just as ragged
and sweaty as Castiel knew he probably did himself, threw a copy of Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon down on the coffee table, and collapsed onto the crouch as
far away from him as possible asking Garth if he had something stronger than
Pepsi to drink.
Castiel had tried to make himself as small as possible in the armchair, hiding
behind Dean's favorite throw pillow that smelled faintly like the Old Spice
body wash his friend kept in his gym locker at school and hoping no one saw him
crying when Chow Yun-Fat confessed his love for his fellow assassin.
When he left, squeezed in between Jo and Ash in the cab of the girl's truck,
Dean hadn't even tried to talk to him. It seemed like his friend was giving up
on trying to apologize for something that he shouldn't have to feel bad about.
Castiel shouldn't be being so petty, it wasn't Dean's fault that Cas had a
crush on him and that he couldn't reciprocate. Jo had held his hand and let him
lean against her as Dean stood arms crossed by the Impala frowning and watching
them as they left.
"Exactly," Meg said to his silence settling on some reality show and turning
the volume up slightly so that Castiel could hear the participants arguing over
who threw the best shade and doing amazing transformations into beautiful,
glamorous women. "You two are going to have to talk or better yet kiss and make
up. Then you can make him a million mixtapes and it probably will actually get
played, not tossed under his front seat or something."
"Maybe you're right," he conceded. Snatching up the remote when she went to
answer the door a couple of minutes later to collect their dinner and changing
the channel to something that didn't make him feel like he was growing ovaries.
===============================================================================
Dean was done. In fact, he was more than done. This day had sucked, this entire
fucking week had sucked and the only thing he could attribute it to was the
fact that Cas wouldn't talk to him, would barely even look at him and seemed to
be spending a lot of time trying to get as far away from him as possible.
He knew that he and Meg had never really seen eye to eye, but he didn't think
that even she would stoop so low as to dictate who Cas could and couldn't be
friends with. That had to be the only explanation for how his friend was acting
because Dean thought that they had been close before Jo's party, was even
starting to think of Castiel in terms of best friend and wanting to talk to him
about his dad and his mom and maybe feel like he could trust him enough to drop
the whole macho aloof guy act for the first time in pretty much his whole life.
But y'know what, Cas wanted to act like he didn't exist or that he had ran over
his kitten or something and Dean was fucking done.
He had decided while he was shucking off his shoulder pads in the visitor's
locker room at Lawrence Free State that he was going to make Cas talk to him.
The team had just had their asses handed to them so badly that no one on the
team could even make eye contact with each other. Coach Uriel called them
Neanderthals that didn't deserve to set foot on the same field as the marching
band and they were all feeling pretty horrible.
Dean made his way towards his assigned bus and kept a sharp eye out for Adam.
The boys in the ROTC rode to away games with the football team since there were
only six of them, but Uriel liked to split the team up between two buses with
the first half of the alphabet, A-N on one and O-Z on another and the rifle,
toting team wasn't exempt from that. That meant he was stuck in a rolling
torture chamber with Alistair and Azazel with only Kevin Tran to talk to. He
liked the kid and all, but Dean could only feign enthusiasm for cellos and pre-
SAT classes for so long.
He spotted the blonde hair of Jo's boyfriend loading rifles into the trailer
that the band used to cart their instruments around and rushed over to him,
feeling way too much like a nervous eighth grader than he was comfortable with.
"Adam, hey man." Dean looked around for Cas, hoping that he could pull this off
without getting caught by the other boy. "Can you like, switch buses with me?"
"Why?" the other boy asked giving Dean and appraising look.
"I just can't handle Tran talking my ear off about honors classes and junk
anymore," Dean said the excuse being only half of the reason for why he wanted
on to be on the other bus so badly.
Adam crossed his arms and started to slowly shake his head.
"Okay, listen." He said desperately, holding up his hands at the other boy. "I
need to talk to Cas alright. He's avoiding me and I just…I need to talk to him,
okay?"
The sophomore gave him an appraising look, his mouth turning into a slow,
teasing smile. He pointed a stern finger at Dean and the larger boy felt like a
huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. "Fine, but you owe me."
"Anything, man. God, you're like saving my life right now." That sounded a
little dramatic, but Christ, was it ever the truth.
Dean practically skipped to the bus allocated for the front half of the
alphabet and searched amongst the bodies inside for a glimpse of that familiar
dark messy bed-head of his friend.
Cas was sitting about halfway back on the bus, wearing a big pair of noise-
canceling headphones and bent over a small journal, writing in that messy
scrawl of his that Dean could probably read upside down and blindfolded he was
so used to seeing it in Chuck's classroom. His stomach felt all burblely when
he saw it, he missed talking to Cas in Chuck's class. Their notes having become
something that Dean was ready to dedicate a whole spiral to just so he could
hold on to some of the funny, quirky things that Castiel said about music or in
response to a one of Dean's bad puns. And Becky wanting to talk about Will
Wheaton all the time was really not the same.
He plopped down heavily in the seat next to Cas, smiling widely at the startled
little jump that the other boy did and how he looked adorable as he fumbled
with his headphones and his journal and his backpack, getting all tangled up
and banging his elbow hard into the window next to him as he went.
"Fuck," Cas muttered rubbing absently at his elbow and then glancing up at Dean
from under his eyelashes. "What are you doing, Dean? You're on the wrong bus."
"Nah-uh," Dean said shaking his head and giving Castiel a long look like he
hadn't seen him in years, letting the gravely voice of the other boy wash over
him and ease all of the tension he had been carrying all week out of his
muscles. "Adam and I switched, he is me. Just call me Milligan."
"Oh, that's okay I guess." Cas said noncommittally, shutting his journal away
in his backpack and stowing it under the seat in front of them. He fiddled with
his iPod for a minute, glancing up at Dean a couple of times. "Dean, I need to
apologize to you."
"What?" he asked, he was watching the way that Cas's mouth moved when he talked
and wondered to himself what his friend could possibly need to apologize for,
he was perfect.
"I've been avoiding you since um…since Jo's party. I thought we were…that you
might…well, um…I'm sorry okay. I was being ridiculous, still friends?" His
friend was looking up at him with those wide, innocent blue eyes and Dean felt
like he would agree to anything, hell murder someone, if it meant that Cas
would keep looking at him just like that forever.
"Of course man," Dean said pulling his friend in for a one-armed hug. "And here
I was, thinking I had done something to make you mad."
"I could never stay mad at you, Dean." Castiel replied softly, twisting the
cord for his headphones around and around his index finger.
The pair was silent for a while, oblivious to the raucous boys surrounding them
and barely noticing as the bus rumbled to life and began the trip back to
Lawrence High.
"I'm sorry I don't have my other headphones with me," Castiel said looking over
at him apologetically and gesturing towards the bulky professional looking
headphones looped around his neck. "If I did, we could listen to music or
something."
"That's ok, Cas." Dean said slumping down in the seat and putting his head on
his friend's shoulder. "I can hear it like this, play something."
He heard Castiel clear his throat above him and felt him shift uncomfortably in
the seat, okay maybe he was pushing it a bit, but after having been apart from
the other boy for most of the week, Dean needed this, this closeness with his
friend.
They listened to some things that Dean was familiar with, more that he wasn't.
Some of it he recognized, but the music was wrong, too slow or too fast or
completely different with just lyrics that he thought he knew. Castiel listened
to a lot of cover songs.
He was listening to a feminine version of Aerosmith's 'Don't Wanna Miss a
Thing' and Castiel was looking out the window at the passing streetlamps and
buildings.
"Why do you like cover songs so much?" Dean asked, fiddling with the edge of
the ROTC uniform top Cas was wearing unbuttoned over a plain white undershirt
as it laid in the small space between them.
"They're different," Castiel said looking down at the larger man beside him for
a moment before his gaze returned back to the blurry dark skyline outside the
window.
"Well, duh. I mean, do you like them more than the original versions?"
"Not more," his friend said, wiggling his shoulder until Dean looked up at him.
"I think hearing a cover song is sorta like when you see something you look at
every day, something you might take for granted, from a different angle and
suddenly it's like this whole new thing, it's completely changed and it has
this new meaning that you never thought of before. You may like it more because
of the new angle or you might completely hate it, but you can't help but think
of what else you may not know about it. It makes you want to look at it deeper.
Look at yourself deeper. Here, let me show you."
Castiel fiddled with his iPod until that annoyingly catchy Carly Rae Jepsen
song came over his headphones. Dean groaned and tried to snatch the device out
of his friend's hand to change the song, it was going to be stuck in his head
all day if it got to the chorus.
Cas laughed and moved his hand out of Dean's reach. "Okay, see you hate this
song. But listen to it now."
He clicked a button and there it was again, but it was just like Castiel said.
Different, with a male voice singing and a violin or something playing in the
background. It sounded less poppy, and childish and superficial. It sounded
like a song being sung by someone who was nervous about approaching a person
they liked and giving them their number. Like they were putting all they had on
the line for this one person who they were inexplicably drawn to for no other
reason besides some crazy gut feeling they were having.
Dean turned his face into Castiel's chest when it got to the part with heavy
chords where the man was singing about being chased by other people and tried
to calm the way his heart was beating. He felt like everything about this song
was so familiar, like the person singing it was the same as him, being perused
by everyone but only having interest in one person, someone they couldn't have,
who may not want them back. The song ended with notes that sounded unfinished,
like the rest of the story was waiting to unfold, the singer may not know what
was going to happen, but he had put himself out there and had to trust that the
other person would reply.
"See?" Cas asked softly.
Dean took a steadying breath and sat back up, pulling away from Castiel
slightly so that he could look at him. His friend's face just looked so open
and trusting and Dean knew that if he said what he was thinking that it would
just ruin everything. Because he had started remembering what had been going on
with him and Cas at Jo's party and those little things that had gone through
his head that night that he thought he would forget about were becoming really
hard to ignore.
"It's good, Cas. I see why you like it."
He thought he saw the other boy's face fall a little bit, but the expression
was replaced with that curious look that Cas got sometimes and Dean just
couldn't help but smile at how he would for the rest of his life associate that
gesture with his friend.
"I'll make you a mixtape," The boy said seriously.
"You don't have to do that, Cas. Baby, doesn't play CDs so I could only listen
to it at home and I spend more time in my car or at Bobby's garage, he just has
a tape player in the shop."
"No, I mean a tape mixtape."
"Oh, cool." Dean said, nudging the smaller boy with his shoulder when a thought
struck him. A way he could make up for lost time with Cas without seeming super
creepy or taking him away from Meg too much. "Hey, can I come running with you
one morning? Uriel said I was dragging ass out there tonight and I guess I
could stand to do some extra training."
"I don't know," the other boy said reaching over to poke Dean teasingly in the
side. "Think you could keep up with me? The way you eat, I'll end up having to
drag your chubby ass around."
"I'm not chubby!" Dean said feeling the bus's air breaks release beneath them
and noticing that they were almost back at the school. He pulled his arms close
into his sides so that Cas would stop poking him, he didn't need the entire
football team knowing he was ticklish. "I can go on Sunday, I'll get all my
work done at the shop tomorrow so that Bobby doesn't need me to come in that
morning."
"Ok," Castiel said pulling his bag back out stowing away his head phones.
"Um…meet me at the nature park at like 6. There's something I want to show
you."
"Six in the morning?!" Dean complained, getting to his feet and letting Cas out
into the aisle of the bus ahead of him as they shuffled towards the exit. "Is
the sun even up that early?"
"Do you want to go or not?" Castiel asked adjusting his messenger bag on his
shoulder once they were off and moving towards where Gabriel was waiting for
him in the convertible at the front of the parking lot.
"I'll be there with bells on," Dean said sounding less than enthusiastic,
giving a parting wave to his friend and telling himself he couldn't look back,
don't look back, as he got into his own car and peeled out of the parking lot.
===============================================================================
"If you need me to slow down, Dean, just say so," Castiel said worriedly as he
looked at the other boy who was leaning against a tree trying to catch his
breath. "I can't resuscitate you if you faint; you're the one who knows CPR,
not me."
"I'm fine," Dean gasped holding onto his knees and waving the smaller boy away.
"Just need a second…or maybe a minute."
Cas chuckled slightly and pulled his leg up behind him in a stretch, looking
around at the trees and bushes that bordered the inclining path they were on.
He didn't go running at the nature park very often, usually it was way too
humid, but now that they were midway through September it had finally cooled
down enough to make it comfortable to go hiking on the steep paths if you went
early enough.
He was barely even breaking a sweat, having to go at about half of his normal
pace to keep Dean from falling too far behind. The other boy had already
sweated through his white shirt and his legs were trembling in the black
basketball shorts he was wearing. Castiel figured they could walk the rest of
the trail, they were almost to the top anyway, they just had to beat the sun.
"You good to go?" Cas asked trying not to sound impatient, he hadn't brought
anyone else out here before and he wanted Dean to see the view when it was the
best.
"Yea," Dean replied groaning a bit as he straightened back up and moving to
walk beside Castiel, their arms brushing as they moved along the narrow path.
The climbed the last several hundred feet in silence, Dean's heavy breathing
and the rustle of the leaves around them being the only sounds to break the
stillness of the morning. Castiel stepped out on the plateau at the top of the
path and walked to the edge of the limestone outcropping, marveling again at
how Lawrence was spread out before him like a map.
"Wow," he heard from beside him and looked over to see Dean standing near him
with his hands on his hips. "This is great."
"Give it ten minutes," Cas said settling down on the edge of the naturally made
ledge and letting his legs dangle off of the sides. He patted the spot beside
him and Dean collapsed heavily on to the ground, leaning back a bit on his
hands as his breathing evened out.
They watched the first rays of sunlight break over the horizon and Castiel
heard Dean's soft gasp as the sunlight glittered off of some of the taller
buildings in the city beneath them. From where they were sitting, Castiel could
pick out the U of K football stadium even though he had never been to a game
himself, from there he could almost see Meg's apartment building and thought
back for a moment of his dinner with his new friend and her boyfriend, Luc, who
was way more charming than his name led people to believe. He knew the general
area where his house was, but it bled into a suburban sprawl that made it
impossible to pinpoint where his brother and sister were still probably asleep
in their beds.
"Amazing," Dean muttered under his breath and Castiel felt like maybe he should
just do what Meg had said and kiss the other boy to see what would happen.
But, no. He had a plan and it didn't involve spontaneous displays of affection
that might get him pushed of a cliff. Granted it was a small cliff, but Cas was
still pretty sure it would hurt if he fell into the brambles that were about
thirty feet below them.
"So, imagine you jumped off of here," Castiel asked suddenly, needing a
distraction from where his thoughts were going. He decided to play a game that
he and Gabriel used to play when they were younger and the jungle gym at the
playground seemed a lot taller and scarier.
"Why would I do that?" Dean asked leaning over and looking at the open space
below their feet.
"Um…your car breaks down, diner's stop serving pie," Castiel searched his mind
for something horrible enough that would make Dean do something dangerous and
drastic.
"The Beatles break up." His friend said solemnly.
"That already happened, Dean."
His friend held up a hand at him and shook his head a bit, "Too soon, Cas. I
just meant I knew where you were going."
"The Beatles? Really?"
Dean nodded at his friend seriously.
"Whatever. We'll talk about that later. Anyway, you jump and you're falling.
Which way would you want to be facing? Up or down?"
"Why does it matter?" Dean asked his brow furrowing in confusion.
"Because if you're facing down you know exactly when it's going to happen, when
you're going to hit the ground and everything cuts to black. Face up you're
just looking at the sky, enjoying the ride and unaware of what's coming."
"I think you'd be aware, Cas. People don't just jump off of cliffs and think
they won't get hurt."
"Answer the question, Dean."
"Ok…up."
"Face up?" Cas asked feeling like this answered a lot of questions he had about
his friend. It explained why Dean just seemed comfortable with letting other
people define him and why he just went along with what other people expected of
him most of the time. Let himself come across as that stereotypical, womanizing
jock when he was really so much more. He nodded a bit and looked down at where
Dean's hand was sitting next to his.
"Yea. What about you?" Dean asked.
"Down, I think." Castiel said nodding his head and moving his hands back into
his lap. "Yea, I'd want to know what's coming."
What he meant was that he was finally ready to start taking control of his
life, ready to stop letting people define him by who he liked or what he did.
That's why he was giving Dean a deadline. A month with the tape. More than
enough time to figure out what he was trying to tell him. Enough time to decide
what he wanted to do, if he wanted to do anything and if those things he wanted
to do involved Castiel being something more to him than a friend.
It also gave Castiel a month to start tying up his own loose ends, so that if
things worked out how he was hoping they would he would be able to tell Dean
about everything in his past without it being such a big deal.
They sat for a little while longer, long enough for the sun to fully rise and
reflect off the rocks around them, causing the temperature to rise steadily and
Cas's shirt to start sticking to his back.
"C'mon," he said climbling to his feet and offering Dean a hand up. His heart
fluttered, like it always did when he was around the other boy when Dean took
it and pulled himself to his feet, stumbling slightly and bumping into Castiel.
"I've got your tape in the car."
"Really?" Dean said dusting off his hands on his shorts and following Cas back
down the path which seemed a lot less grueling now that they were going
downhill. "That was quick man."
It wasn't really. Castiel had spent the entire day on Saturday dubbing songs
over onto a recycled tape using Gabriel's old tape deck and his enormous CD
collection. He even had to go online a couple of times to download songs and
then burn them onto a blank disc so that he could transfer them over. It was
tedious and time-consuming, but he felt like it would be worth it.
He had gotten Meg to come over and help him for a bit, bringing in burgers and
fries with her and he had sat by as she carefully wrote out the track listing
for the first side of the tape in neat, bubbly handwriting. It was full of
covers of songs that he thought Dean would like mostly classic and hard rock.
On the B-side he had her write that Dean should ask him if he wanted to know
about any of the artists, he figured that would be a good way to start the
conversation. That side was full of different songs, ones that couldn't be
misread as having another meaning. Either way, his friend was going to know how
he felt.
Face down meant he was going into this with no preconceived notions. Castiel
knew how badly this could go for him, but the fact that he knew that helped.
And he was ready for the fall.
Chapter End Notes
     OMFG. I never thought I would finish this chapter. I know you're all
     getting antsy for some fluff and all, but seriously? How clueless
     were you in high school about stuff like this. I was pretty clueless
     so now you know why this is taking so long.
     Anyway, I appreciate all of the love and review and such. You guys
     are the bestest. Keep rocking my ankle socks right off, guys.
     *edit* Thank you to Absie74 for making me realize my jerkitude for
     not giving credit where credit is due. For those of you who haven't
     seen the movie Dakota Skye, its really been and inspiration to me for
     this chapter. Go watch it, its on Netflix. Your heart will melt and
     you really really really won't regret it.
     Also, the two covers that I'm making big references to here are by
     Pomplamoose (Don't Wanna Miss a Thing) and Ben Howard (Call Me
     Maybe), totally worth a listen but you might have to go on Youtube to
     find them.*
***** Under Pressure *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Okay," Jo said agitatedly snipping a length of material off of the roll of red
ribbon that was sitting in front of her. She added the piece to the pile that
had been growing steadily in the middle of the table for the last twenty
minutes. "But, this is the last time. If you don't get it then you never will."
Castiel nodded and continued curling the thinner strands of ribbon that his
friend given him using a pair of kitchen shears. Ellen was busy making dinner
across the room and Meg was playing with the hot glue gun that was starting to
ooze the melted adhesive onto the paper plate it was sitting on.
"Homecoming is where your team comes back to play on their own field after
playing away games for a couple of weeks." Jo said beginning to pull fake
flowers and beads and shiny stickers out a bag for the hobby store that they
had just returned from. "It's always a big deal because it's like when everyone
who graduated comes to town to see the game and each day of the week is a
different spirit day like 'Beat the Buffalos' and everyone wears bandages and
stuff on that day."
"See that's what I'm having trouble with," Castiel said sounding frustrated
that the whole next week was going to be so confusing. At his old school they
didn't have football, just stuff like soccer and rugby, things that Meg called
'rich people sports'. And they sure as hell didn't have homecoming. "If we're
trying to show that we can beat the other team then why are we the ones
pretending to be injured. Shouldn't we dress up as boxers or something?"
"It's supposed to be fun, Cas." Meg said tapping gingerly at the hot metal part
of the glue gun. "You're putting way too much thought into it."
"I can understand being fun and goofy, Meg." He replied sullenly. "But you guys
have to admit that the whole thing with the fake flowers and stuff is
ridiculous."
"Yea," Jo said starting to gather craft materials around her so that she could
begin assembling the mum she was making. "It's tradition though; you make a mum
for your boyfriend or decorate his locker if he's on the football team. It's
like wearing a boy's letterman jacket, let's everyone know that they're taken."
"So it's like marking your territory?" He said fiddling around with the little
camouflage clad lion doll that Jo had bought to put in the middle of the mum
she was making for Adam. "Keeping other girls away from the person you like."
"Sure, only less gross." Jo said with a shrug before noticing the way that
Castiel was biting his lip and resolutely not looking up from the scarred
kitchen tabletop. "Y'know I have enough stuff here, you can make one for
someone if you want."
Cas shook his head and dropped the lion like it was made of molten lava, "I
don't know how and who would I make one for anyway?"
"Can we just drop the whole, 'nobody knows that Cas likes Dean' thing for a
minute?" Meg said causing the younger man to give her a look that could peel
paint off of a fence. "Because we know."
He looked over a Jo who was arranging ribbons and strings of beads onto the
back of her big, black fake chrysanthemum. "You both know?"
Of course he had suspected this, but Jo had been dancing around the subject for
the last two weeks since he and Dean had started talking again. She was all
ready to keep giving the other boy the silent treatment if Cas wanted to, but
he told her that they had made up, lied and said Dean apologized for what
happened at her party because he knew that's what she wanted to hear.
"We know," Meg said getting up from the table and pouring herself a glass of
iced tea. "Bert and Ernie know. That weird girl with the vampire fetish knows,
hell I'm pretty sure that chick Dean hooked up with at the party knows and
that's why she was all over him that night."
"Can we not talk about that?" Castiel asked scratching at the glitter on the
page of alphabet stickers Jo had purchased. "Anyway, you guys may all know, but
Dean doesn't. And—"
"And why you won't just tell him is beyond me," Jo said snatching the stickers
out of his hand and picking out Adam's name from the letters.
"I'm doing it in my own way," he said petulantly. "Besides, Dean doesn't like
guys."
"Dean doesn't know what he likes," Ellen said interrupting the conversation to
slide steaming plates of enchiladas in front of each of the kids at the table.
"Remember when he had that crush on your cousin, hun?"
"Andy!" Jo said excitedly turning to Castiel. "We were like eight, maybe nine
and Dean's mom took us to the pool, I caught Dean giving him a kiss on the
cheek under the diving board at the deep end. Man, it was so freaking cute, but
of course back then I made fun of them both and put them in cootie quarantine."
"Cootie quarantine?" Meg said snorting with laughter.
"It was what I called the kiddie pool."
Castiel smiled and pushed away the ribbons and glitter glue in front of him to
start digging into his plate of food. "Well, this isn't the third grade, Jo. He
was a kid, probably didn't know what he was doing."
"Whatever," Jo said waving a dismissive hand at him and adjusting the petals of
the crepe flower centerpiece. "Dean doesn't ever do anything by accident. He
has this whole stupid 'plan' for his and Sam's lives and it's not working for
him."
"Well, I'm sure I'm not part of the plan." He said ignoring the meaningful way
Meg was looking at him as she blew on her steaming forkful of Tex-Mex.
Meg was the only one who knew about the mix tape and Cas's self-imposed
deadline. She thought it was really dumb and didn't ever waste an opportunity
to tell him so, she said that he should've taken Dean out to some romantic spot
and played him the juicy side of the tape so that when the inevitable kissing
happened they wouldn't have to look for a private spot to molest each other.
Dean's time was halfway up and it was making Cas nervous.
"That's right," the blonde declared picking off stray bits of hot glue from the
jangling mess of ribbons, beads, and bells that made up her mum. "Because the
plan is dumb."
===============================================================================
When Dean got to school the next morning, he wasn't very surprised to find that
his locker had been decorated. It happened every year, some of his more
determined conquests just couldn't really take the hint that he wasn't looking
for anything serious. Usually he ended up with a mum or two by the end of the
week also and he always made sure he got rid of the tokens of affection
discreetly so that he wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings any more than he already
did by not wearing them in the first place.
At least this time when he saw his locker it wasn't covered in glitter or
hearts. It was actually kinda tasteful, wrapped up in black butcher paper and
decorated like his football jersey, with his last name spelled out in red block
letters at the top and his numbers in the middle. Simple and uncomplicated and
he was almost convinced Jo had done it so that it would keep other girls from
trying to give him gifts that she knew he didn't want.
He unloaded the books that he had taken home for the weekend from his backpack
and noticed that the butcher paper wrapped around to the interior of his
locker. So that was his proof that one of his friends did it, only a couple of
people besides Dean knew the combination. Yea, it was probably Jo, Garth and
Ash wouldn't bother doing something like this and as much as a part of him may
hope that it had been Cas he knew that his friend didn't really understand the
whole hoopla behind homecoming and its traditions.
Plus, the other boy was dating Meg. He had to keep reminding himself of that. A
lot.
Over the last couple of weeks, they had fallen back into their easy friendship;
sitting together in English class again and tossing back and forth ideas about
what they would write for their short story, driving to movie night together
and walking across the park afterwards, and now they were running on Sundays
together though most of the time Dean would have to stop after a couple of
miles and let Cas carry on with his routine by himself. But he didn't mind
waiting for the other boy to finish while he sat and talked to the little old
ladies who power walked along the paths in the mornings and drank tepid coffee.
Even though they were back to spending time together, Dean wished that he could
have more and he knew how selfish that was. Thursdays were for Meg or at least
he thought they were because Cas always seemed to have plans on those days and
couldn't hang out even though Dean had managed to work up the courage to ask
him over to his apartment one time under the pretense of needing help with his
Algebra homework when really he just wanted to have that mental image of
Castiel in his living room, sitting on his couch or laying across his bed on
his stomach with his feet kicked up behind him and his nose buried in a
textbook.
Dean was starting to feel really creepy about how much he liked the idea of Cas
seeing the parts of his life that he kept everyone else locked out of. It
wasn't normal to want to be around your guy friends that much.
He started towards homeroom and glanced down one of the side hallways as he
passed, spotting his best friend talking to Becky at her locker, ignoring the
other students rushing around as the other girl reached into her locker for
something. Dean smiled widely and veered off his path to meet Cas so that he
could walk with him to Mrs. Barnes's class.
"It's not a problem Castiel," he heard Becky saying as she furrowed her brow
and shoved at something in the locker in front of her. "Just make sure you pick
it up at the end of the day, I don't know if my books will fit around it."
"Fit around what?" Dean asked stopping behind the shorter girl and trying to
peer around the opened metal door into her locker.
Castiel's head snapped up, his eyes wide and terrified looking. The smaller boy
reached out and fumbled for the locker door, barely missing catching Becky's
hand in his haste to slam it shut. Dean gave him a confused look and leaned
against the row of lockers beside him with a disappointed pout on his face.
"I—It's nothing," Becky stammered out, looking between the two boys on either
side of her. "I've gotta go, Garth is waiting for me in Sanz's homeroom. Later,
Cas. "
The girl scurried away, head down and clutching her books to her chest. Dean
watched her go with a confused look on his face and when he turned back to his
friend for an explanation, Cas simply shrugged and started walking off towards
their shared homeroom.
Dean fell into step beside him, casting sideways glances at his friend and
marveling over the fact that everything Castiel owned seemed to look amazing on
him. It was school color day and the other boy had chosen to go with more red
than black, wearing a Chicago Bull's t-shirt under a black blazer and jeans
with newish looking red Converse. Dean was wearing his football jersey, the
black one over a white t-shirt and pretty much felt like a slob by comparison.
They settled into their desks, greeting Jo and Ash who were decked out in head
to toe red and black, face paint included and nothing even remotely close to
the school's colors respectively. Ash had this whole thing about flouting
authority and he told anyone who would listen that school spirit was for the
birds.
Pam went through the role call and morning announcements with her normal amount
of sarcastic enthusiasm, most of the notices pertained to homecoming and spirit
week and included the annual plea from the faculty to please not put any bells
on mums because they were a distraction.
"And they're irritating." The teacher added with a glare at Alistair was
chiming softly and looking smug in the middle of the room. Dean couldn't
imagine what kind of girl might like the other footballer enough to make him a
mum.
The students were then left to their own devices and Pam went back to idly
flipping through a magazine at her desk.
"Hey, um…guys?" Dean heard Cas begin, turning in his seat to look back at Jo
and Ash. "I need to tell you something."
He hoped their friend was going to tell him that he broke up with Meg. Having
her around all the time was really starting to get annoying, the girl had even
showed up at the game this last week, opting to make the drive with Jo to the
next town over so that they could cheer on Adam and Cas during half-time. Dean
had taken his frustration about the whole thing out on the other team and it
had resulted in a rousing victory for the lions, putting them at 3-1 for the
season so far, their only loss having been against their rivals two weeks
earlier. What self-respecting 20 year old had nothing better to do than to go
to high school football games anyway?
"I can't make it to movie night this week," Cas finished, biting his lip.
"It's your week to pick the movie!" Jo declared dramatically.
"Yea," the smaller boy said nodding down at his hands in his lap. "I was going
to see if Ash would switch with me, I'll pick something next week."
"Sweet," Ash said. "I wanted to rewatch Tron before the sequel comes out
anyway."
"Why can't you go?" Dean asked, feeling like that should've been the first
question anyone asked. Cas was usually so reliable so it must be something
important.
"There's this thing I need to do with Gabe and Anna and its going to take a
while. Maybe I can show up after I'm done? I just didn't want you all to have
to wait on me to get started."
"We don't mind waiting, Cas." Dean offered. Wednesdays were like the only set
in stone day that he got to spend with his friend outside of school, Bobby had
made it pretty clear that when business picked back up Dean may not be able to
get Sunday mornings off anymore, and he didn't want to miss a chance to hang
out with his friend.
Castiel gave him a crinkly eyed smile and shook his head. "It's not a big deal,
maybe we can plan something together on another day this week. Right, Jo?"
Jo looked up from where she was smiling stupidly at something on her phone,
probably some lovey-dovey message from Adam and considered the question for a
moment before shaking her head.
"This week's no good for me. Tomorrow I'm painting posters for the pep rally
with the booster club and Thursday the 'crats are going to the nursing home to
do some service work."
"Okay, Friday." Dean said. "After the game."
"Homecoming dance. Remember, Dean? You go every year, I can't believe you
forgot. Adam and I are going and you've got a date too, right Ash?"
"Whoa," Cas said putting up his hands and laughing at the self-satisfied smile
on the stoic boy's face. "Who's the lucky lady, Ash?"
"Becky's got this friend, Krissy." Ash muttered, sliding down in his seat.
"Garth and I are gonna double."
"Who's going with Becky?" Jo asked excitedly.
"Not me." Ash replied quickly.
"We are officially in the outer limits guys," Dean said wishing that they could
change the subject.
He hadn't forgotten about the dance, but he wouldn't mind missing it this year.
Usually he used it as a really elaborate way of getting with one of the hotter
girls at school who were way out of his league, but this year he couldn't think
of anyone that he would want to take. He would be content just sitting around
one of the badly decorated tables in the gym at the dance and making fun of his
friends' shuffling awkwardly to out dated love ballads. But only if that meant
that he wasn't going to be subjected to Meg's company all night.
"I think I'll pass on that little ritual," Cas spoke up over Jo's excited
questioning about Ash and Garth's plans for their dates. "I guess we'll just
have to see if I can finish with my la…thing on Wednesday then."
"Meg doesn't dance?" Dean asked, feeling a tiny bit superior to the girl in his
friend's life. He was an excellent dancer, everyone told him so.
Castiel gave him a weird look, somewhere between confusion and disbelief. "Not
that I know of."
Dean smiled triumphantly, "Well, I have nothing this week. No practice or
anything. Coach is giving us the week off since we're playing Olathe North.
They haven't won a game in like six years, it's gonna be a wash. "
"So you're free Thursday?" his friend was just talking to Dean, could only be
talking to him since their other two friends were busy conference messaging
Garth and Becky about details for the dance.
"Yea," Dean replied.
"Maybe we could work on our story for Chuck."
"Aren't you already spoken for that day? You're always busy on Thursdays." He
asked, even though his heart was giving an excited little squeeze when he
thought of Cas picking him over his girlfriend.
"Well," Castiel said looking up at him shyly from under his eyelashes. "Maybe I
can get out of it."
===============================================================================
"I am so proud of you, Castiel." Rachel said giving him a comforting squeeze on
the hand after hitting the button to disconnect the conference call that he,
Anna, and Gabriel had been on with their and their father's lawyer back in
Chicago.
Castiel gave the woman a shaky smile and then looked over to where Gabriel was
giving Anna a tight hug on the couch that Rachel had had brought in from the
waiting room for the evening for them to sit on. He felt like his little sister
should be the one getting the praise. It was easy for him and Gabe to stand up
to their father. After all, Reverad Novak had explicitly stated that the pair
were as good as dead to him and he had probably burned all of their pictures
too, just like he had done to their mother's after she had passed away.
Okay, maybe easy wasn't the right word for how he felt since his throat was all
raw and his eyes burned from crying, but at least he didn't feel like his skin
was crawling. Well, it did a little, but it was nothing that he couldn't deal
with.
But Anna, she was the one their father wanted back even after what he had said
to her before they left. Telling her that if she chose to go with, what had he
called them? Oh yea, 'deviants who fraternized with the sons of Satan', that
she could never come back. The younger girl's reply had been icy, but Castiel
was too strung out at the time to remember what she said. Based on the language
he had heard her use at Jo's party, it was probably pretty creative.
"Thanks," he replied softly nodding at the woman in front of him.
"Yes," Gabriel said getting to his feet and moving to shake her hand
enthusiastically. "Thank you for everything, really Rachel. You've done so much
for us, way more than you need to."
"It's not a problem," the therapist replied modestly. "I consider it an honor
to help you guys, after everything, your family deserves a little kindness."
Anna sat dry eyed and shell-shocked looking on the couch and Castiel moved
across the small office to sit next to her. He took her limp hand off of her
lap and gave it a little squeeze, causing her to look up at him and give him a
half-hearted smile.
"I'm ok," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Just
talking about it makes me think of how you looked that day…how if I had gone
over to Lori's house you might have…"
A small sob burst out of her and Cas quickly gathered his little sister into
his arms. Anna had been the one to find him, to save him from what he had done
to himself after his father and eldest brother had broken him down and
convinced him that it was the only way that he could find favor with God again.
She had called the ambulance and sat with him in the bathroom, forcing half a
bottle of Ipecac down his throat and smoothing his hair back from his face when
he had started throwing up all of the pills he had taken.
Castiel thought about how unfair it was that his sister had had to live through
something so horrible, but he supposed that being damaged was sort of a running
theme in the Novak household and if any of them were strong enough to overcome
it it was probably going to be the small, lively spitfire of a woman that Anna
was growing into.
The lawyers' questions had been brutal, their own attorney had warned them that
their father's council would be merciless, trying to pin the motives for why
Castiel had tried to commit suicide on depression over what had happened at
Lake Forrest instead of the mental abuse he had suffered from his father and
Raphael after they had picked him up from the emergency room that the school
nurse insisted he be taken to.
That's why his therapy sessions with Rachel were so important, he needed to
show that the problems he was having now with anxiety and trust and mood swings
were caused by his father and not because he was a victim of homophobic
bullying at the hands of narrow-minded underage rugby players.
Because if he couldn't show everyone what a monster the good Reverad Novak was
then Anna was going to have to back to Illinois and Castiel just couldn't let
that happen. His father couldn't touch him due to the restraining order and by
the time the trial rolled around he would be eighteen anyway, out of the
polluted reach of his father and the religion that he twisted to suit his own
vile agenda.
"It's okay," he whispered into Anna's hair, rocking her gently as she cried
onto the grey t-shirt he was wearing. "I'm right here. I'm okay. You saved me,
Anna-Banana. You're my hero, remember?"
She nodded into his shoulder and he felt her relax a little into him. It was
enough that she let herself be led out to Gabriel's car by their oldest brother
so that Castiel could have a minute alone with Rachel like they had discussed
before making the call to Chicago.
"I mean it," Rachel said gesturing for him to sit in his armchair as she
perched on the edge of her desk in front of him. "You did very well today. I
think that you're really doing an excellent job working through all of this."
He nodded at the older woman, feeling drained emotionally and physically after
spending the day at school and then immediately heading over for the deposition
with the lawyers that had taken almost four hours to complete. If this was
anything like how the trial was going to be, then Castiel didn't know how he
and his siblings were going to make it through seeing their father and Raphael
in person.
"You're opening up in therapy and you're writing down your feelings," she said
listing off the things that he has accomplished over the last several weeks in
order to try to make him feel better about retelling his breakdown in more
detail over the phone that he had ever felt comfortable with doing during their
sessions. She was also fairly certain that his siblings had never before heard
the extent to which Castiel has suffered at their father's hands.
The younger man scoffed at that, most of the things he had written down were
about dreams he was having. Some of them were about his father and Raphael, one
particularly violent one involved a baseball bat, more were about ambiguous
things like him going to college or watching a movie during movie night with
his friends that was about his life. Rachel said that one was his subconscious
telling him that he should open up more to the people who had managed to
ingratiate themselves into his life. Maybe she was right.
He didn't write about the dreams he had about Dean. The ones that made him wake
up feeling safe or giddy or aroused. All of the dreams about Dean were good
dreams, unrealistic, but good. Those were the ones he hoped he had every night
the ones that he greedily held onto for himself, but often they were few and
far between.
He had felt silly decorating Dean's locker, but so far it had served its
purpose of keeping some of the more enthusiastic girls who liked his friend
away. Becky had helped him stow away the incriminating roll of black butcher
paper, but Jo and Garth had teased him all week during French class about his
previously undemonstrated crafting abilities. He refused to make a mum or allow
Meg to make one for the other boy for him. Cas felt like he could only push the
boundaries of their friendship so far before Dean felt the need to confront him
about it.
And he was beginning to think that all he would ever have with the other boy
was their friendship, profound as some of their moments together may seem,
since Dean still hadn't brought up the tape or asked him about the songs on the
B-side. Silence was not the response he had been expecting. At all and he
didn't know what he would do if the whole month passed by and they still hadn't
talked about it. Ignore it forever?
"I'm serious," Rachel continued. "I know that when we started this you didn't
think it was necessary, but you have to realize that you're doing better.
You're making friends, leaving the house, touching people, letting people get
close to you. That's a big deal."
"Rachel, I'm really tired," he began, it wasn't a lie. He wasn't trying to get
out of talking to her like he used to; in fact, he had almost gotten to the
point where he enjoyed talking to her.
The older woman put up a hand and smiled at him warmly, "What I'm trying to
say, Castiel, is that you're doing well enough that I think we can start
cutting your session back to maybe every other week. How would you feel about
that?"
He sat up straighter in the chair, "That would be amazing. Not because I don't
think this is helping. I used to think that, but I don't anymore. It would just
be nice to have more time to myself."
Rachel nodded at him and chuckled slightly, "You do have a much more active
social life now and today was a huge step. How about we schedule your next
appointment for a week from tomorrow? We'll try it out and if you feel like you
need to talk before then you can call me. Or you have this huge, amazing
sounding support system; you could talk to your brother or one of your friends.
I don't have to be your only outlet anymore."
"I know," Castiel said smiling and standing up from his chair. He hesitated
before he started towards the door of the office and where his family was
waiting for him; he still wasn't very good at knowing when this kind of thing
was appropriate. "Rachel?"
"Yes, Castiel?"
"Can I…would it be weird if I gave you a hug?" he asked uncertainly.
===============================================================================
Cas wasn't in homeroom and Dean was worried. In the months that he had known
the other boy, Cas had never missed a day of school or even been late that he
knew of. He supposed it was part of the whole ROTC thing, punctuality, because
none of the rest of their group seemed to be able to make a watch function well
enough to get anywhere on time every single time.
He texted Ash and then Garth to see if their friend had made it to the classes
that he shared with either of them and got even more worried when the answer
was no. He texted Cas for probably the millionth time that morning and didn't
get an answer.
So he decided halfway through Chuck's class that if Cas didn't show up in the
cafeteria that he was going to blow off the rest of the day and go over to the
other boy's house to see if he was ok. The teacher had just finished doling out
copies of Much Ado About Nothing and was starting to go into one of his famous
rants about how Shakespeare's comedies were formulaic and predictable when the
door opened, spilling light into the room that Chuck had already dimmed and
admitting a rumpled looking Cas.
Dean sighed in relief when he saw his friend and reached up unconsciously to
straighten the tie that he was wearing. Thursday's spirit day was 'gang up on
the eagles' day and while most of the senior class interpreted that to mean
dressing like a bunch of very suburban rappers, Dean immediately thought of the
dapper and well-tailored suits in The Untouchables and pulled out his one and
only set of formal wear from the back of his closet.
Castiel smiled tiredly at him and dropped into his regular seat, doing a double
take when he noticed Dean's neatly parted hair and the coat draped over the
back of the larger boy's seat.
"Dress up day?" his friend asked, looking at Dean like he was a starving man
who had just walked into a Biggerson's.
"Gangster," Dean supplied with a smile, noting that Castiel had made no attempt
at dressing up and was wearing a bright orange shirt that said "I Heart Justin
Bieber" with his hair looking more unkempt that usual. "Didn't know you liked
Biebs, Cas."
The other boy looked down and cursed softly under his breath before turning
towards the front of the class and snatching Dean's copy of the play out of his
hand. "It's Anna's."
"Sure it is," he teased leaning over to read the book around Castiel's arms.
Dean could probably go and get another copy from Chuck, but it was just easier
if they shared. And it also gave him an excuse to sit closer. Which was not
weird at all. "So were you able to get out of your thing tonight?"
"Yea," Cas replied glancing up at him with a bashful smile. "Did you still want
to hang out? I mean, you don't have other plans or anything?"
"No, dude. You said you might be free so I didn't plan anything else."
His friend nodded at him and listened to what Chuck was saying for a couple of
minutes as the teacher rattled off a reading assignment for the day and then
settled down behind his desk with his flask.
"What did you want to do?" Castiel asked quieter now that the rest of the
students were engrossed in reading their individual copies of the play.
Dean shrugged. "You still want to work on the story?."
His friend made a slightly disgusted face, his nose crinkling and a frown
making the corners of his mouth turn downwards.
"Or we could watch a movie. Since you missed last night we can watch what Ash
picked so that you're not lost."
"No, we can do the story. Listen to music or something, do you want to come to
my house? I can play tapes and CDs and stuff. Pull up pretty much anything on
my laptop."
"Can we go to mine?" Dean asked thinking about Castiel drinking coffee out of
his Batman mug that he had rescued from Jo's backyard the last time he had been
over to her house, the handle being fairly easy to superglue back on and
otherwise unscathed.
"Sure," the other boy agreed readily.
===============================================================================
"Dean," Castiel said seriously as they pulled up to the familiar looking
apartment complex.
"Yea, Cas?" He asked gingerly maneuvering the Impala into a parking spot and
turning off the car.
Cas had heard his tape playing on the way over, noting that it was only about
halfway through the first side and wondering if Dean really drove that little
to not have been in the car long enough to listen to the tape all the way
through yet. Or maybe he had and was just choosing to not listen to the B-side
because it was too weird and the other boy was deciding to ignore the whole
thing because it was easier.
"Meg lives here."
"Right," Dean said laughing and climbing out of the car. He stopped short
however; when he noticed Castiel looking around the parking lot and he realized
that his friend was trying to spot his girlfriend's faded green Honda. "You're
serious?'
The other boy nodded and started towards the doors of the building, Dean
followed, stopping in the entrance way to look at the rows of mailboxes for
residents while Cas waited for the elevator. His heart dropped a bit when he
noticed the label 'Masters/Pellegrino" on the metal slot for apartment 201's
mail. She even lived on the same floor as him, across the building yea, but
still.
The elevator arrived and Dean slid in beside his friend, punching the button
for the second floor with probably a bit more force than necessary.
"You really don't like her, do you?" Cas asked softly watching the way Dean's
jaw was clenching and how his muscles in his shoulders were moving agitatedly
underneath the material of the white dress shirt he was wearing.
The other boy jumped a bit, like he hadn't been expecting the question and
forced what looked like a pained smile onto his face. "Nah, man she's great.
Listen if you want to go over to her place instead then I get it."
Cas gave Dean a confused look, did he not want him to come over? Was he just
now realizing that they were probably going to be alone all evening since
Thursdays had become sort of an unofficial date night for their brothers?
Castiel had made sure that the pair would be anywhere but the Winchester
residence when he cornered Sam before study hall and gave an awkward, fake
sounding excuse for why he wanted to be alone with the boy's older brother. He
couldn't even remember what it had been, something about homework and deadlines
and murderous Lit teachers.
"I want to spend time with you Dean, unless…you don't want me around?"
The larger boy laughed, put a guiding hand on the small of his back and draped
his suit jacket over his shoulder for a moment so that he could unlock his
front door. "'Course I want you around, Cas. Mi casa es su casa."
"Glad to see you're learning something in school," A gruff voice said from the
kitchen area of the dimly lit apartment.
Castiel looked up to see an older man standing at the refrigerator, popping the
tab on a can of beer and felt Dean's hand quickly move off of his back.
"Dad," Dean said moving slowly over to the couch and dropping his jacket across
the arm. "You're back."
His friend's father nodded and gave the two boys a scrutinizing look, the
intensity of which was severely lessened by the fact that Castiel was pretty
sure he was at least halfway drunk, especially if the other cans on the kitchen
table were any indication of how long the older man had been at it.
"Yea, I got back from that job in Eudora at about noon." The older man sat
heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and took a long drink from the can in his
hand. "You're being rude, Dean. Who's your friend?"
"This is Cas, dad." Dean muttered giving Castiel a meaningful look and
gesturing with his head that the smaller boy should go into the bedroom that
was situated down a small hallway from the living room.
"What kind of sissy name is that?" Mr. Winchester asked turning a malevolent
eye onto his son's friend.
"It's Castiel, Mr. Winchester." He could play nice, besides this may be the
only opportunity Castiel got to meet his friend's father and it might give him
some insight into why Dean felt he had to prove himself to everyone all of the
time. He moved over to the table and stuck out a hand. "Castiel Novak."
"Novak?" the older man said making no move to shake the hand in front of him.
"You related to that little queer Sammy's been hanging out with?"
Castiel let his hand hover for a moment before he dropped it back to his side,
tugging on the awful shirt he was wearing and wishing he had brought a sweater
or something with him so that he could cover it up. Gabriel had let him and
Anna sleep in that morning, had even given them the option of skipping school
altogether that day if they didn't feel up to going after all of the emotional
backwash of the deposition the night before. But he had wanted to go, felt a
little bit like things were starting to look up for him now that he was facing
his demons, and grabbed the only clean shirt he had left out of his dresser
before having his older brother drive him to school.
"Dad," Dean said warningly stepping up between the two men. "Gabe is Cas's
brother."
Dean's father nodded into his drink for a moment, "Well, your brother's a bit
of a flamer, Castiel."
"Stop it," his friend said giving Cas a small push towards what he could only
assume was his friend's bedroom. "You're being an asshole."
"No, I'm being a concerned parent!" the older Winchester said his voice
starting to get louder as Dean looked down at him with fists clenched. "I came
home the other day and they were asleep on the couch, all cuddled up together
like a couple of fucking faggots. That pervert is trying to turn your little
brother into some kind of shirtlifting homo and I won't have it in my house!"
This was ridiculous, did people really still think like this, talk like this?
He was sad that he knew the answer to that. Castiel was feeling increasingly
uncomfortable about being witness to this whole family drama that was playing
out in front of him and he wondered why Dean wasn't trying to stick up for Sam
more. Tell his father that it wasn't the older man's business who his son chose
to love, did Dean even think that?
"This is the first time you've been concerned in eight fucking years, dad!"
Dean yelled. "You've kinda forfeited the right to dictate what Sam does with
his life."
"Maybe I should go," Castiel said inching towards the front door. "We'll work
on the story another time, Dean."
He saw Dean reach out, almost as if to stop him before he gave Cas an
apologetic look and nodded slightly. The other boy's father didn't look away
from his son and his eyes were blurry and unfocused and filled with misplaced
hatred.
Castiel looked between the two men for a moment, seeing the physical
resemblance in the furious set of Dean's shoulders, in the shape of his mouth
and the curve of his jaw. But that was about it, apart from that Dean was
nothing like his father and Cas hoped that the similarities between the two
Winchesters didn't carry over into any other areas.
He ducked out of the apartment and wandered around the second floor hallway of
the apartment complex, stopping for a moment in front of Meg's door before
deciding that he didn't want to bother his friend when she was spending time
with her own boyfriend. She was probably getting really tired of hearing him
moan and moon over a straight boy anyway.
Castiel decided to head over to the diner and call Gabe from there to come and
get him even though he felt just as guilty for interrupting his older brother's
time with Sam as he did with Meg and Luc. He felt like such a burden on
everyone, like this big stupid ninth wheel to all of the couples that were
pairing off around him and he wished that he had the guts to just come out and
ask Dean what he thought about him, if he thought about him in a way that was
more than friends.
He shivered in the cold evening air and looked around miserably at all of the
Halloween decorations that were popping up all over town, Meg and Jo were
already plotting and planning this huge party on the Saturday before the
holiday at the end of the month and Castiel would probably have to go to it
alone, watch all of his friends being happy with their significant others,
watch Dean go off with some easy girl dressed up as a slutty version of
something that wasn't meant to be slutty, a vending machine or something.
This was exactly why he wasn't going to go to the homecoming dance tomorrow,
firstly he couldn't dance and secondly he couldn't bear to watch his crush spin
around the dance floor with someone who only wanted the other boy for a night.
Barb greeted him when he walked into the diner and he settled at the counter
since he was by himself. He ordered a cup of coffee and texted Gabriel asking
if he could come and get him when he had the chance. His phone chimed a reply
from the other man a couple of minutes later that said the movie he and the
younger Winchester were seeing had just started and it would be a while.
The young man sighed and ran a hand over his face.
"Top you off, Castiel?" Barb asked holding a steaming coffee pot over his half
empty cup and watching him with a concerned look on her face.
He nodded at her and tried to force a smile that he didn't really feel onto his
face. All of the fearlessness he had felt after talking to the lawyers was gone
replaced again with the certainty that he was going to spend the rest of his
life alone.
"What's wrong kid?" A twangy male voice said beside him.
Castiel looked over at the middle aged man sitting a couple of barstools over
with surprise.
"Bobby, leave him alone." The waitress said sternly, sloshing some coffee into
the cup in front of the older flannel-clad man.
"Stow it, Barb." The man replied good-naturedly putting out a hand. "You're
Castiel. Cas? Friends with Dean Winchester?"
He nodded dumbly at the other man and shook the offered hand. "I'm sorry, I
don't know who you are."
"Bobby Singer. Sam and Dean work for me out at my garage sometimes."
"You're their uncle," Castiel realized, picking up his mug and carefully
sipping at the scalding liquid.
Bobby chuckled a bit and it did everything to take away from the craggy
harshness of the older man's voice making it seem warm and fatherly instead of
intimidating. "I guess ya could say that. John, their dad, n' I go way back.
Friends since we were kids."
"Yea, I just met John." He replied biting his lip to keep him from saying all
of the unkind thoughts he was having about the Winchester patriarch.
"He wasn't always like that," Bobby said softly, sounding slightly sad.
"John's…changed a lot since the boy's mom left. 'N it's not for the best."
Castiel nodded, his dad had changed a lot after his mom died. He meant what he
had said to Dean that night on the picnic table, he thought it twisted you to
lose the person you were meant to be with. Made you bitter and angry and
hateful to everyone around you who was trying to be happy.
"That what got you down, then? John said something bigoted and stupid to ya."
He smiled at the insightfulness of the older man, "About my brother, but it's
not anything I haven't heard before. No, I was just thinking about how
sometimes people focus on one thing about you to hate and to those people it's
like you're everything that's wrong with the world. And then the people you
want to notice you don't, it's like you're invisible."
Bobby swiveled on his stool to face Castiel and reached into his back pocket
where he pulled out a wallet and laid several bills down on the countertop.
"Dean said you were smart, Cas. Let me give ya some advice. Something I wish
someone had said to me when I was yer age."
"Dean talks about me?" Castiel asked as Bobby stood up and dusted off the
crumbs from his shirt.
"Focus boy," The old man snapped, laughing as he did so to let Castiel know
that he wasn't being mean. "I know its hard now. Feeling invisible and tryin'
to figure out who ya' are. But ya gotta remeber, it gets better. When ya get
older, other people's opinions don't matter so much anymore and then ya realize
that it just takes one person to make you feel special. N' if you're lucky then
you'll be the person who makes that person feel special too."
"He never told me how nice you are," Castiel said referring to his friend who
kept so much about himself a secret.
"Well, I've got a reputation to protect," Bobby said patting him on the
shoulder and giving him a wink. "Ya just remind me of myself when I was
younger. And no one told me how pig-headed those Winchester's could be, thought
you might 'preciate the heads up."
Castiel watched the older man leave, feeling slightly better about Dean, if
that was the kind of person who the other boy considered family then maybe John
hadn't messed up his son too badly with intolerant assholery. He waved a hand
to get Barb's attention and ordered a piece of cherry pie.
===============================================================================
Dean sat in the parking lot in front of the gym and took a long, slow sip of
the flask he was holding, relishing the burn of the bourbon as it slid down his
throat. It wasn't his flask, it was Chuck's and he had stolen it.
When it had gotten to be too much, watching Jo and Adam and Garth and Ash with
their dates sitting around and dancing and laughing and celebrating that the
lions had crushed the visiting team, Dean had snuck out of the streamer
decorated gym and crept down the deserted high school hallways to his teacher's
classroom. It had been easy to pick the lock to the door and Chuck didn't
bother with keeping the flask locked away so it had been like taking candy from
a big, bearded, near-sighted baby.
He hadn't seen Cas after halftime and when he asked everyone where the other
boy had gone they told him that Meg had taken him home early since he had a lot
of homework to do. Dean figured they probably weren't doing homework and
couldn't stop himself from picturing his friend dragging the small, brunette
woman up to his room in the Novak household, silencing her giggles with a kiss
as he pressed her up against the wall outside his poster-covered door.
Dean took another stinging drink from the flask and closed his eyes hard to try
to block out the image in his head. He wasn't trying to get drunk, didn't
really have any desire to drown out the feelings he was having or the envious
jealousy he got when he had watched the couples slow dancing on the wooden
floor of the gym, wishing he were out there and wondering which one of them
would lead, him or Cas?
No, he just wanted to dull the aching in his chest a little bit and the alcohol
made that empty spot feel all warm and fuzzy.
Dean turned his keys in the ignition, just until the dash lit up and the radio
started playing. The tape Cas had made him was still stuck in Baby's tape deck
and by now he had heard the songs on the first side so many times that he could
sing along with all of them, knew every key change and how the tempos of the
covers varied from the original songs. They had become the soundtracks to his
dreams and he hummed them in the shower, but God was he tired of listening to
them over and over.
You see, there was something about Baby that Dean didn't' tell people. He
bragged all of the time about how he and his dad had built her from the ground
up from a rusted shell of a body in Bobby's scrap yard into the sleek piece of
American made machinery that she was today, but not a lot of people knew that
she wasn't perfect.
People that rode in her a lot knew the stories behind the legos that rattled in
the heating vents during the winter and about the army men jammed into the
ashtray in the back seat. Sam and he were the only ones that knew about their
initials carved under the floor mats, but that was more of a brotherly bonding
thing that they had the first time Dean had gotten the younger boy drunk on
cheap wine coolers and Everclear one Easter break.
But Bobby was the only one who knew about the fact that Baby was a notorious
cassette tape eater. He and Dean had spent an entire weekend once meticulously
taking apart the dash of the Impala in order to try to figure out the reason
why the third copy of Back in Black that the younger man had managed to find at
a garage sale had been ruined when Dean had tried to forcefully eject the tape
that was stuck only playing one side.
After not being able to figure it out that day, he had finally retired the
twisted fork that he kept in the glove box that sometimes worked when he was
trying to get the tapes out that Baby was just refusing to let go of. It was
getting harder and harder to find copies of the stuff he liked on cassette and
he had surrendered to the fact that when the car decided it was ready it would
finally let the automatic flipping function kick it and turn the tapes over to
let the B-side play.
However, this time it was like torture. Cas hadn't included a track listing for
the alternate side of the tape, if he had Dean just would've gone home and
looked them up on Sam's laptop, and the larger boy was just dying to know what
was on the other side. The first side had seemed so perfect in that original
listening made him realize just how much Castiel paid attention and picked up
on when Dean talked about the things he liked.
He figured he could always ask, but he didn't want his friend thinking that he
didn't understand the songs or what the music was trying to say. So when
Castiel asked him what he thought of the tape he would just shrug and make
little noncommittal noises of approval and his friend would look at him
thoughtfully for a minute, searching his face for something, he didn't know
what and then change the subject to something else.
Just like he had done when Dean had tried to apologize for how his dad had
acted the night before. All he had ever wanted was a normal dad who yea, was
sad that his wife had walked out on him, but got over it eventually, like Ellen
had when Jo's dad had died when they were kids and was going out on dates every
now and then when her daughter hosted a party. But John was an asshole and a
drunk and a much different person than he had been when his sons had been kids
and looked up to him as the epitome of what a man should be.
And Castiel was really nonchalant about it, shook off the older Winchester's
unkind words saying that all father's let their kids down now and then and Dean
hadn't known what that meant, but it felt meaningful and significant and he
felt like maybe he should push for an explanation from his friend, but that
would just drive him more towards Meg who kept everything light and airy and
was never serious about anything. Maybe that was why Cas liked her so much. She
didn't brood, Jo told Dean that he brooded a lot.
A soft tapping sound on the passenger side window had him sitting up from where
he had reclined the front bench seat back and fumbling to hide the pilfered
flask from whoever was bothering him. The door opened with its familiar
creaking sound and the youngest Novak poked her head in the opening.
"Hey Dean," She said with a smile on her face. "Can I join you?"
"Sure, Anna. " Dean mumbled wishing it was another member of this strange
little family slipping onto the seat beside him.
The lithe girl slid back on the seat and looked up at the ceiling of the car
thoughtfully for a couple of minutes. Dean wasn't exactly sure what he should
be saying to her, never really having talked to the younger sister of his
friend expect in passing or to inquire about where Cas was.
"Why are you out here?" She asked turning her head to look at him and settling
her hands on her stomach. "Hiding from someone?"
Dean shrugged, he didn't really want to go into the reasons for why he didn't
want to join in on the revelry that his friends were engaging in. They all
involved Castiel and feelings that he wasn't really ready to admit to himself
yet, let alone talk about with his best friend's younger sister.
"Cas texted me," the girl said without preamble. "Asked me if I was having a
good time. Asked me if you were drunk. Are you drunk?"
"No," he snapped, but a part of him trilled over the thought of Cas worrying
about him. "I just feel all out of place in there. Everyone's partnered up, I'm
the only one without a date."
"You could have anyone in this school you wanted, Dean." Anna replied unfazed
by his rudeness. "All you have to do is ask."
"Well, there aren't really any girls I'm interested in right now." That was a
little too close to the truth, but he didn't think Anna would notice.
She hummed in response and they listened to the soft sound of 'Under Pressure'
being covered over the stereo. "Has my brother done that thing where he asks
you about jumping off a building yet?"
"The one about facing up or down?" Dean asked seeing Anna nod slightly out of
the corner of his eye. "Yea, but it was a cliff, not a building."
"And what did you say?"
"Face up."
Anna laughed a bit and Dean shifted uncomfortably in his seat, he hadn't
thought he had said anything funny. "Castiel always said face up too. Said he
could pretend like he was flying if the ground wasn't rushing up at him."
"Well, when we did it he said face down." Dean grumbled.
"I could see why he would say that now, maybe he thinks it's better to know
what coming so that you can prepare for all of the outcomes."
Dean hadn't thought of it that way when he had answered, at the time he had
been too busy imagining the horrified faces of Sam and Cas and Bobby standing
at the bottom of the cliff as they watched him fall to think about what his
answer would mean in some sub-conscious way.
"My brother is a complicated person, Dean. He's not very good at talking about
his feelings, you have to spend a lot of time with him to be able to read
between the lines. I think you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, Castiel has
also been hurt a lot by people that he trusted. People that he thought cared
about him or had his best interests at heart and I just need to know that you
aren't going to do that too."
He swallowed and stared determinedly at the dome light on the Impala's ceiling.
Fuck, Anna knew. She knew that he liked Cas, knew that he was jealous of Meg
and how happy she made his friend, and she knew that the last thing he wanted
was to hurt the other boy. This was her subtle way of telling him to back off.
"I would never do anything to hurt Cas, Anna. I just want him to be happy."
Dean felt like his mouth was full of marbles; it was so hard to force those
words out. He wanted to add 'with me' but knew that that kind of declaration
wasn't what the girl was asking from him.
"Good." Anna declared opening the door of the car and hopping out daintily.
"I'm happy we had this talk, Dean."
He watched her walk away before he allowed his head to drop back heavily on the
seat as he fought to keep the tears from spilling out of his eyes.
"Son of a bitch." Dean whispered to whoever out there that cared enough to
listen.
Chapter End Notes
     So, its looking like 13 is going to be the lucky number for this
     story. Excited anyone?
     Keep reviewing and letting me know what you think, Halloween is
     coming up and right now there are only a couple of characters (Cas,
     Meg, and Luc)with costumes, if you have any creative ideas shoot them
     my way and I will include them in the next chapter!
***** Here Comes Your Man *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Castile ran his fingers through the other boy's hair, still not believing that
this was real, that everything was finally going his way for once. His legs had
long ago fallen asleep from the heavy weight of the head resting in his lap,
but he didn't care; it was the perfect sensation. As far as he was concerned he
could become paraplegic tomorrow and as long as the last phantom feeling he had
in his dead limbs was this numb, happy tingling it would be worth it.
Images flickered across the screen in front of them, casting the faces of his
friends around him into a muted half-light that kept them from seeing the small
relaxed smile that was on his face. During a particularly dark scene he leaned
down and placed a soft kiss on the forehead under his hand and it was enough to
cause the other boy to sigh contentedly.
Dean looked up at him and smiled stretching on the couch that he was laid out
on and tucking his feet under the throw pillow that was at the other end. Cas
felt only slightly guilty that he and the other boy were taking up the entirety
of the largest couch in the basement, but at some point Garth seemed to have
acquired more furniture, enough to accommodate each person in their group as
well as their respective partners.
They were watching a movie that he had picked out for Dean, something full of
Beatles songs, covers funnily enough that Castiel founding appealing in their
own way. It was nothing like Elvis, but he supposed he could make some
sacrifices for the boy he loved. They hadn't said it yet, but he knew.
He saw it in the way that Dean would try to be all old fashioned, opening doors
for him and offering to carry his books from class to class. It was like the
other boy didn't know how to be anything but gentlemanly and he found it
endearing and adorable and so fucking sexy that it took everything he had not
to pounce on Dean every time he did something chivalrous.
Their moments together played out like a montage in his head, the sensations of
soft kisses and a warm body pressed up against his feeling like something that
couldn't possibly be real. The taste of the boy being fleeting and
indescribable and everything he had ever hoped it would be when Dean would
place teasing pecks on his lips in between classes. Their first kiss had been
sweet and tender, something that left him vibrating even long after it was over
and Dean was just holding him in the front seat of the Impala.
Castiel looked around the room at his friends, happy that everything had worked
out for everyone. Adam and Jo were in the armchair, somehow squeezed into the
small space together, Garth and Becky were sitting with a modest amount of room
between them, but he could see their clasped hands even in the dim light, and
Ash was sitting with a girl leaning into his shoulder, her back to the rest of
the room and her legs folded underneath her. Sometimes it felt like it had
taken forever for everyone to get here.
Later, they walked across the park to Cas's house like they always did. Their
breath making little, smoky puffs crystallize in the air in front of them as
they clutched their coats around them with one hand and each other with the
remaining one. Dean dragged him over to what they had started calling 'their
table' and pulled him down onto it, settling Castiel's head onto his chest and
tucking the smaller boy's icy hands inside his leather coat.
It made him feel safe to know that the other boy cared about him so much,
probably had an exaggerated fear that his fingers would get frostbitten and
fall off since Castiel refused to wear gloves, saying they made his hands feel
smushy.
"This is nice," Castiel murmmered into the chest beneath him and shivered when
he felt Dean move to put his own frigid hands against his back under his
sweater in an effort to keep them warm.
Dean grunted in agreement above him, sounding tired after their long day at
school. Cas knew that he had been working extra hours with Bobby now that
football season was over, something about making sure this Christmas counted or
something. He didn't care about presents though, as far as he was concerned
getting Dean was enough to make him happy with coal in his stocking for the
rest of his life. The smaller boy made a move to get off of the picnic table so
that he could drag Dean back to his house and make him get a decent night's
sleep, but he felt the other boy's arms tighten around him anchoring him to the
spot.
"Just a little bit longer, Cas." Dean said and Castiel knew that he was looking
at the stars. It was something he had admitted to Cas that he did every now and
then, look at the stars and wonder if his mom was looking at them too.
"Okay."
And they stayed there, Dean looking up at the stars probably making up
constellations in his head and Castiel listening to his boyfriend's breathing
and counting each heartbeat like it would be the last one he ever heard.
Cas woke up with a smile on his face, that had been a nice dream.
Nothing like the ones that he had been having lately of walking in on Dean with
faceless girls who were half clothed or the less explicit ones that were even
worse, of Dean walking into Jo's kitchen shirtless with a girl coming in behind
him, blushing and bashful in only the missing shirt and no one batting an eye
at it.
He didn't really think that something like that would happen, but the
possibility of it was what scared him. Castiel had seen his friend talking to
girls in the hallways at school more than ever, tried to not notice the way
they unabashedly draped themselves over Dean and ignored the thoughts he had of
pulling them away and kissing the other boy in a way that would make it clear
that he was off limits.
Part of the dream was based on reality, of the week after homecoming when he
had chosen Across the Universe for movie night now that he knew how his friend
felt about The Beatles and while he hadn't been stroking Dean's hair, his legs
had fallen asleep from where the other boy had been stubbornly leaning up
against them since Castiel had snagged the armchair first yet again. They had
also stopped at their table on the walk home and Dean had given him another
impromptu astronomy lesson that had taken the smaller boy about twenty minutes
to realize was completely made up.
The tip off had been when Dean had pointed out a cluster of stars and declared
that it was the Pac-man nebula. He had poked at his friend until they had both
been sprawled out and breathless from falling off of the table with laughter
and onto the ground. Their legs had gotten tangled up and Dean's face flushed
from the cold had been absolutely adorable.
Castiel had given Dean an extra week and Meg had given him nothing but shit for
it. Alternating between calling him a coward over the phone and taking him out
for ice cream to make up for being mean to him.
He had decided to give Dean the extra time to come talk to him because of
something that Anna said to him when she came back from the homecoming dance.
She had woken him from where he had been dozing on the living room couch,
Calculus homework left strewn all over the coffee table from where he had given
up on it earlier in the evening with this impassioned speech about not giving
up on the things that he wanted and how maybe Dean was just as scared to talk
to him as Cas was of initiating the conversation himself. But he had initiated,
that's what the tape was and Dean wasn't scared of anything
But another week had gone by and nothing had happened. After listening to Meg
pleading with him to either broach the subject with Dean or move on he had
decided to do the latter. It was obvious that his friend didn't want to discuss
Castiel's silly little declaration of affection and he didn't want to lose the
other boy over feelings that weren't reciprocated. No, if he was going to have
to choose between being honest with his friend and losing him forever or
suffering in silence, he definitely wasn't going to pick the one that made Dean
hate him.
So that's what had led to his uncomfortable conversation with Adam in the
locker room after ROTC practice on the Wednesday before Halloween. They had
just finally convinced Virgil to let them try a trick toss during the halftime
show of the upcoming football game that would involve them launching their
rifles to each other over the heads of the other cadets of the team. It was
going to require a lot of trust, on both of their parts as well as from the
rest of the squad.
"It's going to be awesome, Cas! Just imagine the looks on everyone's faces when
we pull this off," Adam said triumphantly shrugging off his sweat-soaked hoodie
and grabbing his stuff to take a shower.
It was going to be Adam's first week going to the gang's movie night and Cas
knew that the younger boy was nervous about it.
"Yea, it's gonna be great." Castiel agreed wanting to get his request out
before the football team showed up. "Listen, I have kind of a weird favor to
ask from you."
"What is it, dude?"
"Do you think you could set me up with your cousin still? Y'know…the one
who's…um…like me?" Castiel tried to look anywhere but at his friend who had the
most dumbfounded expression on face.
"Like on a date?" Adam asked sounding uncertain. "You giving up on Dean, Cas?"
Castiel buried his face in his hands and groaned loudly. Of course Jo had told
Adam about Dean, was nothing sacred anymore?! "Yes. To both questions. Maybe
you can invite your cousin to Meg's party this weekend so that there are a lot
of other people around in case he doesn't like me."
"There's no way that Michael wouldn't like you, Cas. I'm more worried about you
being too good for him, sometimes he is a bit…intense."
"Like stalker intense?"
Adam shook his head quickly, "No, nothing like that. I'll ask him if he can
come down from Kansas City for the weekend and you'll see what I mean."
"Thanks, Adam." Castiel said right as the first footballer bounded into the
locker room early from practice.
The lions had been doing amazingly well all season, barring that first
disastrous away game and with only two games left in the year Wisdom had been
letting the players out of practice earlier and earlier.
"And Jo doesn't need to know about this," he added quickly. Castiel really
didn't want to hear another one of his friend's opinions about how he was
choosing to handle the whole Dean thing. Meg was vocalizing her displeasure
enough to last him a lifetime.
"I'm not good at keeping secrets from her, man." Adam complained as he walked
towards the showers.
Castiel made a face and then turned back around to his own locker, he debated
for a moment before he decided that he better shower too since he could still
remember how uncomfortable he had been the entire night when he had skipped his
shower during the week that he and Dean weren't speaking.
He didn't think that anyone would be looking at him close enough to notice a
couple of weird scars and if they were then he was really just too tired to
care. He drug his gym shirt over his head and tossed it into the bottom of the
small locker, grabbing his shampoo, body wash, and towel.
When he went to start towards the showers before they got too full, he was met
with Dean giving him an open-mouthed stare. The other boy had just taken off
his shoulder pads and was clutching them in a white-knuckled grip in front of
his chest.
"Dean, what's wrong?" Castiel asked moving closer to his friend.
The other boy's eyes widened and Cas saw his adam's apple bob in his throat as
he swallowed hard. He felt his friend's eyes roaming over his chest and
realized too late that Dean was probably horrified by the one big scar he had
right over his heart. The one that looked like a shaky cross, it was the one
mark that Raphael had left on Castiel himself, the only one that the police
said wasn't self-inflicted.
"Nothing, Cas." Dean said hurriedly, dropping his shoulder pads with a loud
clatter on the floor by their lockers and scrambling for his clothes. "Are you
taking a shower?"
"Yes?" he replied uncertainly, feeling like it should be pretty obvious since
he was half-naked, holding a towel and still covered in sweat. "Are you?"
Even though he was giving up on his little crush, Castiel wasn't sure if he
could resist the urge to stare at his friend if they were in the long, open
tiled room where the boys of Lawrence High showered after gym class. None of
the other guys at the school peaked his interest at all, he was pretty sure it
would always be Dean and that's why he was going out of his way to import a
date in the form of Adam's cousin.
"No, man." Dean said moving away towards the rows of stalls that Castiel
usually changed clothes in. "I don't feel all that sweaty. I think I'm just
gonna skip it. I'll…uh wait for you and Adam on the bleachers, just whenever
you're ready to head over Garth's."
===============================================================================
Dean was in hell. This had to be what hell was like.
Being forced to watch the person that he wanted to be with so badly talk and
laugh and smile with someone else. Because of someone else. It was the most
sadistic kind of torture imaginable.
When had they started letting girlfriends and boyfriends come to movie night?
When had it become a rule that just because you were hooking up with someone
they were automatically part of the group? They had never let Dean bring a date
to movie night, but then again most of the girls in his life weren't exactly
the type to stick around and cuddle and get to know each other after they
finished with him.
He had been trying, like really trying to get past his crush on Castiel,
especially after Anna had let him know that she thought it would just hurt her
brother if Dean acted on his feelings. But he could only manage half-hearted
flirting with the girls at school and for some reason they were acting like the
fact that he was not perusing them with his normal enthusiasm was some kind of
personal challenge to their entire sex or something. Most days he couldn't even
make it down the hallway without ending up with someone plastered to his side
or getting a scribbled down phone number shoved into his hand.
It wasn't his fault that it was happening and he was getting really tired of
getting slapped in the back of his head by Jo every day when she saw him trying
to escape from one of his admirers in the most polite way possible, by smiling
and complementing them as he gave the 'it's not you it's me speech' over and
over until he felt like he was a broken record.
Jo had picked some romantic comedy for movie night and Dean was just trying to
make it through it with his sanity as he sat curled up in the armchair with Cas
and Meg sitting on the floor in front of him. Every time the girl leaned over
and whispered something he could almost hear into his friend's ear and Castiel
responded to it with that small quirk of his lips that he got when he was
amused, but trying to be quiet about it, it just killed him a little more
inside.
That was the smile that Cas got when Dean was going out of his way to be silly
in the library during study hall in order to annoy the stern crone-like
librarian who had been breathing down their necks ever since that first day
when he and Jo had taught Cas how to play cards. Back when being around his
friend was easy and uncomplicated and he had no idea how fast he would fall for
someone who would never ever ever want him in the same way. It was a new
experience for Dean. And it sucked.
It didn't help that he had been dreaming about the other boy for weeks now;
they had started out innocent enough. With him and Cas sitting around his
living room studying or watching a movie on the couch in the other boy's house.
Then cuddling had becoming involved, which wasn't something that Dean had a lot
of practice with, but he knew enough that he would probably be down with having
Cas snuggled up against him or even vice versa and he didn't care how pansy
that sounded.
And then the kissing, he imagined that his friend would be a gentle kisser
since he was so soft-spoken most of the time, would let Dean take the lead
because they could both admit that the larger boy had more experience in that
department. In his dreams they kissed everywhere: in the hallways at school
gentle and sweet, after they went running together in the mornings keeping it
chaste and tame in front of the Golden Girls, in the Impala barely able to keep
their hands off of each other when they were alone on their drives over to
Garth's house for movie night, outside of Cas's bedroom with Dean taking the
place of Meg in few times he had imagined that his friend dominated their
encounters.
The dreams progressed naturally from there, turning more into lurid fantasies
that had Dean guessing who would be doing what to whom because he had never
been with a guy before and didn't really know what they did together in the
bedroom, but knew what he liked girls to do to him and filled in the soft
female forms with images of Cas all rugged and wet after coming out of the
shower that one time he had seen the other boy in just a towel.
God, Cas shirtless was something Dean thought he would never be able to get
over. For the months that he had know him it had just been that one time that
he had seen the other boy and Castiel had seemed pretty freaked out by the
whole thing, maybe even then Dean was looking at him in a way that most guys
didn't look at people they just considered their friends. He didn't know, but
he figured that the attraction he felt for the other boy wasn't something that
had just happened overnight otherwise he wouldn't be having as much trouble
with getting over it as he was.
The change in the other boy even just over the month and half or so since
football season had started was astounding. When Cas had started school it was
like he was a toned, but starved athlete, lacking any real definition to the
muscles that Dean had always suspected his friend of having. But now, it was
like all of that running and tossing guns in the air and stuff had turned him
from Peter Parker into Spiderman overnight all biceps and hints of a sixpack
and that V of muscle he could see where the other boy's gym shorts hung off of
his hips and a chest that went on for freaking miles.
He didn't know where this appreciation for the male form had come from, but he
partially blamed Harrison Ford and George Lucas for making him like the stoic,
brainy, chiseled type of person that just was everything Castiel didn't have to
work at being. And when he had walked into the locker room to seen his friend
taking off his shirt like it was just nothing to be that good looking, well his
brain had just shut down a bit and all of his blood had rushed to other parts
of him. A phenomena that had been happening with almost embarrassing regularity
anytime he sat close enough to feel the body heat radiating off of his friend
and smell that scent that made Dean worry that he would never be able to eat a
peppermint again without getting a raging hard-on.
It was like when he was thirteen all over again and anytime a pretty girl
walked by with a little more bounce in her step than usual he had almost
creamed his pants. So yea, his 'me time' had been happening a lot more lately,
with Sam complaining that there was never any hot water left in the shower by
the time he got out flushed from more than just the steam and the heat and
hoping his little brother hadn't heard him trying to muffle the way he was
moaning Castiel's name as he came. Most of the time he didn't make it past the
part in his head where his friend would nibble on that spot that Dean liked
behind his ear before he was gone.
He hugged his throw pillow to his chest and gritted his teeth when Meg looked
back at him in the dark room with a self-satisfied little smirk on her face.
She didn't even realize how lucky she was that Dean had been raised not to
fight with girls because something about Cas's girlfriend just made him want to
call her the most colorful names he could think of before pulling her hair like
a prima donna and telling her how much she didn't deserve his friend.
Dean made it through the movie, but only barely because Cas had leaned his head
back on Dean's knee and looked at him with this sweet, sad little smile on his
face when Joesph Gordon Levitt sang karaoke. He recognized the song as
something that his friend had played for him the week before when he had been
on a 90s music kick and since then it had played in his head every time he saw
Castiel walk into a room.
And it just made his heart do this painful squeezing thing that had been
happening every time he caught himself wishing that his friend liked him back
and he almost got up and left Garth's basement right then because he just
wanted to kiss Cas so hard but couldn't because he was Dean freaking Winchester
and he had made a promise that he wouldn't do anything to hurt his friend.
"So the party," Jo said clapping her hands together once the movie was over and
Adam had gotten up to turn back on the lights. "Saturday. Meg's apartment,
about 8ish."
"Bring your own booze, minors, or cough up for the keg because I will not be
forking out for this whole thing by myself." Meg said taking Cas's offered hand
to help her up off of the floor.
Dean reached for his wallet, mentally calculating how much he could chip in for
alcohol since rent was going to be due next week.
"I got it, Dean." Castiel said waving a hand at him and quickly pulling out his
own wallet from his back pocket and handing the other girl a couple of
twenties.
Meg gave Dean a scathing look before gathering cash from the rest of the
assembled party and heading up the stairs with Cas trailing after her. Dean ran
a hand over his face and let out a heavy sigh, he didn't know how much more of
this he could take. It was going to get to the point where he was going to have
to weigh how much he wanted to be around his friend versus how much he couldn't
stand the other boy's girlfriend. And it was close, Meg was just such a
freaking jerk about everything especially when it came to Dean.
"Have you decided what you're dressing up as yet?" Becky piped up from near his
elbow.
Dean jumped slightly; he hadn't even seen her come up next to him. "Um…yea. I'm
going as Malcom Reynolds, y'know the captain of Serenity from Firefly?"
The girl crinkled her nose at him in distaste, "I'm not real big on sci-fi. I
like paranormal stuff more. Garth and I are going to go to be Shaggy and Velma
from Scooby Doo. Like a couple's costume!"
"That's real romantic," He replied sarcastically, climbing to his feet and
preparing for not having Castiel waiting for him to walk with him across the
park since Meg was there to take him home tonight.
Dean walked out the front doors and was surprised to see the couple standing
near Meg's car talking in heated whispers. He crept closer, marveling over the
fact they hadn't seen him yet and a small, petty part of him hoped they were
fighting.
"You don't owe him anything, Cas." Meg said angrily trying to hand him
something.
"I know," He heard his friend reply pushing her hand away and crossing his arms
over his chest. "I just feel bad, like I need to make it up to him for
everything being so awkward. He didn't even want to be in the locker room with
me earlier, Meg."
"Well, that's his fucking problem then. You're moving on so you need to stop
acting like this is the thing that's going to ruin your friendship with him. If
it was going to be an issue then I'm sure he would've said something by now."
Castiel nodded a bit, looking down at the ground. "It's just so hard being
around him."
Shit, Anna must've told Cas.
Why couldn't Dean just have this one little thing? He was trying so hard to
keep his friend from being uncomfortable, but it didn't fucking matter because
Cas didn't want to be around him, probably thought Dean was going to throw
himself at him or something. Well, he didn't need anyone's pity and it hurt him
that Castiel couldn't just keep going on like they were, pretending everything
was the same.
"Then you don't have to be around me," Dean said stepping out from behind Jo's
truck and trying to keep his voice steady even though all he wanted to do was
scream at Castiel and ask him what he could do to make things better between
them.
Cas looked up at him with wide eyes, his mouth moving soundlessly and it was
enough. Enough to tell Dean that it was what the other boy wanted and he just
had to get out of there. He couldn't let Cas see him fall apart when he told
Dean that he loved Meg and couldn't be what Dean wanted him to be.
He stormed over to the Impala and gunned the engine, feeling like this was a
familiar scenario by now, him running away from what he was feeling when he saw
Meg and Castiel together. Just like he had done after Jo's party when he had
started the chain of events that would ruin his friendship with the first
person to make him believe that someone could like him for who he really was,
without all of the bullshit and the fake smiles.
===============================================================================
"I think you should wear the button down," Gabriel said from where he was
applying black faint paint to the area around Sam's eyes. "The blue, it makes
your eyes pop. You have great eyes, Cas. I'm always telling you that. Play up
your strengths."
"I don't even want to go anymore," Castiel said dejectedly looking down at the
two shirts he had narrowed himself down to, one of which he would wear to meet
his blind date at Meg's party.
"You're going." His older brother said firmly, tossing down the cotton balls in
his hand and moving to grab the costumes he had rented for himself and the
younger Winchester to wear to the Halloween festivities that they were
attending. "I'm tired of seeing you moping around here hiding away from having
normal, teenage experiences. You're allowed to have fun and date and act crazy
every once and a while."
"Give him a break, Gabs." Sam said taking the offered garment bag from the
smaller man and then giving him an affectionate shove towards the bathroom. "Go
get dressed, we're gonna be late."
Gabriel stuck his tongue out at the younger man, but went to do what he said
pausing long enough to point a stern finger at his little brother. "I spent a
fortune on that fucking monstrosity of a costume so you better be there, Cas."
He nodded miserably and glanced over at the pair of wings that were hanging up
on the back of Gabriel's bedroom door. Castiel had begged for his older brother
to order them for him off of Etsy over two weeks ago when he and the rest of
his friends had been sitting around at lunch throwing around ideas for
Halloween costumes. Garth had offhandedly said something about how Cas should
dress up as an angel since at the time Meg was saying that she was going to
dress up as the devil, but she had changed her mind when Luc had leveled his
most unamused glare at her when she brought it up the next time Castiel was at
the couple's apartment eating dinner.
Once it was said however, Dean had gotten this excited look on his face and
even though he knew that he shouldn't keep beating a dead horse, Castiel had
decided to go ahead splurge on the idea that made the other boy light up like
it was Christmas. Gabriel made him promise that he would clean the gutters and
do the dishes for the next month before he had agreed to fork over the money
for the very realistic and expensive costume that had cost extra since they
were a rush order.
Now he just felt stupid for still caring enough to want to try to please Dean.
His friend hadn't spoken to him all day Thursday and hadn't shown up at school
or the game on Friday at all, much to Coach Wisdom's displeasure. And the only
explanation that Castiel could think of was that the other boy was too
disgusted by him to want be around him anymore. If Cas had just been able to
keep how he was feeling in check then maybe this all wouldn't have happened. He
knew that it was one thing for Dean to be supportive and accepting of the fact
that Sam liked other men they were family after all, but it was a completely
different story when he had to spend every day stuck with a boy who just
wouldn't stop mooning at him like a silly prepubescent girl with a crush.
"Cas," Sam said quietly, drawing him away from the brooding direction that his
thoughts were taking. "I really think you should talk to him."
"I'm going to go to the party, Sam. Gabriel doesn't need to worry, Anna and I
are going to ride with Jo because my wings won't fit into the back of the
Cadillac." Castiel assured the other boy, through god only knew how much his
brother had spent renting his and Sam's own Batman and Robin costumes for the
evening.
"Not, Gabriel." The younger man said, twisting his hands anxiously. "Dean's
really fucked up right now, Cas. You're his best friend, he talks about you all
of the time and I don't know what happened, but I think you hurt his feelings."
"Well, he hurt my feelings." Castiel snapped crossing his arms over his chest
and spinning away from Sam so that his friend's brother wouldn't see how upset
he really was. "I didn't mean to make him uncomfortable, but he is the one who
can't deal with the fact that I like him. I shouldn't have to apologize for
that, it's not fair."
"No it's not." Sam agreed moving behind the older boy and placing a comforting
hand on his shoulder. "But neither is the fact that for his whole life, Dean
has had to act a certain way and talk a certain way so that people don't see
the things that he's struggling with underneath all of the flirting and being
Mr. All-American football guy. Everything that he has missed out on having
because of how self-sacrificing he is has been because of me."
"I'm sure that's not true, Sam." He replied turning around to look up at the
other boy.
"No, it is." The younger man said sadly. "And for a long time I was willing to
just let him give up on being with someone who he really cared about, who
really cared about him because I thought it was what he wanted. But, Cas, every
since your family moved here, Dean has been so much happier than I've ever seen
him and the only thing that's really changed for him is you."
Castiel sucked in a sharp breath and bit his lip, if only Sam knew how much he
wished that was true.
"Dean's not good with telling people that he cares about them, especially if he
thinks that they would be better off not knowing how he feels. He's just gotten
so used to letting go of everything he wants because it's all he knows how to
do, but I know my brother, Cas. And I know how he acts when something is really
important to him and how he is now since he thinks he's lost you, just fucking
miserable and destroyed. Well, I think you might be the most important thing to
ever happen to him."
He couldn't stop himself from letting out the small sob that escaped him,
Castiel didn't even know if he wanted to stop it. Maybe he still had a chance
to fix things with Dean, at least salvage their friendship if nothing else. But
he wasn't going to let himself hope for more.
===============================================================================
"They were my fucking friends first," Dean muttered to himself as he stormed
down the stairwell in his apartment complex, resolved that he was going to
Meg's fucking party and he didn't care how uncomfortable he made Cas or anyone
else who might know how he felt about the other boy.
He made a point to stay as far away from Meg's side of the building as possible
so that he wouldn't run into anyone he knew before he was ready to. Dean was
heading over to Bobby's house to borrow some last minute things for his Mal
costume, namely a gun holster and the older man's antique Colt pistol that he
had promised Dean the use of if he spent all day Sunday detailing the cars that
were going to be picked up by their owners over the next week.
When Dean cranked the engine to the Impala he was greeted with the last song on
Cas's tape blaring out at him where he had left it playing the cover of "Any
Way You Want It" turned all the way up when he had driven home from school on
Thursday, needing the loud music to drown out how he was feeling anytime he
thought of Castiel taking pity on him by being his friend still when Dean
finally broke down and told him that he couldn't live without the other boy in
his life, even if it was awkward and different than it had been before Anna had
told her brother about Dean liking him.
He hadn't even gone to school on Friday because he was so scared that he would
embarrass himself and Castiel with some unwanted romantic declaration for the
other boy that everyone would see and make fun of him for when he was
inevitably turned down. Instead he had stayed in bed all day, listening to
songs that reminded him of Cas on Sam's laptop and drinking from one of his
dad's bottles of whiskey that he was pretty sure John wouldn't miss.
The song ended a couple of minutes later as he drove through the crowded
streets that contained the bars near the college and Dean automatically reached
out to push the rewind button as he had done so many times since the cassette
had gotten stuck in Baby's tape deck. He almost hit a large pastel-clad group
of sorority girls who were starting their bar hopping early when he heard the
almost forgotten whir and click of the tape flipping over.
The first song was this poppy little repetitive number, girls just saying over
and over "I've liked you for a thousand years." It hit a little too close to
home when it started talking about not being able to wait to see the person
that the song was for and the other person not being able to stand to see them
in a different way. Dean had to take a moment to remind himself that Cas had
made this tape for him back before even he had known that he liked the other
boy as much as he did so it wasn't some veiled snub directed towards him.
The second song was faster and it was a guy singing about getting away from the
rest of the world with the person they liked. Escaping to some island somewhere
because they were with the one person that they wanted to be with and no one
else mattered. He laughed at the mention of 'making love with your hand', god
that pretty much summed up the entirety of his sexual encounters since Jo's
birthday party because after that the dreams about Castiel had started.
The third one was a little bit more somber, the line that just hit him like a
ton of bricks was, "I'm trying hard not to stare, trying hard to be cool."
Because that's exactly the way he knew he had been acting since he had started
liking Castiel. But he felt better by the end of it, because it was sweet how
it finished on a hopeful note, like the guy singing it was just imagining how
the person who the song was about would reciprocate their feelings and how
wonderful it could be when they were together.
Dean started to get to the part of town where there were less paved streets and
more gravel, the dust off the road was kicking up as he drove and he blamed the
stinging in his eyes on the fact that the cold evening air was whipping the
particles in through his open windows. Bobby's house, shop and the surrounding
scrap yard started to grow on the horizon and he just wanted to slow time down
so that he could think for a while because his mind was going a million miles a
minute.
He turned off the car quickly when he parked, before the next song could start
and he would be forced to wallow in his own self-pity some more. Dean climbed
out of the car and ambled into Bobby's house, not bothering to knock since the
creaky old, structure was more of a home to him than any of the apartments that
his father had shuffled him and Sam through had ever been.
"Bobby!" he called through the house, going into the kitchen to see if the
older man had any pie stashed away somewhere, Dean's own affinity for the
desert being a direct result of it always having been around when he was a kid
eating dinner or staying the night at his surrogate uncle's house. It was a
staple of his childhood and it always made him feel better when nothing else
could.
"I'm coming boy," Dean heard the older man grumble from the hallway that led
back towards the living room and Bobby's massive study/library. "Don't get your
panties in a twist."
The grizzled man appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and tossed the gun
holster and pistol on to the table with a tired sounding grumble.
"You ok, Bobby?" Dean asked finding a small slice of apple pie shoved way into
the back of the other man's fridge, hidden behind a bottle of the cheap, rotgut
whiskey that the younger man knew Bobby kept stocked.
"Boy yer like a garbage disposal," Bobby groused seeing the boy take a bite out
of the piece of pie he had been saving for Dean's father the next time John
ended up passed out on his living room couch. The two older men always used to
joke that pie was the best cure for a hangover. "Here's the stuff you asked
fer. Just don't mess up my gun. That's an antique, worth more than yer sorry
hide and Sam's combined."
"I'll be careful with it, Bobby." Dean promised abandoning the pie in favor of
the pistol and running his fingers over the filigree. A thought struck him,
"Can I ask you a question?"
"If it's you asking to get out of work tomorrow, forget it." Bobby said moving
over to the cabinet and pulling out a tumbler. The older man stopped when he
saw the broken expression of the boy who was as good as his own son and leaned
back against the counter instead, crossing his arms over his chest. "What's got
you all riled up?"
"I was just wondering, did my dad ever…I mean…shit…has my dad always been
so…homophobic?"
The older man squinted at Dean for a second, "Yer asking 'cause Sam is seeing
that boy, right?"
Dean rubbed his neck and looked up at the water spot in the corner of Bobby's
kitchen ceiling that was vaguely shaped like a dagger. "Yea. I just don't know
how far my dad will go if he finds out. Sam's just a kid, I mean…the worst he
can do is kick him out or something, right?"
"You know I ain't gonna let either of you boys go without a roof over yer
heads." Bobby said defensively. "No matter what, you'll always both be welcome
here, I don't care who you choose to take to bed with you. Yer still my boys."
The younger man cleared his throat and blinked his eyes a couple of times
before giving the other man a shaky smile, "Thanks Bobby. If we need
somewhere…well, it's just good to know Sam has options."
"I meant you too, ya idjit. I met that boy, Castiel down at the dinner. He
seemed nice, real taken with you so he must not be as smart as you made him out
to be."
"It's not like that, Bobby." Dean said quickly, putting up his hands to protect
himself instinctively.
His dad had beaten the shit out of him when his mom had told the older
Winchester about Andy Gallagher, thinking it was a cute story that John would
laugh at. The bruises had just started to fade when his parents had had their
last, big fight and Mary had packed her bags and left for good.
A hurt look crossed Bobby's face at the gesture and Dean quickly dropped his
hands back to his sides, wishing he had pockets in the pants he was wearing for
his costume.
"Well, if it ain't like that then you two have yer head so far up yer asses
it's a wonder either one of ya can breathe. That boy is downright smitten with
you, Dean and if you knew what was good for ya you'd grab onto that and never
let anyone take it from ya."
Dean was taken aback slightly by the impassioned speech, he didn't think he had
ever heard Bobby sound so sincere about anything that wasn't related to
someone's car and he wondered if maybe there was something to what the older
man was telling him. But he didn't even know where to begin with fixing things
with Cas, but he knew better than to argue with the other man about how
pointless the
whole situation was.
So Dean nodded like he agreed, picked up the props he was borrowing from the
other man, and said goodbye before promising to be back early in the morning to
get started in the shop, whether or not he was hung over as hell from Meg's
party.
He slung the holster around his hips as he walked out the door and straightened
his suspenders before climbing back into the Impala and turning back towards
his apartment complex.
The fourth song well that was the one where Dean allowed everything Bobby had
said to him to finally start sinking in. It started out talking about how the
silence was keeping them quiet and Dean thought that that might mean that they
were waiting on the other person to be the first one to say something. He
started regretting never just telling Cas that he liked him, because then the
other boy wouldn't have had to hear it from his little sister of all people.
The lyric that tore his heart out was "I really think if we talk we might
kiss." Because that's not how it was going to be with his friend, Dean couldn't
see how any kind of talk about feelings could end positively for the two of
them.
The next song, made him smile because it was upbeat and silly and he could just
picture Castiel singing along with it as he dubbed the song over onto the
cassette. He figured it was probably about Meg, since it kept talking about
kissing, about getting the nerve to dive in and give it a shot. Take that
chance on another person even though it scared the hell out of them. The other
boy was probably still trying to get up the nerve to kiss his new girlfriend.
The last song, was sad. Dean couldn't say what it was about the song that just
made him know before he even heard the first lyric this was it. This was the
last little part of Castiel that he was going to get that meant something.
After this he would have to deal with just getting the superficial aspects of a
friendship that he wished was something more.
All I know is that you're so nice
You're the nicest thing I've seen
I wish that we could give it a go
See if we could be something
It was slow and each word hit him right it in the gut. It was by far the
longest song on the B-side of the tape and he found himself sitting in the
Impala looking up at his apartment complex like it had taken no time at all to
get there and listening to the words as his heart beat unsteadily in his chest.
I wish you had a favourite beauty spot
That you loved secretly
'Cause it was on a hidden bit
That nobody else could see
Basically, I wish that you loved me
I wish that you needed me
I wish that you knew when I said two sugars,
Actually I meant three
I wish that without me your heart would break
I wish that without me you'd be spending the rest of your nights awake
I wish that without me you couldn't eat
I wish I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep
Look, all I know is that you're the nicest thing I've ever seen
And I wish that we could see if we could be something
Yeah I wish that we could see if we could be something
Dean squeezed his eyes shut and bent over the steering wheel of his car
fighting the urge to scream or cry or punch something because for the first
time in his life he thought he was in a place to understand those words and
when Cas had made him this tape there was no way he could have meant all of
these songs in the way that Dean hoped he did. Because it was what? A week
after Cas had met Meg that he had made Dean the tape and even if he had been
able to admit back then that he was starting to feel something for the other
boy it was already too late. He couldn't fool himself into thinking that these
songs had the same kind of meaning for his friend as they did for him.
He straightened up and wiped at his eyes angrily before turning around and
snatching the brown duster out of his back seat. Dean had a party to get to.
Chapter End Notes
     So I'm sorry I left this a cliffhanger too after promising last week
     to make it count, but guess what!? In honor of it being SPN's b-day
     I'm going to post the next chapter tonight as well! Yay! Still let me
     know what you think, I love you all.
     Also if you would like to know the playlist for Cas's b-side I
     literally made one to listen to while I wrote this chapter. You can
     find it on my tumblr:deathsteelwriter.
***** The Nicest Thing *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
When he walked in the door of Meg's apartment his first thought was about how
loud the music seemed in comparison to what he had been listening to in the car
and it felt like the girl had done it on purpose just to annoy him which was
ridiculous because Meg was probably really very nice and if he wanted to stay
in Castiel's life he was probably going to have to learn to get along with her.
Dean's second thought was that the layout of Meg's apartment was this weird
mirror image of his own and it kinda freaked him out a bit, but at least he
would be able to find the bathroom without having to ask anyone.
He stopped to chat with Ash and Krissy for a moment and it took them explaining
the reasoning behind their costumes a couple of times before Dean burst out
laughing when he finally got it. His friend was dressed up in his normal
clothes with some fake smears of blood on his hands and face, but besides that
the other boy was just walking around with a box of Frosted Flakes that had a
big carving knife sticking out of it in his hand.
"Dude, cereal killer. It's funny right?" Ash asked seeming pretty proud of
himself.
"Classic, man." Dean said feeling like maybe this night wouldn't be completely
horrible as long as his friends were still acting like everything was normal,
like he was normal.
He pointed at his friend's date and squinted for a moment at her expertly
applied Kiss make up that was just like the kind Ace Frehley wore on stage
during performances. Except that the younger girl was wearing a black and white
striped boat neck shirt and a black beret. It was freaking genius and Dean was
happy that his friend had found someone who shared Ash's weird brand of humor.
"French Kiss?"
Krissy nodded at him and smiled when Ash wrapped a hand around her waist to
pull her closer. "I like your costume, Dean. Everyone else did like a couples
costume thing, that just seemed real lame so I didn't even tell Ash what I was
going as until he picked me up for the party."
"Yea, and I just took stopped on the way here for a box of cereal and a fake
knife. I wasn't even gonna dress up at all." Ash supplied reaching down and
snagging his drink off of the kitchen table with one of the fingers that was
griping the cereal box.
"Hey, uh have you guys seen Jo around anywhere?" Dean asked trying to spot the
blonde hair of his friend. Her and Adam were supposed to be dressing up as
Garth and Wayne from Wayne's World and he wanted to run the whole speech he had
worked up in his head for Cas by her before dragging his friend away from Meg
who he would probably be all wrapped up in.
Ash shook his head, giving Garth a high five as he passed by with drinks for
himself and Becky who was looming over in the corner all decked out in orange.
"Nah, man she was gonna pick up ice or something, but Adam's here with his
cousin. I think I saw them somewhere over in the corner of the living room or
something."
He headed towards the living room, intending to look for Adam so that he could
have someone to talk to that wasn't currently all cuddled up to whoever they
were dating. Meg's apartment was full of a weird mix of people, not nearly as
many people as he was used to recognizing from school were there, more of the
guests were college-aged and he supposed that the girl only hung around with
him and his friends because of Cas. Dean had just politely excused his way
through a group of guys dressed up like different superheroes when he reached
the small bubble of space that had formed around the coffee table in the middle
of the room.
Dean looked around the room trying to spot his friend, but what he saw made him
feel so many things it was like this miasma of conflicting, noxious emotions.
Vindication was one of them because he had always thought the other girl was a
terrible person. Happiness, anger, sadness, they all kinda blended together as
he strode across the small space, not really caring that he was practically
pushing people out of the way in his haste to get to where Meg was sitting in
some tall, blonde guy's lap with her tongue down his throat.
The pair looked up at his approach and the simpering little smile that Meg gave
him made Dean want to throw up all over her face. She was dressed in a pink two
piece jacket and skirt outfit with a little matching pill box hat on her hair
that was styled into an exaggerated, stiff looking bouffant. The man, because
he was probably old enough to already be out of college, who she was with was
good-looking in that classic way that guys were in the 1960s and was wearing a
suit with a red tie and a little American flag pin on his lapel.
"Hey, Deano." Meg said like it was just no big deal that she was cheating on
her boyfriend in the middle of a party that was full of the Cas's friends and
looking over his outfit as she draped an arm around the man she was with's
neck. "I gotta say you're costumes a little bit better than I thought it would
be."
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" Dean asked loudly, not really caring if
any of the other people at the party heard him confronting the smaller woman.
Everyone deserved to know what a horrible person she was.
"No," she replied with a shrug. "I figured you would just toss on your shoulder
pads and flash your dimples around and expect everyone here to just fall all
over themselves worshipping you. That's what you get off on right? Having
everyone treat you like your god's gift to the world and you can just be a jerk
to all of the people who are dumb enough not to see through your bullshit?"
"Where do you get off saying I'm full of shit, Meg?!" He practically shouted,
gesturing towards the guy who was looking distinctly confused about what was
going on with the two people in front of him.
"This is Dean?" The man asked Meg. "Cas's Dean?"
"So you know about Cas? You know that she has a boyfriend and you're just going
along with letting her cheat on him?!" This was just unbelievable.
"Oh. My. God." Meg said getting to her feet and accenting each word with a wave
of her hands at Dean. "I get it now. You're fucking brain damaged. You've been
tackled so many times that you just don't have that filter between your mouth
and your stupid fucking brain anymore. Of course Luc knows I have a boyfriend,
you moron!"
"Fuck you, Meg!" Dean shouted over the music. "You're a bitch and I wanted to
warn Cas about you but you just made him so happy and when he finds out about
you cheating on him with this pretty boy it's going to break his fucking heart.
You don't fucking deserve him."
"What are you talking about!? You're a crazy person, Dean!" Meg screamed back
at him, looking more confused than angry, but not yet over the fact that Dean
kept calling her a bitch. "Luc is my boyfriend, how could I be cheating on
Cas?"
Dean pointed an angry finger at the girl, ready to keep calling her names and
telling her off on his friend's behalf until someone threw him out of the
apartment, but what she had just said registered right before he busted out and
called her the 'C' word and he really didn't like to call girls that, but god
he was seeing red.
"So, what? You and Cas broke up or something and you've already moved on? You
guys were together like two days ago!"
Meg took a deep breath like she was getting ready to keep shouting at him, but
then Luc reached out and put a hand on her wrist. The small woman turned and
looked at the man who was still sitting in the armchair and Dean could visibly
see the anger and tension draining out of her.
"Maybe we can move this conversation to somewhere less…public?" The man said
softly to Meg.
Dean looked around and most of the party guests were watching the standoff
between him and the other girl with expressions of horrified curiosity. He felt
his face begin to heat up under the scrutiny and gave a curt nod when Luc stood
up and led him and Meg down the hallway to one of the rooms that branched off.
The younger man looked around the space as the other man led Meg off to the
side and talked to her softly, rubbing her arms in a comforting way when she
kept shooting angry looks at Dean. It was a bedroom and in Dean's apartment it
would've been the one that belonged to him and Sam since it was slightly bigger
than the other one. There was a large bed with a tasteful dark, purple
bedspread and different art prints on the walls. There was a big framed poster
of Shepard Fairey's Obama campaign poster over the dresser and film poster for
The Black Dahlia in between the two windows.
Dean focused on his breathing and paced back and forth across the room with his
hands on his hips in an effort to help himself calm down. It was more than just
the anger over his confrontation with Meg that was making his heart race.
Castiel was single and he was coming to the party and maybe it wouldn't be
completely insane to just go up to him and confess all of his feelings instead
of just settling by trying to patch things up enough to keep the other boy in
his life.
He stopped in front of one of the nightstands beside the bed and looked down at
it as he considered his options. The table had a small lamp on it as well as a
copy of Atlas Shrugged with some reading glasses on top of it, a man's watch
and a glass of water. It looked just like the kind of stuff that Dean kept next
to his own bed. He glanced over to the two people across the bed from him who
were still talking and couldn't help his gaze from sliding over to the other
bedside table. On that one there was a hairbrush, a digital alarm clock, a copy
of the lastest Cosmopolitan and a framed picture. It was of Meg and Luc
standing in front of a snowy backdrop in big, puffy coats and holding onto each
other as they smiled for the camera.
Dean sat down heavily on the bed and Meg shot a sharp glance over at him as he
dropped his head into his hands and let out a strangled groan.
"I'll just leave you two to talk," Luc said giving Meg a small kiss on the
cheek and then moving over towards the door. "If you feel the need to kill each
other, well, just don't get blood all over the place. We're already gonna have
enough of a mess to clean up after tonight."
The girl moved slowly around the bed and sat down next to Dean with a small,
irritated huff. He kept his face in his hands in order to give him something
that he could use to ground himself for what he was pretty sure the girl was
about to say to him.
"I don't know why you don't like me, Dean." Meg began. "Pretty much the entire
time I've known you you've been nothing but a jerk to me. But for some reason,
Cas thinks that there's more to you than the asshole jock that you pretend to
be in front of everyone else. He told me that he thinks you do it to keep
yourself from getting hurt. Dean, he thinks the world of you."
"Were you ever dating him, Meg?" Dean asked looking up at the girl beside him.
She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. "I've been dating Luc for
almost two years now. Castiel and I have never been anything but friends."
"But at Jo's party, you were flirting with him and then when he came back later
it was to talk to you. You guys slept in that fucking hammock together for
christ's sake and I know for a fact that that thing is not comfortable."
Meg shrugged and made a face that looked kinda like she agreed with Dean about
the hammock. "My back hurt for a week after that, but seriously Cas was only
out there with me because you were, well he wouldn't tell me what you were
doing. He was kind of upset, but I saw you go off with that girl that you had
been with all night and only you, her, and God know what you got up to. And
Cas, I'm pretty sure he walked in on you with her or something."
"No," Dean said shaking his head slowly and looking down at his hands. "I don't
remember a lot about that party, but I'd remember if something like that
happened."
"Well, maybe you just didn't care if he saw you go off with someone else. It's
not like you're doing anything to keep him from knowing about the girls you run
around with now." Meg said starting to sound angry again a little, but trying
harder to keep it in check.
"There are no other girls, Meg, not that it's any of your fucking business.
There hasn't been anyone since that party. I want…well, I don't want Cas to see
me like that."
"Well, aren't you just the bestest little boy scout?" The girl replied
sarcastically. "Do you think you're doing Castiel any favors by letting him
think you care about him? Because you're not, he's trying to move on and you
always being around and monopolizing his time is not making it any easier for
him. You had your chance and obviously you can't deal with feelings like a
normal person, so maybe you just need to back off and let him get over you.
Though, I gotta say the whole ignorance is bliss tactic was pretty shallow,
even for you."
Dean's head shot up at just about the same time that his heart dropped and the
feeling was a lot like what he imagined vertigo would be like because his mouth
went dry and he felt dizzy from what he thought he was hearing from the other
girl, but he had to be sure. "What do you mean I had my chance?"
"You're really going to keep pretending like Cas didn't pour his heart out to
you on that fucking tape? That is some cold shit, Dean. You think I'm heartless
but really you're the one who doesn't deserve him. He's too good for someone
who can't even get past their friend having a crush on them just because
they're another guy. Seriously? This may be Kansas, but it's not Nazi Germany.
You don't have to vilify him for liking you."
He couldn't breathe. Where had all of the air gone? It was just here a minute
ago, the room had literally been full of it and now it felt like he was in a
vacuum or space because his lungs just wouldn't work and he was going to pass
out. Dean Winchester was going to faint like a girl from Victorian England
whose corset was laced too tight and it still wasn't going to be the most
embarrassing thing he had ever done.
"Dean? Dean!" Meg said getting to her feet and moving to take his face in her
hands. She looked scared, like she was seeing someone get murdered right in
front of her and wouldn't that be poetic justice because Dean felt like that
one Simpsons episode when Bart gets his heart ripped out, a trail of blood
striping down the wall to the waste basket where the organ was thrown by the
girl he likes.
"The tape?" he managed to whisper.
"Yea," the girl said searching his face as she dropped her hands down to his
shoulders and he was grateful because he felt like without the support of this
girl he had literally hated less than fifteen minutes ago then he would be laid
out on the floor just from the way he was feeling right now. "The damn tape he
spent like ten hours or something making for you. The one that you never talked
to him about because it made you uncomfortable."
"The one that's been stuck in my cassette player for a month." Dean looked at
Meg and willed her to understand.
Her eyes widened. "You didn't know? You didn't know that he liked you?"
Dean shook his head and took a deep, shaky breath. Cas liked him. Or had liked
him. All of those songs that he had just been listening to and feeling like
they only applied to how he felt about the other boy were really for him.
Castiel had meant those words to speak for him because for some reason he
couldn't do it himself. They were both so self-destructive and stupid.
"Shit, Dean." Meg said taking her hands off of him like he was made of scalding
metal. "Don't tell him I told you. And don't treat him differently, it would
just kill him if you weren't his friend anymore. Your brother's gay right? So
it won't be weird for you to just keep hanging out with him, you're not like a
crazy conservative or anything are you?"
"Don't be stupid," Dean said making a face at her; he was only half paying
attention to what she was saying because he was still too busy going over what
the songs had been about in his head and trying to figure out if it was too
late to tell Cas that he felt the same way. "He's my best friend."
"Okay, well…um, now that that's sorted out. I guess enjoy the party or
whatever, maybe you can stop being such an asshole to me all of the time now
that you know I'm not defiling your best buddy."
Meg straightened her hat and quickly walked of the room, letting the door close
shut behind her. Less than a second later it opened again and the girl
returned, tripping over to him in her heels that were the same color pink as
the rest of her outfit. She grabbed onto the lapels of Dean's duster and hauled
him to his feet before turning him around and pushing him up against the wall.
The larger boy tried to protest, but the small woman seemed to be driven by
some kind of crazy, strength that frankly scared the shit out of him.
"Holy shit!" she hissed at him over the music that was spilling in through the
open bedroom door. "You like him."
"Meg—" Dean began reaching up and prying her hands off of him as gently as he
could.
"Don't even think about lying to me, Winchester." She continued. "I've dealt
with you treating me like shit this whole time because of how Cas feels about
you. If anyone deserves to know, it's me."
"If anyone deserves to know, it's him." He spat out, giving up all pretense of
being nice to Meg and just pushing her off of him.
"So you do? You like Cas."
Dean clenched his jaw for a moment before giving the smaller woman a curt nod.
"For how long?"
"For about as long as I've not liked you." He admitted angrily, glancing over
at the sliver of living room that he could see.
"You've got to tell him," Meg said quickly, pulling her phone out of nowhere
and beginning to type out a message.
"I planned on it!" Dean shouted reaching for the phone in her hand, he was
damned if he was going to let Cas find out he liked him via text message from
Meg, that would be even worse than if Anna had told him.
The woman moved away so that her back was towards him and she was talking over
her shoulder. "I'm not telling him, jocko homo. He's riding here with Jo, I'm
finding out how long until they get here."
Her phone chimed in her hand and she looked down at the screen.
"Fifteen minutes." Meg declared slipping the phone back into the pocket of her
jacket. "You better get a drink and grow some balls, Casanova, because if you
don't go talk to Cas tonight then I'm literally going to kill you. Luc may have
been joking earlier, but I will not hesitate to sink your body in a lake
somewhere."
===============================================================================
"God, how desperate for ice is she?" Jo muttered sliding behind the wheel of
her truck after helping Cas and Anna get the older boy's costume safely stowed
in the pickup bed.
She tossed her phone down into the cup holder and smiled over at the two
siblings as she pointed her truck towards the convenience store closest to
Meg's apartment complex.
"Is Meg sending you threatening text messages too?" Cas asked looking across
his little sister who was seated in the center of the bench and whose own wings
were settled in her lap.
Jo nodded, pushing up the fake glasses on her nose that she was wearing for her
costume, some character out of a movie that Castiel had never heard of, but it
wasn't much different from what she normally wore to school, her hair was just
ratted up and her clothes were a bit baggier.
"She's started writing in all caps, so I guess she's cyber-yelling at me now."
"Yea, she's been sending me messages since people started showing up at her
apartment. In the last one she told me that Adam and Michael had just gotten
there." Castiel said pulling out his phone and looking down at the last message
he had received from Meg over half an hour before.
He had asked her to warn him if Dean showed up so that he could prepare himself
for any awkwardness that might still be lingering between the two of them
before he worked up the nerve to try to patch up their friendship as the other
boy's brother had suggested.
"Well, it would've been nice if she had forwarded that one to me. Adam's phone
is probably dead; he's been playing Words with Friends with Michael since he
got here this morning. Those two are the worst when they're together."
"Why?" Anna asked. The younger Novak cast a knowing glance at Castiel and he
felt himself blanch.
Both of his siblings knew about his blind date with Adam's cousin, but he still
hadn't worked up the nerve to tell Jo that he was not going to keep waiting on
Dean even though he would wait forever if that's how long it took for the other
boy to even consider being with him. But in his therapy session with Rachel on
Thursday they had talked a lot about being assertive and taking chances on
things so he hadn't told Adam to cancel the date even though Cas didn't know if
he could go through the entire night trying to be charming and witty when his
heart wasn't really in it.
Not when he knew now that Dean was just as miserable about their falling out as
he was. Not when he thought back to another party and how close he felt like he
and Dean had come to having something significant before Gabriel and Sam had
gotten their big, ugly faces punched in by some redneck assholes. Maybe he was
still a little bitter about everything that had happened that night, but it was
hard not to be when Dean looked at him and talked to him like he was something
important. Like he was something worth giving everything up for.
"God, they have like this crazy, dysfunctional family and Michael is always
trying to drag Adam into it even though it's just him and his mom and they're
only related to each other through his dad who's not even in the picture
anymore. I think Adam only bothers with him because his mom is always telling
him that he needs to make the most of the family he does have. Anyway, when
they're together it's just exhausting trying to keep up with all of the names
and dramas going on."
Anna whipped her head around towards Castiel, her curled red hair bouncing
under the green crown of leaves and baby's breath she was wearing for her wood
nymph costume and gave him a pointed look. Cas thought she looked a lot like a
ginger Tinkerbell with her green dress and her sparkly wings, but she had
pointed out the greenery in her hair and the vines that she had painted flowing
up her arms and legs and he had conceded that if it was dark enough she
probably would be able to blend in with the forest fairly well since she was so
willowy already. Supposedly Gilda was dressing up as a water nymph to
compliment the other girl's outfit and Castiel just hoped that it turned out
looking more like Ophelia and less like Ariel.
"Well, if he's good looking I guess that makes up for having a messed up
family," Castiel supplied and he couldn't help from thinking of Dean as he said
it since the other boy's family was pretty unusual in its own way.
"Don't say that in front of him, Cas." Jo warned throwing the truck into park
as she pulled up to the store so she could go in and get some ice for the
party. "You'll give him a big head and you're all innocent looking and
according to Adam, he likes his boy's naive and willing to say yes to
anything."
"I'm not naive," he mumbled sourly, crossing his arms over his chest and
wondering if he ducked out of Meg's part how long would it take anyone to
notice. Dean's apartment was right across the building, surely he could make it
over there to talk to the other boy before anyone realized he was gone.
===============================================================================
Dean took Meg's advice and went off to find himself a stiff drink before he was
forced to talk to Castiel and fix this whole fucking mess that they had somehow
gotten themselves into. All he had in his system was the pie he had eaten at
Bobby's house earlier in the day and about half a bottle of his dad's whiskey
from the day before. Oh, yea and some tacos that he had made Sam go out and get
him when he had been in his bed crying over that damn cover of fucking Call Me
Maybe and acting like his heart wasn't broken.
Almost as if by thinking about him, Dean had somehow summoned his gargantuan
brother he spotted the boy leaning up against the kitchen counter with his arm
around Gabriel's shoulders as they talked to a couple of other people. He tried
not to smile as he took in Sam's costume, Dean didn't know what place sold a
Robin costume that big, but the younger man looked hilarious next to Gabriel
dressed as miniature Batman.
"Dude," he said slipping up beside his brother. "When you told me what you and
Gabe were coming as I thought you were gonna be Batman?"
"Why, because I'm short?" Gabe snapped making his voice lower than usual in
order to sound more like the caped crusader.
"Well, yea." Dean admitted taking the glass of beer offered to him by Sam and
giving his brother a withering look for having it in the first place.
"Gabs is a great Batman, Dean." Sam said hauling the shorter man in for a kiss
and Dean made an exaggerated wrenching sound as he looked away from their
little display of affection.
"Thanks, moosey." Gabriel said in his normal voice, staring up at his boyfriend
with a smile on his face and then looking at Dean. "Plus Sam's legs look way
better in tights then mine ever will."
"Ugh." Dean said jumping back from his brother a bit. "Too much info! I do not
want a visual of you in tights Gabe."
"You're loss," Sam teased causing Gabriel to laugh at the way Dean's face went
white at the comment.
Dean downed the rest of the beverage in his cup and looked around the room to
see if he could spot Castiel yet. "I'm gonna need to be drunk to deal with you
two all night. Where's the keg?"
"Dining room," Sam said pointing over the heads of the people around them to
where the alcohol lived.
"At least I don't have to worry about you driving home drunk," Dean said to his
little brother before moving towards where Sam had indicated. He called back
over his shoulder as a thought struck him, "Just make sure you put a tie on the
door or something, give a guy some warning."
"Will do, citizen!" Gabriel called to him in his exaggerated Batman voice.
He rolled his eyes and shouldered his way through the crowd until he reached
the keg that was standing in a large tub of ice and being manned by Adam who
was dressed as the Wayne to what Dean knew was Jo's Garth and another boy
dressed up as a T-Bird with a black leather jacket, a white t-shirt and slicked
back dark hair.
"Hey man," Dean said reaching out and giving Adam a clap on the back.
His friend regarded him with wide eyes and a forced looking smile before
glancing over at the boy next to him who was watching Dean with a curious look
on his face. It kinda reminded him of how Cas looked at him sometimes, but it
was harder and something was off about it, but he couldn't really put his
finger on what.
"Hey, didn't think you were gonna show up tonight. You weren't at school
yesterday, we were really worried about you, dude." Adam said offering Dean a
full cup of beer.
He took the red, plastic glass and slid it into the empty one that he was
already carrying from Sam as he nodded guiltily and took a long sip. Dean had
gotten a lot of texts from the whole gang asking where he was, if he was okay
and he hadn't bothered to reply to any of them waiting for the one from Cas
that would tell him that everything was still okay between them.
"Yea, man. There was just this thing that happened after movie night and I
needed some time to sort myself out."
Adam nodded in understanding before he gestured over to the boy who was still
staring at Dean and it was kinda starting to creep him out a bit. "This is my
cousin, Michael. He's down from Kansas City for the weekend."
Dean reached out a hand for the boy to shake and was surprised when the other
man leaned into talk to him as they clasped hands. "Are you Castiel?"
"No," Dean said giving the boy a confused look and surreptitiously trying to
shake off the way his skin was crawling where Michael had touched him. "I'm
Dean."
"Oh," The man said giving him a long look as he stepped back with a predatory
smile on his face. "Adam just told me he was good-looking and you're the best
looking guy I've seen here so far, I thought you might be my date. But I guess
even I'm not that lucky."
"Mike!" Adam hissed at his cousin under his breath before turning towards Dean.
"I'm sorry Dean. Castiel asked me to set them up, since you…didn't like him
that way."
Dean swallowed around the dry lump that was in his throat and suddenly it was
like Meg's words were on a loop in his head, he's trying to move on… trying to
move on…move on.
Of course Cas wasn't going to wait on him forever, Dean felt so ridiculous for
thinking that maybe it wasn't too late to tell his friend that he was pretty
sure he falling for him. If only he had fucking pried that goddamn tape out of
Baby's dash then he wouldn't have thrown away the chance to be with his friend
in the way he wanted to be.
"It's fine, Adam." Dean mumbled, looking over at Michael and trying to figure
how Cas would feel being trapped in this other boy's gaze.
Even now, after finding out that Dean wasn't who he thought he was Michael was
still looking at him like he wanted to figure out a way to climb inside of him
and ride around in him like a meat suit. Dean had to get away from that look,
the one that made him feel the Tauntaun probably did right after Han Solo
decided he would make a really good sleeping bag for Luke Skywalker.
He turned to walk away, but felt someone grab onto his elbow. Dean looked back
to see Michael standing right in his face with a self-assured look in his eyes.
"I'm here all weekend, Dean. If things don't work out here tonight, maybe we
can get together sometime," Micheal said lowly, his blue eyes flicking down to
Dean's lips and back up.
"Seriously?" This guy was hitting on him right after Adam pretty much said Dean
and Cas were like almost a thing.
"Just say yes." The other boy murmured leaning into Dean's ear.
"How about not just no, but fuck no!" Dean said loudly and he saw Adam take a
step towards the pair with a concerned look on his face. This was it, everyone
was going to think make up what they wanted to about him after tonight anyway,
might as well give them a good show. "I'm kind of a one man guy, Michael. So
not only are you not getting a date with me, but you're sure as hell not
getting anywhere near Cas, asshole."
He snatched his elbow away and stormed off angrily across the apartment. Dean
abandoned his cup on a table that was near the front door and ran a hand
through his hair before he decided that yes, he needed some air. And he needed
his phone because he was going to call Cas and tell him not to bother with
Adam's cousin because the guy was a sleaze ball. Everything else he would say
to him face to face because his friend deserved to know how Dean felt and if
everyone else knew, well then it would just be stupid not to come out and just
say it himself.
Dean opened the front door, intending to go back to his apartment and get his
phone, but stopped short when he met with the sight of the other boy standing
at Meg's front door holding two large dripping bags of ice.
Castiel's eyes widened when he saw the larger boy and Dean was struck not for
the first time by how gorgeous his friend was. He let his eyes roam unfettered
over the smaller boy, Cas was wearing the shirt, that blue and black buffalo
check button down that Jo had sent him the picture of way back in the beginning
of the school year. The one that the other boy had never worn to school and
Dean was starting to think Cas hadn't actually bought it or had returned it
later when he decided he didn't like it or that maybe Dean had made it up in
his head because he had a thing for plaid and also for Cas in the color blue so
his subconscious had combined the two together in his fantasies.
He had to stop himself from groaning when he realized that the hulking shadows
looming over Cas's shoulders were a large, elaborate pair of wings. They
weren't white and fluffy like he had pictured they would be when Garth had
joked that their friend should dress up as an angel for the costumed holiday,
no they were so much better. The wings arched up over Castiel's dark hair by at
least a foot and were so big that the tips of the large primary feathers were
brushing the ground at his feet. From what Dean could see they were colored in
a gradient ranging from an oily, midnight black at the upmost arches above
Cas's head to a soft grayish blue at the bottom.
Dean tried to make himself say something, either the apologetic speech that he
had worked out in order to get back in his friend's good graces or maybe what
he had figured out about Michael or even just tell him right there in the
middle of the hallway that he thought Cas was amazing and funny and beautiful
and that he cared him in a way that was more than friends. But nothing was
coming out and as the silence stretched out around them Dean could feel the
opportunity slipping away along with his chance to come clean with his friend.
Castiel cleared his throat and looked past Dean into the apartment. Dean turned
around and saw Luc standing in the doorway watching them with something close
to amusement on his face as he reached out and took the bags of ice from the
other boy. The older man gave Dean a wink as he went back into the apartment
and shut the door behind him with his foot, forcing the larger boy out into the
hallway with his friend.
Dean watched how Cas was trying not to make eye contact with him and kept
biting his lip and wringing his hands and he felt like something inside him
broke seeing the other boy so distraught being around him, but he didn't know
what he could say to fix it. All he knew was what he wanted to do and even
though it might just fuck things up more it was what Dean needed to do in order
to make everything stop spinning so out of control around him. He remembered
the way Castiel's hand in his had made him feel grounded at Jo's party, how
every time he touched the other boy it made his stomach stop twisting anxiously
and made it easier to breathe and it made him feel like he could jump face
first off of a cliff and greet the ground beneath him like it was an old
friend.
Dean reached out and grabbed Castiel's face and pulled it towards his, crushing
their lips together in a bruising kiss. It was hard and desperate and it might
be the only one he got so he tried to pour everything he felt for the other boy
into it as he felt Cas tense up beneath him. Their teeth knocked together and
Dean tasted blood in his mouth from where he bit the inside of his cheek, but
he didn't care because it was Cas and it felt real and right and better than
anything else he had ever had in his whole life.
Castiel's hands came up between them and Dean knew this was it, the other boy
was going to push him away and tell him he was too late. He was surprised when
he felt his friend fist the material of Dean's own dark red button down in his
hands and pull him closer. Dean groaned and moved one of his hands to sift
through Cas's dark, messy hair and relaxed his hold on the stubbled cheek
beneath his other hand to cup the other boy's jaw gently. The kiss became
softer and it was only when they couldn't fight for air anymore that the two
boys finally pulled far enough away from each other to draw in the panting
gasps their burning lungs desperately needed.
He kept his eyes closed and his forehead pressed against Castiel's as the other
boy began to gradually ease his grip on Dean's shirt until he was just
smoothing out the wrinkles he had created on Dean's chest and moving his hands
up to rest on the larger boy's shoulders.
"Not that I'm complaining," Castiel murmmered and Dean smiled when he heard the
other boy's voice for what felt like the first time in years even though it had
only been a couple of days since their big misunderstanding at Garth's house.
"But what was that for?"
Dean sighed and pulled away slightly to look at Cas, his thumb gazing over the
other boy's jaw and causing his friend's eyelashes to flutter in the most
adorable way. What could he say that wouldn't sound completely insane? It was
way too soon to be saying things like love, though this kinda felt like that
and like didn't really seem to be enough to describe how happy and whole
Castiel made him feel. He thought back to the songs that Cas had chosen to
describe how he felt about Dean and tried not to mourn over all of the time
that they had wasted getting to this point.
"Well," Dean began, clearing his throat when he heard how thick his voice
sounded. "Cas, you're the nicest thing I've ever seen."
Castiel laughed and moved his hand up to pull Dean down for another kiss that
only lasted a couple of seconds this time. And it was exactly and nothing at
all like Dean had imagined it would be all at the same time, it was soft and
gentle, but with Cas taking the lead and pushing him back up against the
doorway of Meg's apartment causing Dean to give a little sound of surprise
because he hadn't expected to like that as much as he did.
"It's about fucking time!"
The two boys broke apart to see Jo and Anna standing down the hallway a couple
of feet away holding more bags of ice and matching expressions of self-
satisfaction.
"Jesus Christ, I thought I we were going graduate before you two got your shit
together." Jo continued pushing past them and hefting a half-melted bag of ice
into Dean's arms so that she could open Meg's front door. "Garth! You owe me
ten bucks!"
Chapter End Notes
     Today was two chapters because it was meant to be one chapter that
     got completely out of hand and I can only blame it on today being
     Friday the 13th. So thank you, Jason Voorhees and superstitious
     people everywhere for making today special.
     Also, please let me know what you think about how everything is
     working out. This is not the end, how could it be?!? Honestly, it was
     never supposed to take us this long to get here, but I guess I just
     got carried away.
***** Don't Panic *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
They would talk about it later, after the party was over. About all of the
things that had gotten mixed up and misunderstood. The mistakes that were made
and the times where one or both of them should have said or done something that
would've let the other one know how they were feeling. But neither of them were
good at those kind of conversations so for now Castiel was content to just let
Dean keep bringing him drinks and watch him as he talked to Meg and Luc with a
look on his face that made the smaller boy feel all warm inside.
Castiel had a notoriously high tolerance for alcohol, something he had
discovered after Daniel had shown up at his room at Lake Forrest with a bottle
of vodka that one of his teammates had managed to smuggle back into the school
after winter break the year before. He had let the other boy talk him into
playing 'never have I ever' while taking shots and it had been no surprise to
either of them that at the time Castiel hadn't done a lot of things because of
his sheltered home-life, including kissing which Daniel had chosen to remedy
that night.
Looking back now, it should've been glaringly obvious that Daniel needed to be
drunk to kiss him, Castiel knew that coming to terms with your sexuality was
not an easy thing for some people so he watched Dean for signs that he was
regretting their encounter in the hallway. Kept a close eye on how much he was
drinking and how he was interacting with their friends now that Jo had gone and
announced their kiss to anyone who bothered to listen.
Becky had squealed loudly in glee before her face fell and she whirled around
and hit Garth on the arm, complaining that he made her miss it. Ash had hauled
Dean into a short, manly hug that ended with both boys patting each other on
the back and the larger boy blushing madly. Jo and Adam pulled Dean to the side
for a couple of moments while Castiel got his first drink and tried to ignore
how Adam's cousin was watching him with an interested look on his face. When he
came back, Dean had looped and arm around his shoulders and led him away as Jo
and Adam had an argument about him not telling her about Castiel's blind date
with his "creepy, grease ball cousin".
But Dean didn't seem fazed by the fact he had kissed his best friend, in fact
he seemed more relaxed and happy than Cas had ever seen him, the larger boy was
even going out of his way to be nice to Meg who kept looking between the two
boys with an expression of begrudging acceptance. He stayed close to Castiel as
the party continued, kept putting an arm around him, careful not to crush his
wings, and touching him on the arm or letting their fingers tangle for a moment
when they both had a free hand by their side.
"Do you want another beer, Cas?" Dean leaned over and murmured in his ear as
the conversation turned towards college plans and Luc started giving Castiel
some advice about what schools had the best scholarships for ROTC cadets.
The smaller boy turned and smiled, letting himself just drink in the way Dean
was looking at him like he was the most important person in the room. He looked
down at the cup in his hand and shrugged a bit before giving it to his friend
to go and refill it. Dean hesitated for a second, licking his lips and glancing
over at Meg and Luc before he ducked down to close the short distance between
them to drop a quick, soft kiss on Castiel's cheek.
He felt his face heat up as he watched Dean politely push his way through the
crowded apartment and he allowed himself to let out a contented sigh before he
turned back to Meg who was watching him with a shrewd look of amused concern on
her face.
"Oh man, you're so gone." The woman stated taking a sip out of her own drink in
her hand.
"I just didn't think this would happen. That it would feel so good to finally
have him like me back." Castiel admitted. "Nothing good ever happens to me."
"Calling Winchester good may be a bit of a stretch," Meg said drily before
looking over towards where the other boy had disappeared into the crowd and
grabbing onto Cas's arm to pull him towards the less crowded hallway.
Once they were a little bit more alone the girl leaned into talk to him in a
whisper that he had a hard time making out over the noise of the music and
talking going on amongst the other party guests. "Cas, I talked to Dean a bit
before you got here."
"And you're both still alive, I'm impressed Meg. I didn't think you would hold
back how much you didn't like him."
"Well, if he keeps not being an asshole all the time maybe I'll reconsider
treating him like a person. But seriously, Clarence. What did he say to you?
Did he tell you that he liked you?"
Castiel gave a noncommittal shrug and looked away from the smaller woman. "Not
in so many words."
"Ok, well he told me he liked you. That he's liked you for a while."
"He told you that?" the boy said smiling shyly.
"Yea, he also told me that he hasn't slept with anyone else since Jo's party."
Meg told him as she gave him a meaningful look.
"That's ridiculous. Dean is always having to pry girls off of himself. He was
probably just saying that because he knew that you would tell me whatever he
said."
Meg shook her head and got closer to Castiel, "I don't think so. Guys like Dean
don't usually go around bragging about how they aren't getting laid. I just
think you need to be careful, in case he's only in this for one thing."
"Dean wouldn't do that." Castiel replied defensively. "I've met his dad,
remember? He would have too much to lose if it got back to him that he was
fooling around with another boy."
"I just worry about you," his friend said softly. "I know you don't have a lot
of experience to go on and even though you're someone who can keep his hormones
in check, not all teenage boys can. It's cute that you're so trusting of Dean,
but just…don't let him talk you into doing anything you don't want to do,
okay?"
He gave Meg his most unamused look, but inside he was trying not to panic.
Castiel knew that Dean had a reputation as a love 'em and leave 'em type of
guy, but he had never stopped to think about how that designation might apply
to anything that he and boy might have if they were to ever get together. He
hoped that Dean wasn't just using him as a means to an end for some kind of
sexual identity crisis that he was having. Was his friend just curious about
what it would be like to be with another boy and Castiel was just a convenient
person to experiment with? Maybe he had made a mistake by putting himself out
there in the first place.
Castiel nodded at Meg and waved her off when she told her that she was going to
find her boyfriend. He needed a second to try to calm himself down before he
worked himself into a full blown anxiety attack as his mind replaced Daniel
with Dean in his memories of being told that he wasn't enough for the other boy
to be with him. That the whole kiss was just a result of confused feelings and
now that Dean knew what it would be like to be with someone of the same sex, it
was a whole mistake that didn't mean anything in the first place.
"Cas, dude. I thought you had left or something." Dean said sounding relieved
when he found Castiel doubled over with his hands on his knees in the hallway a
couple of minutes later. "Hey? Are you okay?"
The larger boy carefully set down the drinks he was holding on a nearby end
table and crouched down in front of his friend who was dragging in wheezing
gasps of air, the feathers of his costume shushing together softly from where
they sat on his trembling shoulders. Castiel felt Dean's hands cup his face and
he tried to focus on how secure it felt to have the other boy there with him so
that he could push away the voices of his father and his brother that were
telling him he didn't deserve this, that he didn't even deserve to live.
"Cas? What's going on?" Dean's voice was concerned and Cas immediately felt
even worse for making his friend worry about him. The other boy helped him
stand up straight and gathered Castiel into his arms, rubbing what he could
reach of his back underneath the large wings. "I don't know what I need to do,
babe. Just try to breathe."
Castiel forced his eyes open so that he could look at Dean, shadows from the
other party goers danced on the walls behind in his friend in the dimly lit
hallway and to the smaller boy they looked menacing and dangerous, so he tried
not to see them and just looked at the way that Dean's bright green eyes almost
glowed with worry instead. His breathing hitched slightly and it was less from
panic and more from awe that he was standing there, with Dean who was just so
amazing and beautiful and he couldn't even convince himself that this was real
and that he wasn't having some kind of very realistic dream.
"Tell me this is real." He blurted, cringing at how desperate his voice
sounded.
The crease between Dean's eyebrows deepened and it took everything that Castiel
had to just not run away from what his friend was about to say. Because he just
knew that Dean was going to say that this was all a mistake and it was too much
for him to deal with, that Sam was right and Dean couldn't have a relationship
with Castiel because it was going to mess up the Winchester's lives even more.
"Of course this is real," Dean said stroking his thumb over the smaller boy's
cheekbone in order to brush away the tears that he didn't think Castiel had
even noticed that he had shed. "What's going on, Cas?"
"No," Castiel said shaking off Dean's hands, if he was going to say this he
couldn't have the other boy touching him because it would just make it hurt
worse if he didn't get the answer he wanted. He gestured back and forth in the
small space between them. "Tell me thisis real. You aren't just doing all of
this because you feel bad for me or something, right?"
A hurt expression crossed Dean's face and for just a second Castiel thought
that he was going to throw up. But then, the larger boy took a step closer to
him, grabbing onto Castiel's arms and holding onto them tightly.
"This." Dean said lowly. "Is whatever you want it to be, Cas. For however long
you want it be."
Castiel took a deep breath and nodded, he could handle that. They could go
without labels; he didn't need to call someone his boyfriend to know that they
meant something to him. Dean was also giving him control of their situation,
which Castiel hadn't even known that he needed so badly until now. It was
something that had been lacking with Daniel, he had never known which encounter
would be their last and when the end had come, he hadn't been prepared for how
hard he would take it.
Dean looked back and forth between his eyes for a minute and then leaned down
to kiss him again.
While their first kiss had been nothing like what Castiel had always dreamt it
would be, it was still wholly intoxicating to him to have the other boy take
the initiative to show him how much he wanted him. Dean's hands moved to his
waist and he felt the other boy's chest press up against his own as the spicy,
scent of his friend filled his nostrils when Castiel inhaled deeply. He pulled
the larger boy's lower lip into his mouth and nibbled on it slightly, causing
Dean's hold on him to tighten and Castiel made a mental note of the other boy's
reaction.
When they parted Castiel smiled when he saw the awe-struck look on Dean's face
and he bit his lip to stifle a groan when he realized he was already half hard
from just kissing the other boy. Nothing had prepared him for how much actually
interacting with the boy in this way would affect him physically and even
though usually he took care of his erections in the most perfunctory way
possible it had been getting more and more difficult to control himself around
Dean even before they were whatever it was that they were now.
"Can we go somewhere else?" Castiel asked, mostly because he was embarrassed to
be getting so turned on in the middle of a very crowded party, but also because
he wanted to talk to Dean and it was kinda hard to do that over all of the
other noise going on around them. "Your apartment?"
A confused look crossed his friend's face, but then a small smile quirked the
corners of Dean's mouth and Cas thought it was so much more genuine and
adorable than the cocky smirks he doled out to everyone else. "Sure, Cas."
===============================================================================
"Those fucking bastards," Dean said looking at the Robin mask that was loped
over the doorknob to his apartment.
Castiel was giving him a bewildered look as he paced the hallway in front of
his apartment and rubbed at the back of his neck in an agitated way. "I don't
understand. Did you forget your keys or something? See, this is why we don't
lock our front door until everyone is home, Dean."
"No," he said reaching into the pocket of his jacket and retrieving his keys,
Dean jangled them at the other boy before kicking at the door in frustration.
"Our brothers are probably in there right now making out all over my couch or
my bed or something. I was just joking earlier when I told you two to give a
guy some warning!"
He yelled the last part towards the door, hoping that he was being obnoxious
enough that Sam would realize how much of a bitch he was being by not just
going back to Gabriel's house to fool around with the other man. Not that Dean
especially wanted the apartment empty for any particular reason, but his phone
was in there and he needed his clothes for work in the morning, otherwise he
would just ask Cas if he could crash on his couch or something.
"Let's just go in," Castiel said putting a hand on his shoulder. "I doubt that
they are doing anything too compromising. I think Sam at least has enough tact
to realize that you had to come home at some point tonight."
"Cas, can you just go in and get my phone for me? I don't think I can handle
seeing Gabriel molest my brother. Then we can just go back to Meg's and maybe
if we give it a while they'll be done with whatever they're doing."
"They're probably having sex, Dean." Castiel stated matter of factly.
"Ugh!" Dean said knocking his head on the wall next to his doorway. He reached
over and jangled his keys at the other boy as an invitation for Castiel to take
them from him. "I do not want to think about that. Babe, can you please just go
get my phone?"
"Where is it?" the smaller boy said from near Dean's ear and the unexpected
closeness made him shudder. "And why do you keep calling me that?"
"Calling you what?" Dean asked dumbly, knowing exactly what it was that he was
doing. Slipping in endearments and pet names for his friend because it just
felt right and normal to say things like that to the other boy.
Castiel squinted at him and struggled to keep a smile off of his face,
"Nothing. Where is your phone?"
"It's on my nightstand, next to my bed. But don't go in there if you
hear…noises. I'll stay awake all night if it means neither one of us has to
have that image branded in our retinas for the rest of our lives."
The other boy nodded solemnly and took a deep breath before ducking into the
apartment and shutting the door behind him. Dean took the moment alone to think
about Castiel and how far he could try to take things before the other boy got
freaked out about how suddenly Dean's feelings seemed to have sprung up, maybe
he should focus more on talking about where he wanted this all to go instead of
just trying to get out as much of his stifled affections for Castiel as
possible before he did something to screw it up or someone came along and
realized that he didn't deserve someone as great as the other boy and brought
Cas back to his senses.
The front door creaked open and Dean looked up to see his friend standing there
with a note in his hand and a small smile on his face. The smaller boy plucked
the mask off of the doorknob and motioned for Dean to come inside. He did so
warily, looking around the small space and straining his ears to see if he
could hear Sam or Gabriel making any noises that he wasn't ready to hear being
made in relation to his little brother.
"Deano," Castiel began wandering over to the couch and perching on the armrest
as he read from the piece of paper in his hand. "Hope you liked sleeping in the
hallway, evil-doer. Take care of my baby brother or I'll go all Ra's a Ghul on
you. Kisses Gabs and Moose."
"Haha." Dean said crossing his arms over his chest. "Guess that's one less
uncomfortable conversation I'll have to have with your brother then."
"Speaking of uncomfortable," Cas murmured, rolling his shoulders as he leaned
forward to put the note down on the coffee table. He looked meaningfully at
Dean and for a second the larger boy's heart stopped, until Castiel gave him
that cute sheepish smile and gestured to his back. "Can you help me take these
off? I can't even sit down with them on."
"Of course," he said moving up behind the other boy to help Castiel with the
elastic straps that held the wings on his arms.
Dean made sure to remove them carefully so that he wouldn't mess up the
feathers that he had been staring at all night. He just couldn't help imagining
that they were real and he could almost picture in his mind how they would join
to Castiel's back, moving with the sinewy muscles and spreading out to mirror
the boy's moods, wrapping around him when he was anxious or flaring out behind
him when he was standing up to those football players in the locker room all
that time ago.
Once they were off, Castiel laid the wings down on the couch and stretched his
arms over his head with a loud sigh. Dean's eyes widened when the buttons on
the other boy's shirt pulled tightly across his chest and he moved back towards
the door to hang up his own duster with shaking hands before he did something
stupid like throw himself at Castiel because never in his life had he been this
nervous to be around someone he liked, never had he felt about someone in the
way he felt about Castiel and god, he just really didn't want to screw
everything up by coming on too strong.
"Dean?" Castiel said from across the room and the larger boy looked over his
shoulder to see his friend standing in the middle of the living room doing that
head tilting thing that just made Dean's knees melt. "Are you alright?"
"Yea, Cas." Dean replied clearing his throat when the words came out all high
pitched and awkward sounding. "I'm great."
"Maybe we should talk about this," Castiel said grabbing on to one of his
elbows with his other hand and shuffling his feet. The smaller boy glanced up
at Dean from under his eyelashes and then bit his lip before nodding his head
slightly. "Or if you want, I can get Jo to give me a ride home maybe she hasn't
left Meg's yet."
"No!" Dean said moving across the room to stand in front of his friend. "I…I
don't want you to go. We can talk."
He let out a heavy sigh and ran his hand over his face before taking a hold of
Castiel's hand and tugging on it until the smaller boy started following him,
across the living room and down the short hallway to his and Sam's room. Dean
rushed in first, kicking dirty clothes under the bed and scooping up all of the
wrappers for the tacos his brother had gotten for him and shoving them into the
small waste paper basket in the corner of the room. He wished that he had known
that he and Cas would end up here tonight, he would have cleaned up a bit like
he had done on the day that John had chased the smaller boy out of the house
with his drunken ramblings.
Castiel looked around the room and Dean tried to see it how his friend was
seeing it. Most of the room was taken up by the two boy's beds with a small
shared nightstand between them. There were two short, matching oak bookshelves
and the end of each bed, up against the wall that the brother's had built with
Bobby back when they were still in Boy Scouts and were trying to earn a
woodworking merit badge, that were stuffed with books.
Sam's was full of thick non-fiction books about history, biographies of
politicians, with an odd book about folklore or mythology thrown into the mix.
Dean's was stacked double deep with books, had dog-eared paperbacks shoved into
every available space on the shelves and more were placed on top like the older
Winchester was in the process of reading multiple books at one time. These were
as varied as any library's selection; Dean had pretty much everything by
Vonnegut with several different editions of Slaughter-house Five displayed in a
spot of reverence between two plain, blocky bookends on the top of the shelf.
But he also had some books of poetry, John Berryman and Bukowski and t.s.
eliot, as well as some collections of short stories that had been translated
from Hebrew by some girl who was friends with the author.
Dean watched as Castiel meandered around the room, ducking over with his hands
on his thighs to look at the books that he had and flipping through his small
collection of tapes and CDs, smiling when he noticed a burned disc labeled
'Elvis IMPORTANT'. The smaller boy looked over his shoulder at Dean before he
went to sit down on the edge of Dean's bed, sliding backwards until he had his
back against the wall under the larger boy's poster of Metallica that was
tacked up.
Castiel clasped his hands in his lap and toed his shoes off until they fell
with a loud clumping sound on the floor; he smiled to himself and looked over
at Dean. "Are you just going stand there all night?"
The larger boy shook himself out of his stupor and kicked his boots off of his
feet before he scrambled up onto the bed next to his friend, a lot less
graceful in his haste to get closer to the other boy who was watching Dean with
an amused look on his face. One he was settled Dean moved to mirror the other
boy's position with his hands in his lap, at least until he noticed that Sam's
laptop was still propped up on the nightstand where he had left it earlier in
the day, paused on that video of the cover of Call Me Maybe. He shot his friend
a startled look and quickly moved to close the web browser, as almost an
afterthought he pulled up Sam's iTunes and started some quiet playlist that his
brother liked to listen to when he was studying; that way if things got awkward
it wouldn't just be this looming silence surrounding them.
Dean sat back on the bed, unbuttoning the cuffs on his shirt and rolling the
sleeves up. He looked down at his hands for a couples of moments before risking
a glance at his friend who was just staring off with a far off look in his eyes
and a sad, smile on his face. The larger boy cleared his throat, causing
Castiel to jump slightly from how loud the noise sounded in the small room.
"So when did you know?" Dean asked.
"That I like guys or that I like you?" Castiel asked sounding slightly bitter
and resigned as the music played softly in the background.
I don't know you, but I want you all the more for that
And words fall through me and always fool me and I can't react
"Oh," Dean said feeling dumb, because he had thought that Castiel was as new to
this as he was and sometimes he had a hard time remembering that there was a
lot that he still didn't know about the other boy. "I guess start from the
beginning."
Castile took a deep breath and looked away from Dean, the larger boy saw his
friend swallow hard and he reached out his own shaky hand to pick up one of the
ones out of the other boy's lap. The smaller boy watched Dean's movements as
the he ran a thumb over the back of Castiel's hand softly. Dean could feel how
smooth the other boy's hands were and he tried not to be self-conscious of his
own grease stained nails or the calluses he had from working in Bobby's shop.
"Remember when you asked me if there was someone else? Back in Pontiac?"
Castiel began softly.
Dean nodded because Castiel had already told him how that relationship had
ended and he was just so mad that someone could take advantage of someone as
wonderful as the boy sitting next to him.
"Well, I already knew before that that I didn't like girls. It always seemed
like dating was just this big game of who could lie to the other better and
when I met Daniel I don't know, I thought it would be different."
"And it wasn't." Dean stated plainly, encouraging his friend to go on, because
he needed to hear this and even though he knew that the other boy would never
ask him to, he would gladly recite how each and every one of his past
relationships had failed because of something stupid he did or because he
wasn't good enough for the girl and how he would try so much harder with Cas.
He would make Castiel forget that any one had ever hurt him. Dean would give up
everything for the other boy and when that thought struck him as he watched his
friend gather his thoughts to continue he knew that for the first time it was
true.
Castiel shook his head and Dean felt the boy's grip on his hand shift, tighten.
"No, it wasn't. Um…he was older, a senior when I was a junior and he played on
the rugby team. We didn't have any classes together or run in the same circles
so I was really surprised when he came to watch me during ROTC practices.
Daniel was attractive and popular and I couldn't believe that he was interested
in me because I didn't have a lot of friends. My father didn't approve of most
of the people I went to school with."
"Your dad sounds like a jerk," Dean said leaning his head over onto Castiel's
shoulder.
"You have no idea," Castiel replied putting his own head down on the other
boy's. "Anyway, I thought he really liked me and even though he would barely
talk to me around his friends and he only showed up at my room way after curfew
to see me. I was happy for a bit. It was like I was the only one who knew the
real Daniel and he didn't push me to meet my family or ask me about why I
didn't go home for the holidays. Now I think it's just because he didn't care,
because I would see him around school with this girl, Lillith, and he would
treat me like I didn't exist."
"He was using you?" Dean asked even though he already knew the answer.
The larger boy felt his friend nod against his head and Dean shut his eyes to
try to block out the images of how he must have looked to Castiel with all of
those girl's always chasing after him and when he had gone off with Cassie at
Jo's party. He hadn't been lying when he had told Meg that he didn't want Cas
to think of him that way.
"I'm sorry, babe." He murmured.
"I was fine with it," Castiel said shrugged his shoulders. "For a while at
least, I never saw them kissing or anything so for a while I could just pretend
like they were friends and Daniel was just scared of coming out to his friends
so that's why he was keeping us a secret. One day around the end of spring
break this year, he asked me to meet him up on the roof of the school; which we
did sometimes when it had just snowed and stuff because no one else would be up
there. He said he had someone he wanted me to meet and I figured that he had
told his friend John about us, because if anyone it was going to be John since
he was the nicest one of his teammates."
The smaller boy's breathing changed, started to come faster and gasping and
Dean looked up sharply at his friend to see that he was clutching at the collar
of his shirt with his free hand and fumbling with the top couple of buttons so
that he undo them and try to take a breath.
Dean let go of Castiel's hand and sat back to give the other boy some space,
"I'll get you some water, Cas."
He rushed to the kitchen and quickly grabbed a bottle of water out of the
fridge before stumbling back to his room. Dean had no idea how to handle how
the other boy was acting tonight, this was the second time that he had seen his
friend on the verge of a panic attack in just the last couple of hours and he
didn't know if he was the one causing it or if him being around to witness it
was just making it worse. When he got back into the room, Castiel was laying
down on the bed on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, taking deep
measured breaths. The smaller boy looked up when he came back and sat up on his
elbows with an embarrassed look on his face.
"I'm sorry, Dean. It's just really hard to talk about all of that stuff
sometimes."
Dean moved to sit beside his friend on the bed, "It's ok, sweetheart. You don't
have to talk about it if you don't want to."
Castiel nodded at the larger boy and flopped back down onto the bed, raising a
hand up to stifle a yawn. "I guess I should head home. Do you mind taking me,
Dean?"
"You can stay." Dean offered setting the bottle of water down on the nightstand
and moving to rummage around in his dresser. He pulled out an old, grey AC/DC
shirt and a pair of pajama pants that had a drawstring on them before he turned
around and offered them to Cas. "Here, you can change if you want."
Castiel sat up cross legged on the bed and looked at the clothes for a minute,
biting his lip and deliberating to himself. He looked up at Dean for a moment
and the larger boy could see a blush creeping across his friend's cheek bones
before he stood up quickly from the bed and tugged on the bottom of his shirt
self-consciously.
"Maybe that's not a good idea, Dean. I…uh…I know that you're used to
certain…things…happening when you spend the night with people and I uh…I'm not
ready to do that." The smaller boy stammered out reaching for his shoes on the
floor.
Dean caught his arms and turned his friend to look at him. "I don't want to
sleep with you, Cas."
"I know," his friend muttered. "That's why it's better if I go."
"No, I mean. Ugh. I do want to sleep with you, just sleep, Cas." Dean clarified
as he felt his own face begin to heat up. God, he just wanted Castiel to stay
so badly. He felt like if he let the other boy leave then everything would go
back to how it was before at school with Dean pining after his friend from afar
and being too nervous to do anything about it. And yea, he wanted to find out
how much of his fantasies would actually play out the way Dean had imagined
they would with Cas, but he was willing to wait and take it slow if that's what
the other boy wanted. "Listen, I have no idea what I'm doing here, but I don't
want you to leave, okay? I promise it won't be weird, I'll even sleep on the
couch if you want."
Castiel bit his lip and nodded at Dean; the smaller boy moved to pick up the
offered clothing and made his way towards the bedroom door. "Do you mind if I
take a shower?"
Dean swallowed and willed away the image that flashed through his mind of the
other boy in his shower and using his body wash. "Go ahead, man. Um…there are
clean towels on the shelves in the cabinet."
The smaller boy disappeared into the hallway and Dean looked around his room
for a second before he snatched the pillows off of Sam's bed and started
towards the living room, he was surprised when he rounded the corner out of his
room and ran face first into Castiel. The smaller boy grabbed onto Dean's neck
and pulled him into a short heated kiss.
"What was that for?" He asked, repeating his friend's question from earlier in
the evening.
"Just...you don't have to sleep on the couch." Cas said lowly before darting
into the bathroom.
===============================================================================
It was the only way he was going to make it through the night, sleeping in that
tiny bed with Dean and even though Castiel knew this it didn't make him feel
any less awkward about the whole thing. The other boy probably didn't have this
kind of problem, getting aroused at even the mention of sleeping with another
person.
He thought about taking a cold shower, but with the way his body was betraying
him tonight that probably wouldn't take care of the problem long enough for him
or Dean to drift off to the relative safety that sleep would provide him to
keep Castiel from embarrassing himself. So after little to no deliberation
after he had given in and kissed Dean in the hallway Cas turned the water on to
the slightly less than searing temperature that he preferred and stepped into
the shower with his only concern being not letting the other boy hear what he
was about to do.
Castiel spotted a bottle of body wash that was the same brand that Dean kept in
his locker at school and squeezed a liberal amount into his hands. The familiar
scent made it easy to imagine that the other boy was with him in the shower as
both of his hands lathered the soap on his neck and chest before he allowed one
to travel down and grip his half-hard member. The first stroke of his hand had
him groaning, which wasn't something he normally did, but he was thinking about
Dean down the hallway and how maybe the other boy was touching himself too and
thinking of Castiel in the shower.
He leaned up against the wall of the shower and buried his face in the crook of
his elbow, biting hard on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from making
any more noise besides the smack of his hand against his lower abdomen that he
was pretty sure would be covered up by the noise of the running water. But a
traitorous part of his mind supplied that if he was really worried about being
heard then he wouldn't be doing this in the first place or at the very least he
would've locked the door to the bathroom.
The boy imagined that Dean had stayed in the hallway outside of the bathroom
and that his friend had decided that he wanted to talk to Castiel while he
showered. It was innocent enough really, the reasoning that Cas provided for
Dean to come into the bathroom, it wouldn't seem pushy or make him feel like
the other boy was taking advantage of him like Meg had suggested that he would.
When Dean saw what Castiel was doing, his amazing green eyes would widen and
his breathing would become all uneven like it had when they had gone to the
nature park.
Dean wouldn't try to touch him, he would just watch Castiel touching himself
and let his eyes roam over the smaller boy's body and Castiel would feel like
the other boy really wanted him, not just to use him or experiment, but wanted
him enough to never want anyone else again. And Cas would be able to see that
Dean was hard too and the larger boy would bite his lip and tell Castiel that
he was amazing as he touched himself through the pants of his costume.
Castiel's hand sped up as he thought of Dean getting off just by watching him
and his breathing stuttered as the water started to make his back sting from
where it was beating down on him. He was so close and his mind pulled up the
image of how sexy Dean had looked after Jo had walked up on them in the
hallway, with his pupils dilated and the way that the other boy had groaned
when Cas had pushed him up against the wall and how Dean's hand felt when it
was cupping his face and wrapped in his own and he wondered what it would be
like to have Dean touching him just like this. And he was gone, falling over
the precipice of his arousal as he came hard against the wall of the shower;
the water rinsing away all the signs of what he had done and beginning to turn
cold as he gasped for air in the small, steamy room.
When Castiel finally caught his breath, he turned off the water with hands that
were still as shaky as they had been before his shower, but he felt like maybe
he could make it through the night without forcing Dean to confront an awkward,
unexpected erection. He toweled off quickly and donned the clothing that his
friend had loaned to him, noticing that the shirt was a little bit stretched
out around the collar, but otherwise both the shirt and pants fit fairly well
and he supposed that he and Dean were about the same size.
He grabbed the jeans and button down that he had worn to the party and carried
them into Dean's bedroom as he hoped that the other boy wouldn't be able to
tell what he had been doing just by looking at him. Dean had changed clothes
while he was gone and now he was wearing a pair of blue plaid pajama pants and
an old faded black t-shirt. Castiel dumped his clothes onto the floor by his
shoes and plucked on the front of the shirt he was wearing awkwardly.
"Clothes fit," he said lamely as Dean scooted over to provide some room for him
on the bed.
Castiel sat down on the edge of the bed and looked over his shoulder at Dean
who was just smiling at him with this goofy little grin on his face and the
smaller boy tried to reconcile the situation he was in now with how he had felt
earlier in the day, like he would just be happy if he didn't lose Dean for good
because of how he felt about him.
"I don't bite," Dean said turning over on his side with his back to the wall
and patting the bed beside him. He waggled his eyebrows mischievously. "Unless
you…like that sort of thing?"
The smaller boy rolled his eyes and lay down on the bed so that he was facing
his friend. Their knees knocked together sharply and Castiel winced from the
contact. He smiled sheepishly at Dean and then snuggled down into the pillows.
The larger boy reached out and put a hand on his waist, pulling him close
enough that he could kiss the tip of Castiel's nose and then he sat up and
pulled the comforter up from the foot of the bed to cover them both.
Soft music was still playing in the background and the only light in the room
was coming from a small table lamp sitting on the nightstand between the two
beds.
"Can you get the light, babe?" Dean murmured sounding sleepy and content.
"I'm the guest," Castiel grumbled darkly before turning over and stretching out
to pull the chain that would cut off the lamp.
He stayed with his back towards Dean and allowed the larger boy to pull him
back until he could bend his knees around the other boy's and he felt a warm,
solid chest pressed up against his back. Dean's arm curled up towards his chest
and Castiel could feel his friend's breath against the back of his neck and he
thought that if they stayed like this he would be happy forever. He felt like
he could take on the world right now.
"When I went to meet Daniel on the roof," Castiel began the music from the
laptop's small speakers still trilling soft sounds throughout the room. "John
wasn't there; he was pretty much the only one on the rugby team not there. But
Lillith was there too."
"You don't have to tell me this, Cas." Dean murmured behind him as the larger
boy flattened out his hand to place it comfortingly on Castiel's chest.
"I want to," the smaller boy whispered. He took a deep breath before he
continued, focusing on how it felt to wrapped up in this warm, safe cocoon with
Dean. Dean was different than Daniel. "Um…Lillith started yelling at me,
calling me names and saying that I was trying to turn her boyfriend queer.
Daniel didn't say anything; he just sat there letting her call me every
homophobic slur you could think of. Then the team started in, but they were
pushing me around and saying they didn't want my kind at their school."
"I wish I had been there."
"I can take care of myself, Dean. I got a few punches in and I'm pretty sure
that they were about to let me just leave with a busted lip and then they would
tell everyone that I was gay. But I had to know why Daniel had pretended to
like me. I mean, who does that? Someone who is confused and scared and hiding
from who they are and I felt bad for him. So I asked him why. Why he let them
treat me that way. And he said, 'because you're a fucking faggot'. He just spat
it at me like I was lower than dirt. So I punched him in the face."
Dean let out a short, sharp laugh and buried his face into Castiel's hair to
try to muffle the giggles he could feel coming on. "You're so awesome, Cas."
"Well, it was stupid. I should have walked away from the whole thing while I
still had a chance, but a couple of the boys on the team pulled me off of
Daniel and decided that the only way I was going to give up on the whole thing
was if they taught me a lesson. So they dragged me over to the stairs and
pushed me down."
Castiel felt Dean's hand grip the front of his shirt and he put his own over
the clenched fist of the other boy, rubbing a thumb over the warm rough skin at
the edge of Dean's palm. "I hit my head pretty hard on the way down and I
slammed into the wall at the bottom, cracked a couple of ribs. Fractured my
skull, some freshman girl found me when she was sneaking out to the roof to
smoke a cigarette. The nurse said she thinks they had left me there for like
two maybe three hours. My dad came and got me from the hospital, I never saw
Daniel again."
"Those fucking assholes," Dean growled out behind him and Castiel spun around
so that he was facing the other boy. "They should be locked up."
"It's fine Dean, I'm fine. They were just stupid kids. Its adults who do stuff
like that that should go to jail. I forgave those boys a long time ago; there
are other people more deserving of me hating them."
The larger boy cupped Castiel's face and he felt like Dean was looking at him
like he really was an angel or a saint or something for having survived
something like that. He didn't have the heart to tell him about what else had
been done to him, at least not tonight. Castiel would wait to see how much Dean
actually wanted this before he burdened his friend with anything else.
Dean moved over to kiss him and Castiel closed his eyes in anticipation of
feeling those perfect cupids bow lips against his again. But instead he felt
light brushes of the other boy's lips across his eyelids and down his cheeks,
running over his jaw line and then back to his mouth for the other boy to
lightly press his lips against Cas's. He sighed into the kiss and let the other
boy deepen the kiss until their tongues were tentatively tangling as they
explored each other's mouths for the first time and Castiel didn't want to fall
asleep, didn't want this night to end because this was perfect and the music
played softly in the background, providing a white noise soundtrack that would
eventually lull both boy's to sleep, wrapped up together in the small twin bed.
Oh, all that I know,
There's nothing here to run from,
Cos yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on
Chapter End Notes
     Okay everybody! I don't really have much to say this round. Thanks to
     everyone who's commenting or bookmarking or subscribing. You make me
     feel warm fuzzies. Keep doing what you're doing.
***** Girls *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Monday morning found Dean leaning up against Castiel's locker, anxiously
fidgeting with the zipper on his leather jacket and letting out a sigh every
now and then as the girl looming near him continued to talk and ignore the
hints that he was giving her that he wasn't interested in her. Her chattering
was starting to give him a headache and he wished the other boy would just show
up already because he felt like he was going into withdrawals from not having
seen Cas since the morning before.
The morning after their impromptu sleepover had been hectic, with Dean shooting
out of bed with his phone clutched to his ear, having been woken up from up
from where he had been sleeping with his head resting on Castiel's chest by
Bobby calling him and asking him where the hell the larger boy was with his gun
and saying he better get his sorry ass to work before the older man tore him a
new one.
Dean had debated for a moment about whether or not to wake up his friend
because Castiel was just so adorable when he was asleep, all stretched out and
drooling on Dean's pillow like it was the most normal thing in the world for
him to be in the larger boy's bed, like he was always meant to be there. He had
gotten dressed in his work clothes quickly and then gotten back under the
covers with the other boy, climbing on top of Castiel and running his finger
down the bridge of the other boy's nose until his friend had scrunched up his
face and cracked a sleepy eye at Dean.
A slow smile had spread across Cas's face and the smaller boy had wrapped his
arms around Dean's waist before muttering something about a good dream and
turning them both over so that they were lying on their sides and he could bury
his face in Dean's neck. The other boy would have been content to lay there for
the rest of the day, but he knew that Bobby would go out of his way to give
Dean a harder job if he was any later than he already was.
The last time the older man had just finished his work for him and then made
Dean start cleaning out his crowded, dusty attic which had turned up a bunch of
boxes of old Christmas decorations along with several forgotten photo albums
that featured pictures of a teenage John and Bobby smiling in ways the younger
Winchester had never seen. But that had not only killed Dean's allergies, it
had also made Bobby all sad, mopey and practically inhaling whiskey for the
next couple of weeks as he perused through the photo albums and refused to let
either Sam or Dean take them out of the house to show the old pictures to their
father. Finally the books had disappeared and whenever Dean brought it up later
the older man had pretended not to know what the boy was talking about.
So in an effort to wake up the other boy, Dean had kissed at Castiel's temples
and what he could reach of the boy's scratchy, stubbled jaw, made promises of
coffee and pancakes next time they were able to wake up together as long at the
other boy got up right the fuck now because Dean really needed to go. Cas had
eventually woken enough to put on his shoes and grab his clothes before he had
followed the larger boy down to the Impala still in the borrowed pajamas and
allowed himself to be driven home, looking over at Dean with a small smile on
his face as the tape he had made for the larger boy played over the stereo.
But Castiel had gotten all weird when Dean had tried to kiss him when he had
stopped in front of the Novak household and Dean couldn't help but play over
and over in his head how panicked the other boy had looked when he had leaned
towards him, fumbling with the door handle and telling Dean he would talk to
him later before he practically ran into his house. For the rest of the day
Dean had thought about it and he wondered if his friend was regretting the
whole thing now that they were in the harsh light of day, like so many of the
romantic interests in his life had.
Dean straightened up when he saw Castiel coming down the hallway and turned
towards the girl beside him to make one last ditch effort to get her to leave
him alone.
"Yea, Casey." He muttered giving her the smirk and the wink that usually worked
when he was trying to get a girl to do something. "Sounds great. Talk to you
later, bye."
"It's Katie," she mumbled in a star-struck way before giving Dean a little wave
as she wandered off down the hall with a happy look on her face.
The larger boy hoped that he hadn't just agreed to a date or anything with the
girl because he hadn't really been paying attention to what she was saying as
he turned around to face the only person he was interested in doing anything
with. Castiel was standing close enough behind Dean to make him jump back
slightly and looking at the girl's retreating back with a dark look on his
face.
"Whoa, Cas," Dean said lowly wanting to just lean in and give the other boy a
kiss, but if the expression on his friend's face was any indication of how
welcome that would be then Dean figured he should just let Castiel set the
precedent for how much PDA would be acceptable. "Not that I don't like being
close to you, but maybe some personal space. Y'know, just enough so I can
breathe."
Cas squinted at him and pursed his lips slightly before he turned sharply
towards his locker and started twirling in the combination with jerky, agitated
movements. The smaller boy quickly shoved some books in his messenger bag
before slamming his locker door loudly and starting down the hallway without
looking back to see if Dean was following him.
He jogged down the hallway to catch up to the smaller boy and reached out to
grab onto his arm, spinning Castiel to face him. "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," Cas said angrily shaking Dean off with a fierce look on his face.
"I'm sorry I interrupted, but maybe you can keep your fan club away from my
locker. That's not really the first thing I want to deal with when I get to
school."
"Are you mad about Casey?"
"Katie." Castiel corrected deflating visibly as Dean watched his friend.
"Whatever, the point is that was nothing. Some of these girls just can't take a
hint and I'd rather not have the whole school thinking I'm an asshole. I was
just being nice." Dean explained running the hand he had used to stop Cas down
the smaller boy's arm until he was just stroking the back of his friend's hand
with the tips of his fingers.
Castiel looked down at Dean's hand and swallowed nervously before casting a
glance around the hallway. The larger boy watched as the other boy bit his lip
and god, he just wanted to kiss Cas so freaking bad.
"Maybe I just want you to be nice to me." Castiel murmured, his cheeks coloring
slightly as he looked up at Dean underneath his eyelashes.
"I promised you pancakes, babe." Dean said starting towards their homeroom with
Cas beside him, their shoulders brushing together as they walked down the
mostly empty hallway. "And that's not something I do for just anyone. Ask
Sammy. Birthday pancakes, that's all he gets."
===============================================================================
At movie night on Wednesday, no one batted an eye when Dean pulled Castiel down
into his lap as he sat in the arm chair, victorious for the first time in a
while in their weekly struggle to see who would get the comfortable seat and
who would be forced to sit on the floor. As usual, the smaller boy had been
poised to win until Dean had cheated and distracted Cas by kissing his neck and
wedging himself into the seat with a smug smile on his face.
But Castiel could admit that there were worse ways he could have lost to his
friend as he laid back with his head on Dean's shoulder and his legs draped
over the arm of the chair. It was the perfect position for the two boys to talk
during the movie without anyone else hearing them and Cas was marveling at the
way the larger boy's arm felt around his waist and how amazing this all was to
even notice the way that Krissy and Ash seemed to disappear halfway through the
film or how Adam and Jo were sitting with more space between them than usual.
Around his friends it was easier for him to be affectionate with Dean because,
frankly none of them seemed to care, well except Becky who squeaked a little
bit anytime Cas and the other boy kissed, almost kissed, or he was pretty sure
when they were thinking about kissing because the tiny high-pitched sounds came
from the other girl a lot. But it didn't really bother him that she was
watching them in the most voyeuristic way imaginable because it was different
than the way he had been feeling when Dean had leaned over the space separating
them in the Impala or anytime the other boy's eyes lingered for just a little
too long on his mouth when they were talking at school.
At those times it felt like Castiel was getting dirty looks from everyone, like
the shadows that had scared him at Meg's party were following him and Dean
around judging them and planning something horrible. He just couldn't shake the
feeling that if the whole school knew about him and Dean then it would be
disastrous and someone would try to hurt the other boy in a way that was much
worse than anything that had ever happened to Castiel.
But Dean was just so self-destructive that he didn't care if anyone saw him
touching Cas in a way that was more than just friendly, like the times when he
would put a hand on the small of the other boy's back as they navigated down
the hallways in between classes or touching Castiel's knee under their desks in
Chuck's classroom.
Just the day before Castiel had been looking for a book on Richard Nixon way in
the back corner of the library during study hall when Dean had spun him around
and pushed him up against the shelves, burying a hand in Cas's hair and pulling
him into an intense, frantic kiss. It had been exactly what the smaller boy had
wanted to do since he saw Dean talking to Katie on Monday, but Castiel had been
too conscious of the few people who were meandering around the hallway before
class to give into his instincts that were telling him to let everyone know
just who it was exactly that Dean wanted.
Castiel had just gotten the nerve to start inching his hand towards the hem of
Dean's shirt when the librarian had interrupted them with a pointed clearing of
her throat, causing the two boys to separate quickly and head back to Jo who
was laughing silently and pointing between her two blushing friends. Aside from
that one encounter, Castiel had made a point to not do anything that would draw
extra attention to him and Dean.
That's what had caused all of the trouble with Daniel after all. Him getting
jealous of Lillith and deciding that some grand romantic gesture was the best
way to get the boy to pick him over the other girl. A gun range target with a
heart shot in it, probably not the most subtle way of getting the older boy's
attention.
"I don't get it," Castiel murmured into Dean's ear as the movie they were
watching reached its dramatic climax.
"Bruce Willis is a ghost," Dean whispered back. "Remember he got shot by his
patient back at the beginning?"
"So he's been dead this whole time?" the smaller boy asked, drawing a pattern
on his friend's flannel clad chest with one of his fingers. Castiel had kinda
stopped paying attention to the movie awhile ago, too caught up in etching how
Dean looked in the dim light into his memory.
"It surprised me too the first time I saw it, but Bobby has a thing for Bruce
Willis so I think I've seen this at least fifty times."
Cas hummed in understanding and shifted in the other boy's lap so that he could
get up and turn on the light as the credits started rolling across the screen.
The larger boy grabbed him around the waist refused to let Castiel up until he
had given Dean a kiss and while it was cute and amazing and adorable, he
couldn't help but wonder if his friend was this affectionate with all of the
girls he had dated and if he was, when was the honeymoon period going to end
with Dean.
He gave the younger boy a sympathetic look as he passed where Adam and Jo were
sitting together on the couch bickering in hushed tones about nothing in
particular, but Cas knew that the girl was still upset about the whole Michael
thing; less about the younger boy thinking that his cousin could possibly ever
in a million years be good enough for Castiel and more for Adam not telling
her.
He didn't really understand why she was so mad, it's not like he had ended up
saying more than two or three sentences to the other boy over the course of
Meg's party and any time Castiel had been anywhere near Michael, Dean had been
right there glaring daggers at the boy and standing possessively close to the
smaller boy. Cas smiled when he thought about how Dean didn't see especially
shy about going after what he wanted and again questioned why it had taken his
friend so long to just break down and kiss him. He supposed there was something
to be said about Dean having enough honor to not want to come between Castiel
and the girl that the larger boy had thought he was dating.
Castiel bundled on his grey peacoat and watched while Dean grabbed his own
jacket before they bid their goodbyes and started towards the front door. The
smaller boy noticed that Krissy's silver Pontiac was missing out of the
driveway and wondered to himself where the girl and Ash could've gotten off to.
He turned up the collar of his coat against the cold wind that was blowing and
started towards the park so that he and the other boy could follow their usual
after movie ritual. Castiel let out a surprised yelp when he felt himself
pulled sharply back by his coat until he had Dean's arms wrapped around him
from behind and the larger boy was shuffling him towards the Impala.
"Nuh-uh, too cold to walk, babe. We're driving tonight," Dean said into his ear
as he unlocked the driver's side door and pushed Castiel in and across the
bench seat so that he could get behind the steering wheel.
Castiel shivered in the cold vehicle and he could see his breath ghosting out
into the dark interior as his friend started up the large car with a rumble and
cranked the heater all the way up. He could hear a faint rattling sound, but
Dean didn't seem concerned so Cas decided not to mention it in case his friend
suddenly got the urge to start giving his car a tune-up in the middle of Jo's
driveway.
"S'go!" He managed to force out through his chattering teeth, shoving his hands
deep into the pockets of his coat in an effort to fight the numbness that he
could already feel setting in.
"I gotta let the car warm up, Cas." Dean said blowing into his hands before he
looked over at the smaller boy and burst out laughing. He reached over and
pulled Castiel flush against his side, rubbing his hands briskly against the
smaller boy's arms. "Awww, sweetheart. Come here."
Cas took the opportunity to bury his face in the larger boy's neck and he
chuckled slightly when he felt Dean shiver from his cold nose pressed up
against his jaw line.
"I wish it would just snow already," Castiel said sounding slightly muffled.
"We could make snow angels," the larger boy responded and his friend could
almost hear the smile in Dean's voice.
The smaller boy shook his head and Dean sputtered from where Cas's hair was
getting in his face and mouth. "We are going to have to get you over the whole
angel thing, Dean. Snow men, we'll build snow men."
"Or we can build and igloo and live in it for the winter." Dean said drawing
away from the other boy enough to put the car into gear and slowly start making
his way around the park and over to Castiel's house.
"Still cold." He declared sliding his hand under Dean's jacket and kissing
along the other boy's neck as he drove.
"Likely story," Dean scoffed, tilting his head to the side in order to give
Castiel better access.
"I had a dream about this one time," Castiel admitted happy that his friend
couldn't see his face because it felt hot enough to start a fire with. "Not
exactly this, but driving around with you and like holding your hand and being
able to kiss you and stuff."
"I've had those too," he heard the other boy admit softly; tightening his arm
around Cas enough that the other boy could feel it through his thick, winter
coat. "I also sometimes have dreams where my teeth are falling out, which are
freaky. But the ones about you and me, those are nice."
The car rolled to a stop outside of Castiel's house and the smaller boy sat up
quickly once he realized they had reached their destination. Cas looked around
anxiously, trying to discern whether his Lawrence neighbors were as interested
in what was going on in the Novak household as the ones in Pontiac had been.
Gabriel and Sam weren't exactly discreet when they parted company, but Castiel
figured it would be just his luck for the people next door to take offense at
who he was seen embracing and not his older brother.
Cas placed a quick kiss on the larger boy's cheek before reaching into the
backseat for his messenger bag. He got out of the car with a happy bounce in
his step and started towards his front door, looking back over his shoulder to
wave Dean away even though he knew that the other boy wouldn't leave until
Castiel was inside.
"Babe, wait up!" He heard behind him, turning around quickly to see Dean
jogging up the sidewalk towards him.
The larger boy had a wide smile on his face and Castiel couldn't help but feel
the anxiety drain out of him at the other boy's approach. Dean just had that
effect on him, made him feel like he could take on the world as long as the
other boy was with him.
"I forgot to tell you something." Dean said excitedly. "Coach benched me on
Friday, since I missed last week's game he's not going to let me play."
"And this is a good thing?" Cas asked slightly confused because he thought that
Dean enjoyed football and why would he want to be punished by not being allowed
to play.
"Hell yea! It means I can watch you during halftime instead of being stuck
getting yelled at in the locker room by Uriel."
"You've seen the marching show, Dean. Every Wednesday we practice it and you
watched when you weren't busy running plays and stuff."
"Yea," the larger boy admitted with a shrug, looking down at his feet shyly.
"But I haven't seen you do the whole thing in your uniform."
"My uniform." Cas said as a slow smile spread across his face. He adjusted his
messenger bag on his shoulder so that he could reach out and flip up the collar
of Dean's leather jacket. "I see, well then I'll just make sure my shoes are
extra shiny that day."
"Whatever, loser." Dean muttered giving the smaller boy another quick kiss
before heading back to his still running car.
===============================================================================
Castiel wasn't joking when he said he would take extra care with his uniform on
Friday. In fact, Dean was pretty sure that he played up the whole ROTC angle
probably way more than was necessary by snapping off salutes to their teachers
at random intervals, standing at military rest anytime he was waiting around
for Dean to get stuff out of his locker, and even somehow managing to get his
hair to stay parted to the side instead of how it usually stuck up in messy
spikes.
To his credit, Dean managed to control himself for most of the day barring the
two times when he pulled the smaller boy into an empty classroom once and
cornered him in the library again to kiss him and muss him up a little bit. He
didn't know what it was about the uniform that made him want to just rip the
olive green fabric off of the other boy, but Dean did derive a certain perverse
satisfaction from making Cas appear all flustered and wrinkled when he was
supposed to be impassive and stoic.
For their last game of the season, the lions were a shoe in to win and Dean had
managed to convince Uriel that it would just lower the teams soaring morale if
he was forced to sit on the sidelines and watch the rest of the team play when
he couldn't. Since he was going to be a spectator for the first time since
junior high, Dean went all out snagging his giant red foam finger out of his
closet when he rushed home after school to get a blanket and a thermos before
heading over to Jo's house so they could ride together back up to the school.
The pair hung around the house, with Jo talking about how she was almost ready
to forgive Adam for the whole Michael debacle and Dean chiming in every now and
then with his opinion on the matter, which was that the girl shouldn't be mad
at the younger boy in the first place because it wasn't his fault that his
cousin was a weirdo just like it wasn't Dean's fault that John was an asshole.
"It's not that Michael was creepy," Jo said grabbing chips for her and Dean to
snack on until they had to be back at the school in a couple of hours in order
to get seats next to the ROTC on the bleachers. "It's that Adam didn't tell me.
You're not supposed to keep secrets from the person you're dating."
"Okay," the boy conceded tipping his soda can at his friend. "I get that, but
maybe he thought you would just make a big deal about it. Like you always do
when someone tells you something they know you won't like."
"I don't see why you're defending him," Jo muttered plopping down next to Dean
on the living room couch. "You're the one that would've gotten hurt if Cas had
ended up with Michael instead of you because of Adam not telling me."
"Like you would've done anything to stop him."
"That's bullshit and you know it. I would've pulled you and Cas aside and
pushed your faces together until you two figured your fucking shit out.
Seriously, you two have been dancing around each other since you met and it was
reaching sickening levels of frustrating for the rest of us."
Dean blushed and threw a chip at Jo because he really didn't know what to say
to that. Since the week before every one of his and Castiel's friends had
pulled him to the side and given him a talk about how great the two of them
were together because Cas was level-headed and Dean forced the other boy to
lighten up a bit. There were also the expected thinly veiled threats,
surprisingly the most frightening one had come from Garth, who's dad was some
government big wig that none of them had ever met and Dean was pretty sure he
could make a body disappear if his son asked him to.
"And if you hurt him, I'll kill you." Jo stated plainly. "So don't keep secrets
from him, Dean. Secrets hurt."
Dean nodded because he didn't think there was anything about him that he
wouldn't want Cas to know about and if being honest was the easiest way to have
a good relationship well, then he could do that no problem.
Before they left, Ellen filled both his and the other girl's thermoses with hot
chocolate and loaded Dean down with some more blankets because it was supposed
to be really cold out and she was not going to be dealing with a bunch of flu
riddled teenagers lounging around her house like they had the winter before,
begging for soup and moaning and groaning like they were dying.
They reached the school with about half an hour to spare before the game and
met Cas and Adam up at where they were already sitting on the bleachers,
talking to Gilda and Kevin with Virgil and going over some volunteer thing they
were going to be doing next week after school since there wasn't a game.
He settled down on the bench behind Jo and spread one of the blankets he had
brought out across his lap. The temperature was already hovering just below
forty degrees and Dean thought again about what it would be like to kiss
Castiel in the snow and hoped that they would see the precipitate soon because
that was something he was really looking forward to doing. Creaming Gabriel
with a couple of snowballs was the second thing on his list of must do winter
activities.
Castiel plopped down on the seat beside him and gratefully shuffled under the
portion of the blanket that Dean offered him. The smaller boy's cheeks and nose
were already red from the cold and Dean suddenly remembered what else he had
raced home to grab for his friend.
"Jo, get that stuff out of your backpack for me." Dean demanded tapping the
girl briskly on the shoulder to break her attention away from where she was
making lovey-eyes at Adam.
She grumbled for a second before reaching down to pick up the bag at her feet
and rummage around in it for a few seconds before producing several hats and
scarves which she shoved at the larger boy before turning back to her
boyfriend.
Dean untangled the jumbled mass of fabric, separating red from black so that he
could give the boy beside him some cold weather gear. He motioned for Castiel
to turn towards him and the smaller boy obliged, smirking slightly when Dean
settled a black beanie on his head and wrapped a matching scarf snuggly around
his neck, pulling him in for a quick kiss on the lips that had Cas looking
around the bleachers nervously to see if anyone noticed. Dean frowned slightly
at that but tried to not let it bother him too much, it's not like Cas was
ashamed of him or anything, right?
He put his own red plaid Sherpa style hat on his head and looped his scarf
around his neck before nestling his hands back under the blanket and
surreptitiously sliding closer to his friend. A couple of minutes later he put
one of his hands on Castiel's leg and the smaller boy jumped a bit at the
contact, looking at Dean with wide eyes and shaking his head slightly.
"Stop it," Castiel hissed at him low enough that if Dean wasn't listening he
wouldn't have heard the smaller boy over the band which had arrived and was
starting to warm up beside them.
"I didn't bring gloves," Dean said with a shrug, running his thumb over his
friend's thigh under the blanket. "And my hand is cold."
"Just one of your hands is cold?" Cas said disbelievingly, putting his own hand
over Dean's and giving it a small squeeze to still his fingers.
The larger boy smiled widely and waved his foam finger at Castiel who made a
face, but also didn't try to make Dean move away from him again. As the game
got under way, Dean tried to see what else he could get away with by sliding
his hand farther up the other boy's leg during exciting plays like it was on
accident, but that was quickly stopped when Cas started shifting uncomfortably
beside him and giving Dean dark looks.
When it got close to halftime, Dean managed to pull the smaller boy into
another kiss when the band and ROTC were busy shuffling off of the bleachers
and everyone was too distracted to notice what they were doing anyway.
"Dean!" Cas whispered sharply, licking his lips and looking around like they
were about to get ambushed by hidden cameras or something. "Can you just
control yourself for like five minutes? I can walk around during third quarter;
we need to talk about this."
He nodded glumly at his friend and moved to sit beside Jo for the halftime
show, which was so much more awesome than anytime Dean had seen the ROTC
practicing it on the track while the football team used the field to practice.
The squad moved in perfect sync with each other, catching tosses and flipping
their rifles around like it was as common as breathing to them. Dean wasn't the
only one standing up to applaud Cas and Adam when they tossed their rifles at
least twenty yards to each other over the heads of the other unflinching cadets
and caught them perfectly without hardly even blinking an eye.
"He is amazing," Dean stated watching Castiel march slowly off of the field
with the rest of the band.
"Yea," Jo sighed beside him and Dean knew that they probably weren't talking
about the same person, but he wasn't really ready to get all gushy with his
friend about Cas just yet.
"Hey," Dean said tearing his eyes away from the other boy. "I'm gonna go ahead
and go to the concession stand, beat the crowd. Plus Cas said he wanted to talk
and I'm pretty sure it's going to be something I don't want to hear, I'm gonna
get him a burger to maybe try to butter him up. Do you want me to get you
anything?"
"Nah, Adam and I will go when he gets back over here. Go on, lover boy." Jo
said pushing him towards the stairs.
Dean started towards the small brightly lit building that housed the
concessions which was separated from the football field by a slight hill that
provided a pretty decent view of the whole area including the home and
visitors' bleachers. He joined the short line and soon enough he was placing an
order for burgers for him and Cas, extra cheese for the smaller boy. Dean paid
and stuck the cans of soda he had gotten into the pockets of his jacket before
stepping off to the side and watching the beginning of the third quarter as he
waited.
He could see the wave of band members making their way towards the concession
stand from both sides of the field and congratulated himself on beating the
rush so that he and Cas wouldn't have spend the whole quarter freezing in line.
The larger boy tried not to wonder about the conversation the other boy wanted
to have with him. Technically they weren't dating or anything, at least they
had never officially discussed it and maybe Cas didn't want Dean hanging all
over him all of the time so that he could keep his options open. And while that
shouldn't hurt his feelings as much as it did, every time that Castiel pulled
away from him or looked around before letting Dean touch him it just confirmed
to the larger boy that he wasn't good enough for the other boy.
"Winchester! I got your burgers!" one of the more enthusiastic dads on the
booster club announced, holding up a brown bag.
Dean made his way through the crowd of uniform clad band members that had
started to form and grabbed his order, nodding at the older man when he told
him that he had thrown some fries in to thank the younger boy for a fantastic
season. He spun around intending to make his way back to Cas so that he could
make the most of the time he had with the other boy, only to run straight into
someone he had never expected to see again.
"Cassie," he said half-heartedly as the girl enveloped him in a fruity scented
hug. She looked a lot like she had the last time he had seen her, only with
more clothing and her hair bouncing around her shoulders.
"I thought that was you!" She squealed into his ear and Dean flinched away from
the sound, patting her on the back and moving as far away from her as he could
since they were in the middle of the third quarter crush that had arrived at
the stand in full force.
"It's me," he agreed, running his free hand over the back of his neck and
looking around for someone who could rescue him from this uncomfortable
situation; Jo, Adam, hell he'd even take Becky at this point. "What are you
doing here?"
"My cousin, Victor, quarterbacks for the visiting team. Me and dad came to
watch him play and I thought that you would be playing so that was just more
incentive to come." Cassie said smiling at Dean seductively and running her
fingers over the front of his coat. "You never called me."
"Yea," Dean said taking another step back and accidentally bumping into a
small, bespeckled boy in a band uniform, getting a dirty look when he gave the
kid an apologetic look. "About that, I…uh…I'm sorta seeing someone else now."
Cassie made a disappointed face and then shrugged before leaning in to give
Dean a kiss on the cheek, it just felt so wrong since it wasn't coming from Cas
and he marveled at how much had changed for him after only being involved with
another boy for just a week. Her lips felt oily on his face and Dean figured
that she was probably wearing lip gloss or something and he missed the stubble
that rasped against his own when he and Castiel kissed.
"Lucky girl." Cassie said into his ear before giving him one last wink and
sauntering back over to the visitors' side of the field.
Dean rubbed at the spot that Cassie had kissed him and started back towards the
bleachers with his only thought being about how the girl had it all wrong, Cas
wasn't the lucky one.
"Where's Cas?" he asked when he reached the spot that they had been sitting and
found only Gilda and Kevin sharing nachos with extra jalapenos.
"He said he was going to find you," the boy mumbled around a mouth full of
chips.
Gilda shook her head and waved a finger at Dean to wait as she sipped at her
Gatorade in an effort to cool her burning mouth. "No, he went to look for you
and then came back. I saw him talking to Virgil, he said he wasn't feeling well
and asked if he could go home."
"How long ago was that?" Dean asked concern creeping into his voice as he
thought about Castiel being sick and having to wait in the cold for Gabriel to
come and get him.
"Ten minutes?" Gilda said looking to Kevin for confirmation and the younger boy
just shrugged before a particularly large dollop of cheese fell onto his jacket
and he cursed softly to himself.
"Thanks," He replied stashing his bag of burgers and sodas next to Jo's
backpack that was still sitting with their blankets on the bleachers and making
his way towards the parking lot.
===============================================================================
Castiel felt so stupid; of course he couldn't give Dean what he wanted. How
could he ever compete with the kind of girls that liked his friend, all bouncy
and perky and easy; that's what guys like Daniel and Dean wanted, someone they
could show off to everyone. Someone who would hang on their arm like some kind
of trophy and if Cas was any kind of trophy he figured it would probably be for
some really lame sport like shuffleboard and everyone would be able to see how
tarnished and banged up and damaged he was on the inside.
Seeing the other boy with Cassie was just the thing that confirmed what the
voices in his head had been saying to him all week, that he didn't deserve to
be happy or with the person he wanted to be with and no matter what he was
never going to be enough for someone to want him back.
He clutched his phone to his ear and listened as Gabriel's voicemail kicked in
again and instead of leaving another message he just angrily punched the
disconnect button and fought the urge to throw his phone as far across the
parking lot as he possibly could. Castiel swallowed hard and leaned his head
back against the cold brick wall of the gymnasium and told himself that he
wouldn't cry over a relationship that he hadn't even had in the first place.
"Babe, what are you doing out here? It's fucking freezing."
Castiel looked over to see Dean approaching him silhouetted against the stadium
lights of the football field. "Can't you just leave me alone?"
The larger boy stopped and a hurt look crossed his face before he continued
walking towards Cas slowly with his hands raised like he was trying to calm a
frightened animal.
"I'm sorry, okay. I'll back off, Cas. I didn't know all of the kissing and
stuff bothered you so much." Dean said apologetically. "But if you aren't
feeling well, I can take you home. Waiting on Gabriel in the cold is just going
to make you sicker."
"I'm not fucking sick, Dean!" Castiel yelled suddenly angry because how could
Dean not know what it did to him to see the other boy with all of those girls.
And why did it have to be that girl. "No, you know what, I am. I am sick. I
deserve better than this and if you can't decide what you want from me then we
just need to stop."
Dean took a step back like he had been hit and looked at the smaller boy with a
distraught expression. "I know you deserve better, Cas. But I'm working on it
ok? I can't read your mind and I'm not good at the whole boyfriend thing so
you're going to have to cut me some slack here."
"I don't want a boyfriend, Dean. I mean I do, but I know you don't do that. I
just want someone who wants to hang out all the time, and thinks I'm the best
person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me. You can't just run off
with a girl every time I don't let you grope me in public!"
"I didn't run off with some girl, Cas…" The larger boy began defensively before
realization hit him and made his eyes widen. "You saw me talking to Cassie."
"Of course I saw you," Castiel snapped crossing his arms over his chest. "And
why her, Dean? Like it's not enough that you called her my name when you were
with her, you have to let her paw all over you in front of everyone we know."
"I didn't call her your name."
"Yes, yes you did." The smaller boy said shaking his head to try to rid himself
of the memory of his friend calling the girl beautiful when he had walked in on
them. "At Jo's party."
"At Jo's party." Dean repeated sadly looking down at the sidewalk separating
them. "So you did….see me with her. Do you know what I did after you left that
party, Cas?"
"Obviously I know what you did, Dean."
"No, before that." The other boy continued entreatingly. "I wanted to kiss you
that night, Cas, and I didn't because I was stupid and thought I had to live up
to what I thought everyone expected of me. My dad, Sam, the whole fucking
school. So when you left, I waited for you and drank because I needed to not
ruin our friendship by doing something that would make things awkward. And I
don't remember what happened with Cassie, but I remember wishing that it wasn't
her that I was with and it scared me. It scared me how much I liked you and I
hardly even knew you then."
"Then why don't you want to be my boyfriend?' Castiel said softly. "Why do you
keep talking to all of those girls? Am I not enough for you?"
"Have you not been paying attention?" Dean asked moving up to put his arms
around Cas's waist. "All of those girls, I don't want any of them. If I had it
my way then I would call an assembly and kiss you in front of everyone. I want
to hang out with you all of the time and I know you're the best person in the
world and….well…we'll get to the other thing when we get to it. And I want to
be your boyfriend."
Castiel smiled tearfully at Dean and buried his face in the other boy's neck,
sliding his arms under his friend—no, his boyfriend's jacket and clutching on
tightly to the flannel shirt he was wearing over his soft, worn Journey t-
shirt. "So you want to have sex with me?"
Dean chuckled softly and pressed a kiss into the smaller boy's hair that was
sticking out under the hat he was still wearing before Castiel heard him make a
disappointed noise. "What is in your hair anyway?"
"Anna's hair gel and don't change the subject."
"How about we go back to your house, wash this shit out of your hair because it
makes you smell like a candle store, and then we'll…talk about it."
Chapter End Notes
     I'm so sorry this is late. I've literally worked fourteen days
     straight and counting and fell asleep before posting this up last
     night. Also say what you will about Girls and Lena Dunham, but the
     lady sure can deliver one hell of a heartfelt line. As always
     comments are appreciated, you guys are amazing and constantly make my
     day.
***** Closer *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"So I told my therapist about the other night," the smaller boy stated
nonchalantly, dipping one of his fries into Dean's milkshake and taking an
experimental nibble of the combination before making an approving sound and
sliding the other boy's drink closer to the middle of the table they were
sitting at.
"You did what!?" Dean coughed out around the bite of burger that was currently
lodged in his throat.
Castiel's eyes widened and he moved around the table to pat the larger boy on
the back until Dean waved him off and wiped at the corners of his eyes to clear
away the tears that had sprung up as he had fought to breathe.
Dean couldn't believe that his boyfriend had told his freaking therapist about
last Friday. He had only found out that the smaller boy was seeing a shrink the
day before when Dean had tried to make plans for them to do something after
school today and Castiel had said he was busy. The larger boy had whined and
complained about wanting to spend time with Cas until the other boy had given
in and told Dean what he was really doing on all of those Thursdays that he had
thought his boyfriend was spending time with Meg.
And it made him sad and angry all at the same time because that Daniel kid had
hurt Cas bad enough that he had to get professional help and Dean didn't know
if he had ever felt like he could kill someone before now, but it seemed like
something that wouldn't be very hard to do. Not if he got Sam and maybe Jo to
help him.
He knew that therapists were supposed to help people work on things that they
were going through, but Dean hadn't thought that what had happened with him and
Cas after they had gotten back to the empty Novak household warranted seeking a
second opinion about. Yea, it had gotten a little awkward for a couple of
minutes there, but in the end he thought they had both enjoyed it.
Dean felt his face redden and he shifted in his seat, looking around the diner
self-consciously as he thought about Castiel being all possessive and self-
assured and sexy when they were alone together.
They had barely made it into Cas's house before the smaller boy had pushed Dean
roughly up against the front door and rushed them both out of the coats and
cold weather paraphernalia that was separating them from touching each other.
He had pressed close enough that Dean could smell the familiar scent of
peppermint under the unappealing chemical odor of the hair gel Cas was wearing
and it had made the larger boy give a breathy sigh that wasn't anything like
the noises he usually made when he was feeling this way.
Castiel's eyes had bored into his own and the smaller boy had pressed his mouth
hungrily against Dean's, initiating their kiss for one of the few times since
they had admitted how they felt about each other. It was rough and desperate
and Cas did that thing where he nipped at Dean's bottom lip. He tasted like hot
chocolate and heaven and their tongues slid together in a way that the larger
boy thought that he would never get enough of.
When he felt cold fingers brushing against his side under his shirt Dean had
pulled away from the kiss, looking at Cas with wide, shocked eyes because the
smaller boy was always shying away from him when Dean tried to touch him like
that and fuck, all he had wanted to do for weeks was touch Castiel's chest so
that he could find out if the feel of the other boy's muscles moving under his
hands would be as hot as he had imagined it would be.
"What are you doing, Cas?" Dean had asked because he knew what his own endgame
would be if he were acting like this, but he didn't think that his boyfriend
was ready for that kind of thing yet. Hell, Dean wasn't ready for that with
another guy yet and he didn't want this to happen too soon just because Castiel
felt like he had something to prove.
The other boy had frowned slightly before moving back in and starting to place
soft kisses along Dean's jawline and neck.
"I'm kissing you." Cas had mumbled in reply before biting softly on the spot
where the larger boy's neck met his shoulder and trailing his fingers over
Dean's ribs.
"Ohhh! God, babe, I can see that," Dean had managed to groan out his hands
gripping the back of the light green button down that Cas wore with his ROTC
uniform. He knew that he should probably stop this, but it just felt too good.
"This isn't really what I meant when I said we would talk about it."
The other boy had chuckled slightly before grabbing Dean's hand and dragging
him up the stairs towards his bedroom, "So talk. I'll listen."
Dean had managed to stop the other boy in the hallway outside of his bedroom by
gripping onto the banister at the top of the stairs. "Cas! Seriously, can you
just slow down for a second?"
"No." Castiel had said moving with lightening speed to pin Dean's arms to his
sides and press him up against the wall outside of his doorway and it was
almost enough to make the larger boy say, fuck it and rip his boyfriend's shirt
off right there. "You don't want those other girls, right?"
He had shaken his head quickly, wide eyed and confused by the sudden change in
Castiel's tone which had become uncertain and rough with emotion. "No, Cas. I
only want you."
The smaller boy had let out a deep growl and pulled Dean into his darkened
bedroom, practically tossing the other boy down onto the bed before he had
climbed on top of the larger boy, straddling his hips and silencing Dean's
half-hearted protests with another deep kiss. It had been like Dean's hands had
had a life of their own as he hurriedly untucked Castiel's button down and
pulled the other boy as close to him as possible using the black tie that went
with the uniform.
His slid his palms under the other boy's shirt and groaned into the kiss when
he felt the hard muscles of Castiel's back moving as his boyfriend shifted one
of his hands up to Dean's hair in order to pull his head slightly to the side
so that he could continue kissing the larger boy's neck. Dean didn't think he
had ever been this hard in his life and when Cas's hips ground down against his
own he could feel that his boyfriend was as turned on by all of this as he was.
Maybe this was why being with another guy was so appealing to him; there wasn't
any guesswork when it came to knowing if the other person really liked what you
were doing.
Dean sucked in a sharp breath the first time Cas purposely thrust his erection
against where the larger boy's own was straining against his zipper, moaning
into the neck of the boy beneath him.
"Fuck, Cas. You're so fucking amazing. I want you so much." The larger boy
groaned out, shifting his hips so that he could feel Cas against him every time
he thrust up to meet the other boy.
Castiel had been breathing heavily against Dean's skin and the larger boy drug
his short, blunt nails down the other boy's back, clutching him close and
hooking one of his legs over his boyfriend's hip as he felt Cas start to falter
in the rhythm they had set together.
"Tell me your mine, Dean." Cas had growled into his ear before sucking the lobe
into his mouth. "Say it."
"God, Cas." Dean had moaned shutting his eyes hard when his vision started
getting blurry and the other boy's mouth moved to the spot behind his ear that
was just going to end everything for him. "I'm yours. Just yours."
"Dean!" The smaller boy had not been quiet when he moaned his boyfriend's name
and Dean had just been thankful that no one else was in the house because while
it was sexy as hell to hear Cas like that, he didn't need Sam getting scarred
for life either. "I'm going to…I've never…Jesus, you're so fucking gorgeous."
He had moved his hands out from under Castiel's shirt and held tightly onto the
other boy's hips as he started to shudder and grind determinedly against Dean,
breathing in shaky, gasping moans against the hollow of the larger boy's neck
and fingers clenching in his hair in a way that had Dean reaching his own
orgasm right on the heels of other boy.
"Cas! Fuck!" Dean had grunted out in lieu of a warning as the waves of pleasure
crashed down on him, whiting out his vision even behind his closed eyelids and
causing his back to arch up slightly off the bed.
He had collapsed back, dragging in greedy lungfuls of air and rubbing small,
soothing circles onto Castiel's hips as the smaller boy continued to shudder
through aftershocks on top of him. Dean had kissed the other boy's hair which
was no longer neatly parted, the gel making it stick up in even more mind-
bending directions than usual and sighed in happy, contented way.
Even though he had been entirely blissed out, the feeling of Cas tensing above
him had not passed Dean's notice and he cracked an eyelid at the other boy who
had started to pull away from him with an embarrassed look on his face.
"I'm sorry, Dean." His boyfriend had said, pushing himself off of Dean and
wincing when he stood up, turning his back quickly and burying his face in his
hands. "I…I don't know where that came from."
"It's okay, babe." Dean said, ignoring the rapidly cooling mess in his own
boxers in order to move around the other boy and put his hands on his
shoulders. "I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the hottest thing that's ever
happened to me."
"Really?" Castiel had said glancing up at him before his eyes darted back down
to Dean's neck and he started blushing. "I…I mean. Well, I guess it goes
without saying that I liked it too, huh?"
"You are so fucking adorable," The larger boy had said before pulling them into
another kiss that would eventually lead to more making out and Castiel working
up the nerve to pull Dean's shirt off and both of them coming again before they
collapsed exhausted in a tangled mess of limbs, but at the time Dean had just
hoped that it would convey how he was feeling without him having to say it.
Back in the diner, Dean ran a hand over his neck and let out a slow breath as
he tried not to be annoyed that Cas was talking about their sex life with a
lady who was getting paid to listen to it. "I can't believe you told her about
that."
"Why?" Castiel asked tilting his head at the larger boy and swiping a fry
through the dollop of ketchup on the plate they were sharing. "It's just a
dream, Dean. It's not something to be embarrassed about. Anyway, Rachel said
dreams about your teeth falling out mean that you're feeling powerless."
"Oh, that." Dean said quickly, clearing his throat as the memory of Castiel
trailing hesitant kisses across his chest flittered through his mind again. "I
don't feel powerless, babe. I'm a total badass."
"Maybe it's about your dad," Castiel murmured, glancing out the window beside
them at the cold drizzle that had started since they had met at the diner after
the smaller boy's therapy session.
Dean gave his boyfriend a withering look and snatched back his milkshake just
as Cas went to dip another french fry. "I told you it was nothing."
'It' referred to the dark bruise that Castiel had found on Dean's ribs earlier
that week when they had been in the Impala after movie night, kissing in the
car in front of the Novak house. The smaller boy had tried to haul Dean closer
to him across the seat and he had winced from where Cas had pulled his shirt
tight across the mark that John had left on him the night before. His father
and younger brother had been arguing about how Sam was never home anymore,
which was true since the junior had been spending more and more time with
Gabriel or crashing in Bobby's spare bedroom as their father's intolerance and
drinking became more and more centered around what Sam was doing with the
eldest Novak.
John hadn't actually caught them in the middle of anything yet, but Dean knew
that the older man was suspicious of the fact that Sam had clothes in his room
that were way too small for him and a new found appreciation for Bonnie Tyler
that couldn't possibly have come from either Dean or himself. Like most of the
other times his father had left bruises and marks on him, Dean had tried to
write off the whole thing as being an accident, which wasn't exactly a lie
since the bruising on his ribs had been caused by John pushing him into the
kitchen table in his drunken haste to get to Sam who had just called the older
man 'an ignorant, self-hating redneck.'
It was like his younger brother had a death wish or something and after all of
the work Dean had put into keeping their family together over the years, even
as John spiraled farther and farther out of control, he was going to be damned
if he let the younger boy just throw it all away when they only had a couple of
years left until Sam would graduate and they could both get the hell out of
Lawrence like they had always planned. Once they were gone, John wouldn't have
a say in their lives anymore and Dean could care less if his little brother
dated every munchkin in Oz as long as he was happy and safe and not hell bent
on severing the last familial tie that they had besides each other. He figured
given enough time their father would just get used to Gabriel being obnoxious
and not having ovaries and he would get used to Cas too, that was something
that had to happen or Dean would just have to give up on the older Winchester
for good himself.
The other boy narrowed his eyes and perused his lips before reaching for his
wallet and slamming down a couple of bills onto the table. Castiel was up and
pulling his coat on before Dean even knew what was going on. The larger boy
threw some more money down on the table, enough to make it up to Barb that they
were depriving her of getting to keep giving the two of them pinches on their
cheeks every time that she refilled their drinks. He rushed after Cas who was
already striding determinedly towards Dean's apartment complex, shoulders
hunched and head bowed against the cold, misting rain that as falling.
"Jesus Christ, Cas!" Dean said pulling the smaller boy under the overhang of a
nearby bookstore when he caught up to him, shivering as he slid his jacket on
over his damp arms. "What did I say now?"
"I don't understand why you insist on putting yourself in a dangerous situation
just because he's your father." Castiel replied angrily, his blue eyes blazing
with concern and worry for the other boy.
"My dad's not dangerous. I told you before he only acts like that when he's
drunk, when he's sober he's not nearly as much of an asshole. You would
probably really like him."
"And would he like me, Dean? Would he think that I'm good enough for his son or
would he be worried that I'm keeping you from having a normal relationship
because I'm a fucking shirtlifting homo? Your dad is never sober and I don't
want you getting hurt because you feel like you have to protect everyone all of
the time! Sam knows how your dad is; he can take care of himself."
"It was an accident, Cas. He didn't mean to hurt me I just got in his way. And
I'm not going to let him do anything to my fucking brother, would you let
someone hurt Anna? You're being ridiculous right now!"
The smaller boy shook his head, causing the beads of water in his hair to track
down his face and neck looking way too much like tears for Dean to not want to
gather the boy in his arms and promise that he knew how to handle his dad and
no matter what the older man's opinion on their relationship wasn't going to
change how he felt. But he was mad that Cas was suggesting that Sam should fend
for himself against John, Dean had always shielded his younger brother from
their dad when things got really bad and they always had the refuge of Bobby's
house to go to when they needed to let John rage by himself for a while.
"What if he doesn't stop?" Cas whispered, his jaw clenching. "What if one night
you dad comes home and decides that he can't handle having a gay son and he
does something that you can't just pretend he did on accident?! What if he
decides that your life or Sam's is worth less than his reputation, Dean!?"
"That's not going to happen!" Dean yelled back feeling like they weren't
exactly talking about just what John did when he was drunk and angry at the
whole world for how his life had turned out.
"You don't know that! You can't promise me that one day John isn't going to go
too far, push you too hard and you break down and do something that will make
me lose you." The smaller boy let out a strangled sob and clutched at his chest
right above his heart. "I can't lose you. I just found you."
"Fuck," Dean swore softly, his anger and confusion over their unexpected
argument draining out of him as he wrapped his arms around his boyfriend. "I
can't promise you that my dad will stop being the way he is, Cas. You said that
all father's let their kids down and mine is a lot less perfect than most other
parents. I will promise you that if it gets to be too much, if I think he's
going to do something that will seriously hurt me or Sam then I'll get us out
of there. We'll leave, go to Bobby's or Ellen's, somewhere until he calms down
and comes to his senses."
"And if he doesn't? If he finds out about you two and stays angry forever,
you'll lose your family because of me and Gabriel. I don't want to ruin your
life." Castiel said sniffling against Dean's chest.
"You could never ruin my life, sweetheart." Dean replied tilting the other
boy's face up so that he could kiss Castiel softly. He didn't care who saw them
or if it ever got back to his dad because right now the only thing Dean was
worried about was making Cas realize how much he cared about him. "But you have
to promise me something too."
"Anything." The smaller boy said quickly and Dean smiled at how sincere he
sounded.
"Stop fucking running away from me all of the time when you get upset, the
weather is too shitty for all of this confrontational bullshit."
"Did we just have our first fight?" Castiel asked innocently, leaning into
Dean's chest as his voice dropped lower.
Dean shrugged in response, enjoying how the other boy fit perfectly in his arms
and burying his face in Cas's warm neck for a moment before his boyfriend
hurriedly started pulling him towards the apartment complex. "Where's the fire,
babe?"
"We just had a fight," Castiel said glancing over his shoulder at Dean and
biting his lip. "So now we get to make up, right?"
===============================================================================
"Okay boys," Jo said plopping down heavily at the cafeteria table and letting
out a tired sigh, stretching her neck and arms from where they had started to
hurt from carting around her heavy backpack all day. "If you're wanting a pie
this year, my mom says you need to get on it because after Tuesday she is not
going near our oven again until Christmas."
"She's not doing Thanksgiving dinner this year?" Dean asked sounding confused
and Castiel just smiled around his soda can because he knew that the food-
themed holiday was one of his boyfriend's favorites.
Jo shook her head and Dean pouted to himself a minute before pulling out a pen
and beginning to make a substantial list of the types of pies that he wanted
Ellen to make for him. It was long enough that if the larger boy wanted to and
Cas knew that he probably did, then Dean could live off of pie for a week and
be entirely content.
"We're going to do Thanksgiving with Adam's family this year," The girl
continued glancing around the cafeteria for her own boyfriend before letting
her voice drop a bit lower. "I'm not really thrilled to be around that bunch of
psychos but my mom jumped at the chance to not have to cook this year and his
mom pretty much begged her to go with us. So we'll be in Kansas City next week,
that means I can't come over to Bobby's for bar-b-que, Dean, sorry. And Garth
you'll have to snag me some of your mom's cobbler because watching the game is
not going to be the same without it."
"Actually," Garth began blushing to the tips of his ears. "My mom and dad are
going to some dinner for his work, so I'm going to Becky's on Thursday."
"I thought the CIA got holidays off, dude." Ash said waving Krissy and Becky
over across the crowded room. "Even the post office is closed on Thanksgiving."
"My dad is not in the CIA," Garth muttered, sliding over to give his girlfriend
room to sit at the table and dropping a kiss on her cheek.
"Your dad is the man, it doesn't really matter what branch of government it is.
He still works for big brother." Ash continued, mostly because they all knew
how much it annoyed Garth that he couldn't talk about what his dad actually
did. "Anyway, ol' mom and daddy dearest are shipping us out to New York to do
Thanksgiving with the fam. So I won't be around either."
"I thought that you guys only went to the Hamptons once a year," Dean said
looking up from his list long enough to see the sour look that crossed Ash's
face.
"Well, they want to take me to look at some colleges while we're on the coast
so I kinda don't have a choice."
"I'm sorry?" Cas supplied confused, earning an endeared smirk from Dean and a
shrug from Ash who had already started getting distracted by Krissy who was
pretty much sitting in the other boy's lap.
"What are you doing next week?" Jo asked Castiel as Adam settled into a seat
beside her with his lunch tray.
"I don't know," He said looking down at the salad that Dean had teased him for
eating and silently begging Jo to not bring it up, he didn't want his boyfriend
to know because it wasn't that big of a deal and they had only been dating for
like two weeks and it was unrealistic of him to expect anything from Dean.
"It's going to be the first time that it's just Gabe, Anna, and I. We'll
probably order Chinese food or something."
"What?" Dean blurted beside him looking up sharply at Castiel and shaking his
head. "Sam told me that Gabe was coming with us to Bobby's; do you not want to
spend Thanksgiving together?"
Cas bit his lip and thought about how that would go, Dean would find out there
wouldn't be any way around it with the way that Gabriel got so excited about
that kind of thing. He just hoped that there would be enough food there that
his older brother wouldn't feel the need to bake him a cake or something.
"Of course I want to spend Thanksgiving with you, Dean." He assured the larger
boy, looking around the crowded cafeteria before leaning over and dropping a
quick kiss on Dean's cheek.
The other boy gave him a small smile and went back to his list, Cas was pretty
sure he was just making up pie flavors at this point, surely there couldn't be
that many different types of pie in the world.
===============================================================================
Dean waited on the bench outside the office for Castiel's ROTC meeting to end.
Even though football season was over the group was still getting together on
Fridays to talk about different volunteer stuff they were going to do over the
rest of the year and having uniform inspections with Virgil. He planned on
talking to Bobby about the whole thing so that he could work on cars after the
shop was already closed, still get some hours in after taking Cas home from his
meetings.
He read a book that the other boy had loaned him, The Unbearable Lightness of
Being, which so far was kinda weird and a little sad, but Dean wasn't very far
into it because every time he sat down to read he got distracted by coming up
with awesome things he wanted to show his boyfriend or texting his boyfriend or
thinking about he and his boyfriend in painfully domestic situations, kissing
and cooking for each other. Basically he still couldn't get over the fact that
he had someone who made him so happy and who he seemed to make feel the same
way.
But Dean kept having nightmares, not just the ones about his teeth falling out
that he had told Cas about. No, these were about him doing something stupid and
ambiguous to screw things up with the other boy, something horrible enough that
Cas would never speak to him again and would make him lose the other boy
forever. Or about someone hurting Cas and Dean not being able to stop it
because when he got to the place where he could hear the other boy screaming,
the man doing the torturing was wearing his face and his clothes and dripping
in his boyfriend's blood. The only times that Dean could sleep through the
night were when he was with Cas and could feel the other boy safe in his arms.
He perked up when he saw the door to Virgil's classroom open, but only about
half of the ROTC members emerged and he tried to bury his disappointment that
Cas wasn't one of them in his book.
"Dean," Gilda said coming over to him and rummaging around in her backpack
until she found a professional looking embossed folder and held it in front of
her chest excitedly. "I hoped you would still be here. Can I talk to you for a
sec?"
Dean looked up at the other girl before nodding and marking his place in his
book, it was weird that Gilda was wanting to talk to him alone, they hadn't
ever really interacted with each other when no one else was around. Mostly
because she was a junior and a brain, so she spent more time working on
projects with Sam at the library than around him, but also because she was also
one of the few girls who hadn't tried to throw herself at Dean at one point or
another and for that he automatically liked her even before she and Cas became
friends.
"So I don't want to make you uncomfortable or anything, but there's this
petition going around," Gilda said handing Dean the folder so that he could see
what she was talking about. "And I've kinda been put in charge of going around
and seeing if any students are interested in signing it."
Dean scanned the first page, a frown creasing his forehead because he couldn't
believe that this was something that was still an issue at their school.
"It's a petition to let same-sex couples go to school-sponsored dances
together." He said disgustedly. "Do we really need something like this?"
"Well, uh…" Gilda said paling slightly and backing away a bit from Dean. "I
didn't mean to make you mad or anything. I just thought it might be something
you would sign because…well…y'know."
"Because Cas and I are dating," Dean said plainly, reaching into his bag for a
pen. Of course he was going to sign it, there was no way he was going to miss
out on seeing his boyfriend in a tux as many times as he possibly could.
"Ohthankgod," Gilda gushed, clutching at her chest and letting out a deep
breath. "I was going to say because of Sam since I thought I had totally been
misreading the eye-sex thing going on with you and Cas, but Yay! Gay-dar
totally functional."
"He didn't tell you we were dating?" The boy asked trying to not let how hurt
he felt seep into his voice.
"ROTC isn't exactly sharing circle time, Dean. I mean, it's not like he's
keeping it a secret or anything, but the military is kinda hush hush about the
whole thing so I think that Virgil is going with the ol' 'don't ask don't tell'
policy in order to keep people from feeling uncomfortable."
"Dude, its 2010. Why should something like that even be necessary anymore?"
"You're asking the wrong person," Gilda said putting her hands up in agreement.
"It shouldn't be anyone's business who you are dating, but unfortunately it is.
That's why the petition is going around. The local PFLAG chapter started it
when Lawrence Free State kicked two girls out of their homecoming dance who
were there together."
"That is such utter crap," Dean said his pen hovering over the page of
signatures as he skimmed the names of the other signers. Sam's name was there
and the older Winchester glowed with pride that his brother's was one of the
first student names that he recognized on the page.
"Tell me about it. Last year, I didn't even bother buying a ticket to the
winter ball because I couldn't bring the girl I was seeing. My friend's all
went and she and I were stuck sitting at home watching Letterman in our
pajama's. We were together, but that didn't make it any better."
"So you're…a lesbian?" Dean asked, printing his name on the page and just
holding the folder in his hand as Gilda and he continued talking.
"It's not really something I go around announcing to everyone, but yea. I've
met some pretty intolerant people since I started coming out, some I never
would have expected to be bothered by it and others who's support has just
blown me away. PFLAG has really helped me and my parents feel like we aren't
alone in this town. You and Cas should come to a meeting."
"A meeting for what?" Dean heard the deep voice of his boyfriend rumble behind
the smaller girl and immediately started feeling that warm, fuzzy tingle he got
in his stomach around the other boy.
"Oh Cas!" Gilda said excitedly, grabbing the folder out of Dean's hand and
thrusting it at the other boy. "You have to sign this, Dean did. And we were
talking about PFLAG, you two should come. Bring your parents."
The larger boy watched as Castiel skimmed the page and saw the exact moment
when the other boy's eyes found his name because his mouth quirked in that cute
way that Dean knew was meant just for him.
Cas cleared his throat and held out a hand to Dean for his pen, which the
larger boy was still holding dumbly as he unabashedly started at his boyfriend.
"What does it mean when there are two names written on one line?"
Dean had noticed that too, but he had also noticed the little plus sign between
the two names and while he had wanted to do that with his and Cas's names, he
didn't know if it would be too presumptuous of him to bind them together like
that, even if it only was on paper.
Gilda stood on tiptoe to peek over the edge of the folder and smiled widely
when she saw what the other boy was indicating. "Oh, those are people who are
signing as couples, kinda like they are double declaring their support for the
petition together."
Dean's breath caught in his throat when Castiel's blue eyes locked onto his own
and he saw the unspoken question in them. Dean gave the other boy a slight nod
and watched as the smaller boy's face lit up like he had just gotten the best
Christmas present of his life.
"You're such a dork, babe." Dean declared standing up and moving beside the
other boy to slide an arm around his waist as he signed his name next to Dean's
and then handed the folder back to Gilda. The larger boy leaned over and
pressed a kiss to Cas's temple as the pair continued to chat about the
volunteering that the ROTC could do with PFLAG. "Don't ever change."
Chapter End Notes
     Sorry this is a little on the short side, it was either cut it down
     or have it morph into a monster. Even though Halloween is coming up,
     I am anti-monster right now. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last
     chapter and everyone who is following and kudoing. Your support is
     greatly appreciated! <3
***** Say Anything *****
Chapter Notes
     Please note the rating change!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Movie night was an abysmal affair on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Ash's
parents had pulled him out of school for the entire week, citing the fact that
they had to hit MIT and Harvard and Yale before all of the tour guides left
campus for the holidays and Krissy had been moping around since he had left,
the junior girl's only sincere smiles coming when the phone that she had
clutched in her hand at all times vibrated with a text from the other boy. Jo
left on Wednesday morning since they didn't have school that day, her and Ellen
loading down their suburban with luggage from the Milligan family so they could
stay the night with one of Adam's aunts in Kansas City.
Becky insisted that they watch Twilight, which Dean had initially thought was
just a ploy by the other girl to ensure that he and Cas stayed as far away from
the Fitzgerald basement as possible so that her and Garth could make out. But
the couple seemed to be taking things a lot slower than Ash and his own
girlfriend who he and Castiel had happened upon Sunday morning when they had
gone jogging in the frigid stillness of the nature park, asleep in the backseat
of Krissy's car at one of the more secluded areas that the park had and missing
key pieces of their clothing.
He could still remember the look of shock on his boyfriend's face and how it
had taken everything Dean had not to burst out laughing as he dragged them back
down the path they had come up and away from the couple who obviously hadn't
intended to be discovered.
When they had seen Krissy at school on Monday and Tuesday, Dean could tell that
Cas wanted to say something about it, mostly because the other boy couldn't
seem to look their friend directly in the face, but also because that's just
how Castiel was. He felt like he had acknowledge things like that because it
was just more awkward for him if he didn't, but every time the other boy had
started to say something, Dean had slapped a hand over his mouth or distracted
him with a kiss or a touch that made his boyfriend smile shyly and stutter and
basically forget what he had been talking about.
They were starting to get looks in the hallways at school and not nearly as
many girls were coming up to try to hit on Dean because word had started to get
out that the new guy was pretty territorial of the star running back. He knew
that Cas was still nervous about being overly affectionate at school and would
shy away from Dean if he got too close or if too many people were around, which
the larger boy tried to be understanding about because Cas tried to make up for
it during the times that his boyfriend would pull them into an empty classroom
or outside during lunch because it was way too cold for anyone to want to be
out there now and kiss him and tell Dean that he was sorry and that he was
trying.
It was enough for Dean that Cas was working on getting past being scared of
what might happen if someone saw them together. Usually they were with their
group of friends so it didn't matter what anyone else thought because no one
ever got close enough to try to say something to them, even when they got dirty
looks from other people when Dean would lean over Castiel at his locker and
brush his hair out of his face or when they would just be staring at each other
in class or gym with matching goofy smiles on their face, having a silent
conversation about what was going on around them that everyone else just
mistook as them being hopelessly in love.
Which they were or at least Dean thought they were, maybe? He had never felt
like this with anyone else and the L-word wasn't something that got thrown
around a lot when he was growing up so he didn't really know what it looked
like outside of books he read or movies he watched. Dean wanted to ask someone
if this was what falling in love was like, what he had with Cas, but he didn't
want it getting back to the other boy that he was talking about that kind of
sentiment with someone else and all of the girl's he knew would be sure to tell
Cas because they couldn't keep their big mouths shut about gushy stuff like
that. So Dean was waiting until he could be certain about how Castiel felt
before he blurted out something that could scare the other boy away.
The two boys tried on Wednesday to make it through Twilight, more for Garth's
sake than Becky's because their friend looked just as pained by the dialogue
and the weird denying your baser instincts thing that the writer had put in the
original books and had been translated very terribly into film as Dean and Cas
were. But ten minutes in, Dean could feel the smaller boy's eyes burning into
the side of his head as they sat together on Garth's couch. He looked down at
where Castiel's head was on his chest and the agreement that they had to get
out of there before they killed their friend's girlfriend passed between them
without either boy having to do more than blink and wince and nod.
They made up some excuse about being really tired and Cas made such a big show
of yawning and drooping in an exhausted way against Dean that the larger boy
had to practically carry him out of Garth's house in order to not completely
ruin their charade with the laughter that he wanted to burst into.
It was still pretty early and since they didn't have school the next day, the
two boys decided to rent a movie that they actually wanted to watch before
going back to Dean's apartment and locking themselves in the larger boy's room
in case John came home early and got the sudden urge to be paternal and check
to see if his son was home.
Dean steered the car towards where he knew the closest Redbox was near his
apartment and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel along with the gritty,
noisy grunge music that Cas was playing through the tape adapter that he had
insisted on buying for the Impala. The larger boy had conceded to the device
mostly because it was his boyfriend asking for it and he couldn't say no when
Cas's blue eyes got all big and puppy dog adorable, but also because it wasn't
as douchey looking as the iPod dock that Sam had tried to install a couple of
years earlier.
"What kind of movie do you want to get?" He asked Castiel who was staring out
the window
at the snowy flurries that were falling but not sticking in the frigid evening
light. "I think Eat, Pray, Love is out now if you want to relive that
nightmare."
"Do you think they're having sex?" The other boy asked suddenly, not tearing
his eyes away from the couples that were braving the weather and walking down
the sidewalks, huddled close and cozy looking.
"No way. Garth is way too much of a chicken for that." Dean replied, slowing as
they approached the parking lot he wanted to turn into. "Then again maybe they
are. Have you read some of the stuff that Becky writes? Girl's into some kinky
shit, plus she's mousy and you know what they say about the quiet ones."
"People say I'm quiet," Castiel muttered, glancing over at Dean who just
smirked and rubbed at the fading mark that the other boy had left on his neck
over the weekend. "But I wasn't talking about Garth and Becky."
"Krissy and Ash?" The larger boy asked, pulling quickly into an open spot right
near the movie dispenser and flipping his headlight off. "I mean, I don't know
Cas, they probably are. You saw the same thing I did the other day. It's not a
big deal or anything."
Cas frowned a bit and looked down at his hands, "But they've only been together
for a little over a month."
"Babe, I hate to tell you this," Dean said teasingly, sliding across the seat
to put a hand on his boyfriend's leg. "but if you're saving yourself for
marriage then you may be waiting a really long time. Kansas will probably be
the second to last state to legalize gay marriage; we'll be right ahead of
Texas."
"I'm serious, Dean." The other boy said blushing furiously and putting a hand
on Dean's, running his thumb over the boy's grease stained knuckles. "I know
that you have…I just know what your other relationships have been about and I
don't want it to be like that for us but…"
"Cas," the larger boy interrupted. "I will wait forever if that's how long it
takes for us to get there. We don't have to compare ourselves to other couples
because we're not other couples."
Castiel opened his mouth to speak, but Dean stilled him with a raised hand.
"Let me get this out, babe. I'm just as new at all of this as you are, but um…I
haven't not liked the things that we've already been doing so I'm fine with
just seeing where things go from there. I don't want you to feel pressured or
like you have to be like the other people that I've…"
"I was just going to say that you don't have to go slow, Dean." Cas blurted,
putting a hand up to cover the larger boy's mouth before he brought up all of
his past partners.
"What?" Dean's muffled reply came from behind the smaller boy's hand.
"I'm not made of glass or anything. And uh….I can't say that I haven't thought
about what it would be like to do other things besides kiss and stuff. So, I'm
just saying that you don't need to feel like you have to hold back because if I
um…have..shit…if I have sex with anyone, well then I want it to be you."
The last part was said in a rush and Castiel waited for the larger boy's
reaction as he slowly removed his hand from Dean's mouth. It was either going
to be really bad or really good, he might have just scared off the one person
he felt safe enough with to let get close to him in that way.
Dean watched the smaller boy blushing and biting his lip and putting himself
out there like that, just telling Dean how he was feeling and what he was
thinking because this was real. This was a real relationship and they could
talk about things like this and it wasn't weird or uncomfortable because they
cared about each other enough to want the other one to know what was going on
with them. And he should say it, he really should because god, he was pretty
damn sure that he loved Cas.
He loved him so fucking much and even though it was pretty much the scariest
realization he had ever had Dean also felt like this wasn't the time to admit
how be felt because it would just sound like he was saying it just so that he
could sleep with the other boy and that wasn't what he wanted Cas to think at
all. And the last time he had said that to anyone, it had been his mom. Then
she had left and his loving her hadn't been enough to make her stay to protect
him from John, so maybe it wasn't the right word to describe how Dean felt
about Castiel. Maybe it wasn't enough.
So instead of saying it he just kissed the other boy, hard and with every ounce
of feeling that he could muster. Dean pushed Castiel back against the passenger
side door of the Impala, earning a surprised grunt as he carded his fingers
through the smaller boy's hair and pressed close enough that he thought surely
Cas had to feel how Dean's heart was beating harder than it ever had because it
was so full of things that he had never felt before.
"Not here, darling." The smaller boy managed to gasp out as Dean broke away to
pepper kisses across his cheeks and nose. Cas pushed against the broad chest
pressed against his own in a half-hearted way because all he wanted to do was
keep the larger boy that close forever."I didn't mean right now."
Dean buried his face in Castiel's neck and started giggling softly which soon
turned from chuckling to him throwing his head back and holding onto his ribs
as he laughed because he was just so happy and he didn't know how to put it
into words.
Beside him, the smaller boy surreptitiously adjusted the bulge in his pants and
that just made Dean laugh harder because he was so turned on by just a kiss too
and what were they going to do when they actually tried to have sex?! They
couldn't even make out without both of them creaming their pants. It was so
ridiculous and amazing and Dean finally felt like he was on an even playing
field with Cas for the first time since they had started exploring what each
other liked with heated kisses and brushes of hands over clothing.
"I don't see what's so funny," Castiel muttered, crossing his arms over his
chest and pouting.
Dean reached out a hand to cup the other boy's face and fought to even out his
breathing, letting out a few more giggles and wiping at his eyes with the back
of his hand. "Nothing, babe. I just...I'm just really happy."
"Oh," the smaller boy said smiling and leaning into the other boy's hand.
"Well, then since you're in such a good mood, can I pick the movie?"
"Of course you can, darling." Dean replied emphasizing the last word and
reaching for his door handle.
Cas groaned in a resigned kind of way and ran a hand through his hair. "I can't
slip anything past you."
===============================================================================
"Remind me to write that Twilight lady a thank you note later," Gabriel said
leering at the younger man who was straddling his legs as they sat on the couch
in the Winchester's living room.
Sam pulled his shirt off and Gabriel decided that he needed to thank John later
too in some roundabout way for bestowing such amazing genetics on his youngest
son, maybe buy him a six pack or a confederate flag or something else that
prejudice old men liked. The younger man just smiled at Gabe and leaned down to
resume kissing the older man's neck and collarbone as fingers trailed over his
ribs and down his back until the man beneath him grabbed firmly onto his denim
clad rear and chuckled darkly in a way that Sam had learned only could mean one
thing.
Gabriel's hands moved to the front of Sam's jeans, unbuttoning his fly and
reaching into the denim with practiced motions until he could feel the hard
length of the other man straining against the thin material of his boxers and
god, it had been too long since he had touched Sam like this. He was twenty
years old, he had a house, and he felt like they shouldn't have to settle for
groping in the backseat of the Cadillac just because one of their siblings
might hear them.
Anna's room was all the way on the other side of the house and she hadn't said
anything after they had come home from the Halloween party, Gabriel had not
guessed that Sam would be such a screamer, but he liked being the one who could
make the studious, stoic Winchester come undone. And Cas was too busy with Dean
to notice if something was going on in the room next to his, besides what good
were those noise canceling headphones if his younger brother didn't get some
use out of them?
No, he and Sam were going to have to talk about this later, when the other boy
wasn't fumbling with Gabriel's belt buckle and making that frustrated little
huffy noise that Sam did when he was too impatient to wait for them both to get
fully undressed, the one that just did all of the right things to the area
below the older man's waist.
"Why are your clothes so complicated?" Sam growled at him, giving up on the
belt and pushing up Gabriel's shirt so that he could mouth across the other
man's chest to his nipples.
"I told you," Gabriel gasped as the younger man's teeth grazed his skin. He
used the hand that wasn't stroking Sam to undo his belt and button fly so that
there would be less separating him from sliding against the other boy in that
delicious, spine-tingling way that Gabriel craved about 97% of the time that
they spent together. "I didn't know that costume would be that hard to get off.
But you looked so sexy in those tights, Moose. We should get you another pair."
"Only if you promise not to ruin them again," Sam said mock seriously, pulling
back so that he could take the older man's shirt off the rest of the way.
"I promise nothing!" Gabriel declared loudly, using the larger man's weight
against him in order to toss him down on the couch so that he could climb on
top of Sam and take in the sight of the chiseled boy's brown eyes that were
hazy with desire and it made his breath catch in his chest as he thanked
whoever it was out there that had made the younger boy dumb enough to want to
be with Gabriel when he could probably have anyone in the world.
The older man leaned down for a kiss that was deep and promising, one that
spoke of the plans that they had tentatively started discussing when they were
both basking in the afterglow of their love-making and too full of feeling to
realize that they still had a whole 'nother year until Sam was done with
school. A whole year of them having to hide and deal with the venomous backlash
of John who had finally cornered them alone in the apartment that day and told
Sam that he would rather see the younger boy dead than dragged down to that
"fucking faggot's" level. Gabriel had managed to hold Sam back long enough for
the boy's father to realize that he was too drunk to take on his son if it came
to a fight and had left to go to the bar.
"I love you, Gabs." Sam murmured into their kiss, running his hands up the
older man's sides and across his back in order to end up with his long arms
wrapped around Gabriel's waist.
"I love you, too Samtown." He would never get over how right it felt to say
that.
The two men went back to kissing and soon the heat was back, building and
wrapping around them until all they could think about was how the other felt as
they panted and groaned each other's names in the stillness of the apartment.
They didn't even know that the front door had opened until they heard Dean's
voice ring out across the dimly lit room and both Sam and Gabriel started
fumbling with their clothes in order to keep this situation from being worse
than it already was.
"Cas," Dean said shrugging his jacket off and hanging it up as the smaller boy
stalked petulantly into the apartment. "I'm not saying I don't like it. It's
cute, old-fashioned. Call me whatever you want, sweetheart."
Castiel grumbled something indecipherable and Gabriel reached for his shirt
that had somehow ended up under the coffee table. The older man prayed that
Dean wouldn't look over and see the compromising position he and the other
boy's brother were in, it had been bad enough when the older Winchester had
found one of Gabriel's shirts mixed in with Dean and Sam's laundry. Dean had
whined that he was going to have to buy all new clothes, but Gabe saw the wink
that the older boy gave his little brother when he thought that the elder Novak
wasn't looking.
"Hello, Gabe. Sam." His younger brother mumbled plopping down into the armchair
that faced the front door and crossing his arms over his chest as he glared at
Dean.
"Are you guys…nonono. I told you two no making out on the couch!" Dean stormed
over to level a disapproving look on Gabriel and Sam, hands on his hips and
looking altogether like a annoyed father who just walked in on their son with
their prom date only to throw a handful of condoms at him and make himself
scarce for a while. "Babe, go and find me some lighter fluid."
Castiel shook his head at Dean, but smiled and uncrossed his arms to hold them
out to the larger boy in a consoling way. Gabriel watched his little brother's
boyfriend cross the room and drop heavily in Cas's lap, burying his face in the
smaller boy's neck and saying that he needed brain bleach. Gabriel glanced at
Sam who just rolled his eyes at his older brother's dramatics.
"Thanks, Captain Cockblock." Sam said pulling his shirt on over his head and
getting up to pad barefoot into the kitchen, punching his older brother hard in
the arm on his way past. "Gabs, do you want a bottle of water or anything?"
Gabriel pressed his hands between his knees and rocked back on the couch,
tucking his legs underneath himself. "I want…pizza!"
"Pizza!" Dean declared his head popping back up and a smile breaking out over
his face. "I knew there had to be something Sammy liked about you."
"You mean besides my dashing good looks?"
"I mean besides the fact that you're small enough to fit in his pocket," the
other boy dead-panned back.
"Hmmm, a convenient pocket-sized boyfriend," Castiel mused sounding like it was
something that he would seriously consider investing in.
Sam returned to the couch, giving the older Novak a mischievous look along with
a bottle of water. "I wouldn't exactly call Gabriel pocket-sized, Dean."
"UGH! NO!" The other Winchester exclaimed, fishing a DVD out of the pocket of
the coat that Castiel was still wearing and throwing it at his younger brother.
"You do not get to talk about the size of Gabriel's junk in front of me. You
don't even get to allude to it. Put that in before you entirely ruin the spirit
of movie night."
"Scott Pilgrim, yesssss." The younger boy said snatching up his laptop from
where it had sat on the coffee table softly playing music as he and Gabriel had
kissed. "Dean and I wanted to go and see this when it came out, but he had to
work and school was starting the next week so we missed it, good pick bro."
"Cas picked it." Dean said simply, smiling down at the other boy who was
attempting to wriggle out of his coat even though the larger boy was still
firmly planted in his lap. "Said he needed to learn how to fight my evil exes."
"Well, if there weren't so many of them..." The younger Novak muttered darkly,
turning his head just as Dean tried to kiss him so that the other boy just
ended up with a mouthful of his hair instead. Castiel smirked triumphantly at
his older brother while his boyfriend worked himself into a full on pout over
being ignored. "Can we order pepperoni and olives?"
Gabriel nodded and pulled out his phone, quickly searching for and finding the
closest delivery place and calling in an order for an extra large meat lover's
pizza for himself and the two Winchester's and a small pepperoni and olive
pizza for his younger brother because the other three boys all agreed that
olives were hella disgusting.
It was probably the most quality time that Gabriel had spent with his brother
since school had started and they had both gotten distracted by the Winchester
brothers who had so deeply rooted themselves into the Novak's lives so quickly.
He didn't think he had ever seen Cas this relaxed or happy and he could
begrudgingly admit that it was all because of Dean, who he had written off as a
moronic football player the first time he had seen him picking up Sam from
class over the summer, but had turned out to be way more than the gruff,
swaggering exterior that he presented to everyone.
His little brother looked at Dean like he was the stars and the moon and held
all of the amazing secrets of the universe in his smile, Gabriel knew that was
how he looked at Sam and he hoped that the older Winchester realized how lucky
he was being on the receiving end of his brother's affections. The older Novak
didn't know what he would do if things ended badly between the two boys, he
didn't know if Cas could handle being broken like that again by someone he
trusted.
But he tried not to think about it as they watched the movie and ate pizza and
joked about the fight scenes, trying to figure out how much money they would
get if they beat John in a video game style fight. Gabriel saw how Cas's eyes
got all far away looking when Scott talked to his roommate about the L-word and
some ultra-protective part of him wanted to warn the other boy from being the
first one to say it, but he knew how hypocritical of him that was because
hadn't he been the one to blurt it out to Sam on their second date?
When the movie was over he saw his little brother hesitate for a moment before
gently pushing at Dean to get off of him so that he could go home. Gabriel
could understand the sentiment because he liked being able to sleep alone with
Sam too and through some previously unspoken agreement, Wednesdays had always
meant that Dean stayed over at their house while Gabriel and Sam made the best
of the younger Winchester's small twin bed. But its not like they weren't going
to see the two boys all day tomorrow, so he decided to exercise some authority
over Cas and make him come home, especially since he needed the younger boy's
help with the food that they had agreed to bring over to Bobby's house the next
day.
"Come on, Romeo" Gabriel called taking his jacket from Sam and sliding it on
before standing on tiptoe to place a kiss on the taller boy's lips. "I'll see
you tomorrow, Moosey."
"Six o'clock. Don't be late, Bobby gets grumpy when he's hungry." Sam said
sternly, wrapping his arms around the smaller man to drag him back for another
kiss. "I want him to like you."
"What are you worried about? He's gonna love me!" He retorted cheekily.
"I love you," Sam murmured, pressing a kiss onto Gabe's forehead before
releasing him to go and rescue Castiel from where Dean was clutching onto the
smaller boy like he was never going to see him again.
The two Winchester's watched as their respective boyfriends left the apartment,
bundled up against the cold weather and promising that they would be on time
for Thanksgiving and football and whatever else it was that Bobby had planned
for the following day. Sam glanced at his older brother who had an expression
like someone had just gutted him with one of cupid's arrows, all pained and
love-struck and just rolled his eyes before trudging off to shower so he could
finally relieve the tension that he had been dealing with since Dean and Cas
had walked into the apartment.
===============================================================================
This had to be, by far the strangest Thanksgiving that Castiel had ever
attended.
First of all, there was no traditional Thanksgiving food. No stuffing or
cranberry sauce, no green bean casserole or yams or a cheese log. Bobby told
him that they used to do turkey, a long time ago and once, just once he had
made a turducken which had ended up making Dean gain about ten pounds in a week
because he refused to eat anything else, even pie. Okay, there was a lot of pie
at Bobby's house, more than just the five pies that Ellen had made for the
Winchester's to bring over (excluding the one that Sam said they had to leave
at the apartment for John, since he wasn't coming because, apparently the
Winchester patriarch didn't do holidays).
Second, was Rufus. The two Winchesters didn't even seem to know who the surly
old black man was bustling around outside in the patchy snow with Bobby as they
two men manned the grill and argued over who cooked better brisket. He had
apparently been to the Singer household before because he knew his way around
the kitchen when Castiel asked where the glasses were as he helped Dean set the
table. He was gruff in a way that complimented Bobby, and Gabriel kept making
references to Grumpy Old Men when both men were out of earshot.
Third was the fact that apparently everyone but Dean knew that it was his
birthday because when his boyfriend had gotten up excitedly to go and fetch pie
after they had all finished eating, the other four men at the table, Rufus
included, had insisted that Gabriel and Sam be the one to go and get it and the
older Winchester's face had gotten suspicious and confused as he made threats
towards anyone that touched his apple pie. Castiel didn't have the heart to
tell the other boy that he preferred cherry, he figured that they would always
just have to have both around when they got out on their own.
Castiel knew what was going on and he hoped that Dean didn't get that hurt look
he sometimes had when something reminded the smaller boy of his looming court
date with his father and eldest brother and he started having a panic attack
that he wouldn't talk about with his boyfriend afterwards.
He crossed his arms over his chest and put on his most disapproving face when
Sam flicked off the lights on his way back into the dining room and settled a
party hat in the dark nest of Castiel's hair.
"Sorry, Cas," The younger boy said smiling widely as Gabriel entered the room
holding a cherry pie with lit candles stuck into it and singing some made up
song about birthdays that he changed from year to year and person to person.
His older brother really liked birthdays.
The younger Novak glanced over at Dean who was resolutely looking at the party
hat that Sam had put on the table in front of him, the muscles in his neck and
jaw tense from keeping the forced smile on his face as his older brother
started dishing out pie to all of the men at the table.
"Alrigh' idjits," Bobby said, fixing the party hat on over his trucker hat,
turning towards Rufus who was shaking with laughter at the sight. "Now would be
a good time to go around the table and talk about what yer thankful for."
Sam raised his beer that the older man had turned a blind eye at the younger
boy drinking, "I'm thankful for whoever it was that made a salad to go with all
of this food. You realize that you basically cooked just meat and potatoes
right, Bobby?"
"Shut up," The older man groused, raising his tumbler which was full of the
amber whiskey that he and the other adults were drinking. "I'm thankful for
family and that you boys are happy and safe. Castiel, happy birthday, boy. Dean
picked the right brother."
"Hey!" Gabriel exclaimed petulantly.
"Prove me wrong, boy." Bobby said looking pointedly at the glass of untouched
whiskey that he had given to the older Novak.
His brother sneered at the older man and picked up the glass, toasting with it
raised in the air. "I'm thankful for the fact that Anna is staying the night
with Gilda and I didn't have to cook more than a salad and some coleslaw."
"Awww, I knew it had to be you Gabs." Sam said leaning in and kissing Gabriel's
cheek, the older boy stuck his tongue out at Bobby before taking a sip of the
whiskey and grimacing at the taste of the alcohol.
"I'm thankful that my wife will be home from her mother's by the time I get
back to Omaha," Rufus said making a face at Sam and Gabriel's cuddling before
glancing over at Bobby and quickly rearranging his features. "I'm also thankful
that Bobby took me in out of the cold for the day so that I didn't have to eat
a TV dinner for Thanksgiving."
"A bit of goddamn 'preciation. That's all I ask for," the other man grumbled,
hiding his smile behind his whiskey.
The table was silent for a moment, Castiel was waiting for Dean to speak, to
say that he was thankful for him and that just them being together was more
than he could ever have hoped for, because that's how Cas felt and he needed to
know if the other boy felt the same way. But nothing was coming from the seat
beside him, it was just Dean sitting with his fingers toying the elastic string
of the party hat and breathing deeply through his nose.
Castiel cleared his throat and reached out a hand to put it over the fist that
Dean had clenched on top of his leg. "I'm thankful for today, just being here
with the people that care about me. If you had asked me before we moved here if
I ever thought that I would be blessed enough to have so many people who wanted
me around then I would have told you you were crazy. I was just content to wake
up breathing everyday, now I have something to look forward to. So, I'm
thankful for all of you."
Dean blinked his eyes hard a couple of times and took a steadying breath before
unclenching his fist and turning his palm up so that he could twine his fingers
through Castiel's.
"Guess that just leaves me," The larger boy glanced over at Cas and for a
second there, he thought that Dean was going to say it. He could see the words
forming on the tip of his boyfriend's tongue and he didn't know if he could get
the reply out fast enough, that's how much he had been wanting to tell the
other boy that he loved him. But Dean didn't say it and Castiel bit back the 'I
love you, too.' before it slipped out of his own mouth after the other boy
spoke. "I'm thankful for camera phones, someone tell me you got a picture of
Bobby in that hat?"
"Got it," Gabriel said smugly, sliding his phone off of the table and back into
his pocket as the older man glared at him.
"Balls!" Bobby swore, snatching the cone off of his head and throwing it at the
younger man sitting across from him.
"I've got to go to the bathroom," Castiel said quickly, pushing back from the
table hard enough to knock over his chair as he rushed out of the room, feeling
stupid for being so sentimental and hopeful and thinking that Dean could ever
feel that way about him too.
He rushed down the hallway to the small guest bathroom that Rufus had pointed
out to him earlier and locked himself in. Cas leaned against the sink and
watched as his reflection crumbled and tears started tracking down his face, he
disgustedly snatched the party hat off of his head and crushed it before
throwing it into the waste basket in the corner of the room. He could feel his
chest tightening and the voices whispering at the corners of his mind, telling
him that Dean would never love him back because he was dirty and sinful and all
of the Hail Mary's in the world would never be enough to fix him.
Castiel's vision started to get black around the edges as he began to struggle
for air and he really regretted not taking his medication for the last couple
of days because he had been feeling better and he didn't think that he needed
it anymore. He thought he was getting better, Rachel even said he was doing
better and he didn't want to be this weak little thing that Dean was stuck with
out of a sense of obligation. He wanted to be whole and perfect for the other
boy because that's what Dean deserved.
"Open the door, Cas." The sound of Dean's voice came through the wood along
with a short knock.
The smaller boy tried to control his gasps so that the other boy wouldn't hear
him being upset and decide that Castiel wasn't worth all of this trouble. The
knob rattled and another more urgent knock followed as Cas collapsed to his
knees, still clutching the sink and fighting away the memories of his torn
nails scrabbling at the lock on the basement door when his father was out of
the house and he thought he had a chance to escape.
"I swear to god, I will fucking break it down." Dean sounded worried and
desperate and it was enough to bring Castiel back to himself for long enough to
reach out and flip the lock on the door so the other boy could get in.
His boyfriend took one look at Castiel and stooped to gather him up in his
arms, rubbing small circles into the other boy's back and making soothing
shushing sounds as he told the panicked boy that it was all going to be fine,
nothing was going to hurt him, Dean would make sure that nothing ever hurt him
again.
"What's gong on in here?" Bobby's voice rang out in the tiny bathroom and
Castiel tried to look up at the other man, but Dean kept stroking his hair and
kissing his forehead and it was helping to calm his racing heart so he stayed
hidden in the safe confines of the other boy's chest, clutching at the the
material of the gray Henley that Dean was wearing.
"It's nothing, Bobby." Dean said softly.
"Looks like a panic attack to me," Rufus supplied, glancing over Bobby's
shoulder into the bathroom.
"Thanks, Freud." Bobby snapped shooing the other man away. "Go get a plate
together for John, make yerself useful. He gonna be okay?"
"Yea," the larger boy answered. "It happens sometimes, he won't tell me what
causes it, but I can handle it, Bobby. Go ahead."
"You sure?" the older man asked and Castiel felt bad for making this man he
hardly knew worry about him so much. "His brother and Sam already left, said
they were going back to Gabriel's house. Are you here tonight?"
"If you don't mind?" Dean asked, pulling back so that he could cup Castiel's
face in his hands and brush his fingers over the other boy's face to clear away
the tears. "You know how my dad gets during the holidays."
Bobby cleared his throat and nodded, fidgeting with his trucker hat as he
watched the two boys and thought about a time when another Winchester had been
as concerned about him as Dean was about Cas. "I made up the guest room for
you, hell. You know where everything is, boy. We'll be back in an hour or so."
The older man headed towards the kitchen and helped Rufus gather up some
leftovers to take over to John, which after so many years of Bobby watching the
older man get drunk during the holidays by himself it was going to be strange
to have their old friend there to keep things from getting out of hand this
year.
"I'm glad you were able to make it out, Rufus."
"Well, you saved me from my mother in law and I can't say I wasn't surprised
when you called and told me what was going on with John. You would think the
man would be a little more tolerant towards his own son after everything that
happened when you guys were their age."
"They say history repeats itself," Bobby replied sadly, stacking up a couple of
plates of food and tossing the keys to his truck to the other man. "Let's get
this over with."
Back in the bathroom, Dean pulled Castiel to his feet still mostly supporting
the other boy as he led him up the stairs and to the guest bedroom. He got the
smaller boy situated sitting on the bed and disappeared so that he could get
some extra blankets and some clothes for Cas to sleep in because Dean really
didn't have any qualms about sleeping in just his boxers with the other boy,
but he knew that his boyfriend would probably get cold in the drafty, old
house.
When he returned he was stunned to find that Castiel was already snuggled under
the blankets facing the wall, his clothing scattered around on the floor like
he just didn't have the energy to deal with being neat like he usually was.
Dean tossed another blanket onto the foot of the bed and striped down to his
own boxers before turning off the light, sliding under the covers, and spooning
up behind Cas.
He reveled in the how his chest felt pressed against the warm skin of the
smaller boy's back, Castiel didn't like to take his shirt off and Dean thought
it might have something to do with the scar on his chest, but it could also be
because the larger boy couldn't help staring when he would get Cas's button
downs open before the other boy got a chance to stop him. Castiel was just so
beautiful and the scar didn't take away from how sexy Dean thought the other
boy was.
"I wish you had told me," Dean muttered into the back of Castiel's neck,
pressing a kiss onto the smaller boy's shoulders. "I felt like such an asshole
sitting there. What kind of guy doesn't know when his boyfriend's birthday is?"
"I don't know when yours is," the smaller boy supplied, which Dean figured was
probably just a lie to make him feel better because Cas knew everything about
him, down to his favorite pie and which Metallica album made him want to give
up on the band anytime he heard anything off of it.
"January 24th."
"Oh, don't tell Gabriel." Castiel said and Dean relaxed because he could hear
the smile in the other boy's voice.
"He already made the joke about Sam not being the only Winchester who liked
older men, you should've seen Bobby's face."
"I'm sorry I missed it," the other boy sighed, twining his finger's through the
hand that Dean had splayed across his chest.
"Are you going to tell me what it was about this time? Was it because of me?
I'm sorry I didn't get you a birthday present, babe. I would've done something
if I had known," it would just kill Dean if he were the cause of Cas's panic
attacks, he wanted the other boy to feel safe around him.
"It wasn't you, not really." Castiel said softly. "I'm not ready to talk about
it yet and this is a great present. Just being here with you."
Dean tightened his arm around the smaller boy and tangled their legs together
under the covers, he kissed the back of Cas's neck and draped his free hand
lazily over his boyfriend's waist. He used the tip of his index finger to spell
it out, how he felt about the other boy, onto the taunt skin of Castiel's
abdomen and the muscles in the boy's back jumped and tensed against his chest
as the sensation caused the smaller boy to shiver and gasp.
"I guess there is something I could give you for your birthday," Dean said
swallowing as the image of what he wanted to do flittered through his head.
"But if it's too much, you need to tell me to stop."
"Okay," Castiel said nodding quickly and allowing the larger boy to turn him
over onto his back.
In the dim light, Dean could barely see the other boy's features, but what he
could see told him that Cas was just as nervous as he was and it helped because
god, he was so incredibly worried that he was going to be terrible at being
with another guy and it was just going to make everything awkward between the
two of them if it was bad.
Hesitantly, Dean leaned down and kissed Castiel, taking it slower than he
normally would because he didn't know if his brain was going to overload once
he started touching the other boy and he needed to be in control of how his
body was reacting so that he didn't embarrass himself. The smaller boy tasted
like the beer that he had been nursing throughout the night and Dean tried to
mimic how Cas would nip at his lips in that way that just drove him wild,
earning a groan from the other boy that went straight to Dean's rapidly growing
erection.
He levered himself up onto the other boy, slotting their bodies together as he
ran his hands over Castiel's neck and chest, brushing his thumb over the wildly
thrumming pulse point at the base of his boyfriend's throat and lightly
pinching Cas's nipples how he knew the other boy liked, causing the smaller boy
to roll his hips up to meet Dean. The larger boy had to stop for a moment as
the sensation of Castiel's arousal against his own caused his dick to throb in
an almost painfully pleasurable way, they had never done this with so few
clothes on and it was almost too much, but at the same time Dean still felt
like there was so much separating them.
Castiel ran his fingers through Dean's hair, as the larger boy started to place
hot, open mouthed kisses down his neck, nibbling at his collarbone and his
shoulder while one of Dean's hand held onto his jaw, moving his head into a
position that gave the other boy room to work. Dean's fingers brushed against
his lower lip as the smaller boy murmured encouragement to his boyfriend and an
emboldened, wanton part of Cas made him want to suck the fingers into his
mouth, but this was enough and it felt so good and he didn't want to do
something that would make Dean freak out and stop.
Dean kissed his way down Castiel's chest, pausing to lave his tongue over each
of the dark nipples as the smaller boy's back arched off of the bed and he said
something in a language that could've been French, but the larger boy wasn't
entirely sure. Regardless it was hot and he decided that he needed to touch Cas
right the fuck now.
Before he could think too much about it he reached into the other boy's plain
white boxers and grasped the smaller boy's cock. Castiel's eyes flew open and
Dean could see the amazed look on the his face as he started to stroke his
boyfriend's length loosely and tentatively until he was sure how the other boy
would react.
"Is this okay?" Dean asked lowly, smirking when Castiel nodded and threw his
head back onto the pillow he was laying on, arching his back up into the larger
boy's sure touch and groaning.
"Dean," Cas panted, gripping onto the other boy's bicep and urging until Dean's
face was back near his and he could kiss the other boy like he wanted to, their
mouths moving urgently together as the larger boy pushed Castiel's boxers down
his legs until his cock was exposed to the cool night air.
Dean ran his palm over the head of the smaller boy's leaking erection,
spreading the precome down the hard length to ease the friction of his hand as
he looked down to watch what was he was doing. He was still hard as hell,
himself and it calmed his fears a bit that he wasn't going to suddenly decide
that he couldn't be with another guy once he was actually doing more physical
things with Castiel. And the sight of his hand stroking Cas, knowing that he
was the one causing the other boy to moan and writhe beneath him in a way that
no one else ever had done caused his own dick to throb and pulse in time to how
he was touching the other boy.
Castiel bit his lip and tried to string together a coherent sentence, something
that would let Dean know that he needed to touch the other boy too, that he
wanted them to do this together. "Uhhh, god! Dean...fuck...dean!"
"I've got you babe," The larger boy growled, twisting his wrist and thumbing
over the slit of Castiel's dick on the upstroke. "Shit, you're so fucking sexy
right now. My fucking beautiful angel."
The smaller boy focused on getting the words out, fingers clenching in Dean's
hair as his boyfriend ducked back down to suck one of Cas's nipples into his
mouth. "Dean...I want...I want..."
"What do you want, Cas? Tell me what you want." Dean muttered, looking up at
the other boy under his eyelashes.
The smaller boy reached down and cupped Dean's erection through his boxers and
the larger boy's eyes widened in sudden realization. His boyfriend pressed down
on him as he used his free hand to pull down the form-fitting navy boxers he
was wearing, still stroking Castiel as the smaller boy's slim fingers wrapped
around his own substantial length.
"Fuck, Cas!" Dean groaned as his own dick was stroked at a pace that matched
the one he had set for the other boy, Castiel mirroring his own movements so it
felt like they were doing something so much more intimate than simply jerking
each other off. "You're so fucking good, babe. Oh, christ!"
When the heads of their cocks brushed together as the thrust into each other's
hands, both boys groaned loudly, with Dean clutching the sheets next to
Castiel's head as the smaller boy dug his nails into the boy above him's back.
Dean moved closer so that every he and Cas stroked upwards their hands would
meet and he could feel the other boy's precome mixing with is own to lubricate
the movement of Cas's hand on his dick. The smell of sex hung heavy in the air
and Dean felt overwhelmed by how much he loved the other boy and wanted to
never leave this bed or this room if it meant that they wouldn't have to face a
world that hated them again.
"Darling," The smaller boy moaned, pulling Dean's face down so that he could
kiss the other boy as he started to feel his spine start tingling. "OH! Oh dear
lord...Dean...you're so wonderful...I'm close! God! Deeeeaaaan!"
Hot, white spurts of come shot out over their chests and stomachs, coating
Dean's hand as he stroked the other boy through his orgasm. Castiel's grip on
Dean's cock never slackened and it only took a couple more slides of his hand
around the other boy, eased even more by his own come that had gotten onto the
larger boy's dick, before Dean was groaning and throbbing in his hand as he
came as well.
"Shit, Cas! Oh fuck, jesus!" Dean exclaimed his climax taking him by surprise
because feeling the other boy come across his chest had been way hotter than he
had expected and he didn't even care that they were filthy and sticky because
Castiel was marked as his and he was Cas's.
The larger boy collapsed on top of Cas, kissing his shoulders and breathing in
the heady scent of the other boy's sweat as his heart fought to return to its
normal rhythm. Dean laughed when he felt the other boy's hands slide around to
cup his butt and give it a gentle squeeze.
"I could've just let you grope me for your birthday and you would've been
happy, right?"
Castiel shifted beneath him until he could kiss Dean's nose softly, his mouth
quirking in an exhausted but mischievous way. "Probably. But this will do I
guess."
Chapter End Notes
     Is anyone daunted by the length of this thing?! Seriously, its
     freaking me out that I've written over 100K words so far. And there
     is no end in sight...well there is but its a long way off and it
     lives in another part.
     Anyway, forgive my tiny quarter life writing crisis, but let me know
     if you're getting bored I will toss all that angst right back in
     there! Don't think its disappeared.
***** Lord, I'm Discouraged *****
Chapter Notes
     Beware the angst, it lurks within.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Dean decided to make good on his promise of pancakes when he woke up the next
morning, untangling himself from Castiel's octopus-like embrace that wrapped
around the larger boy sometimes when they slept in the same bed. He hadn't
decided if it was something that the smaller boy did on purpose or not yet, but
Dean liked feeling like Cas was being all protective of him so anytime he woke
up with his boyfriend tangled up in him, it was a good way to wake up.
He tucked the covers back over the other boy as Castiel flopped back onto his
back, throwing an arm over his eyes and muttering something about bumblebees,
his brow furrowing until Dean leaned down and pressed soft kisses against his
cheeks until a smile settled on Cas's face and the other boy's breathing evened
back out as he continued to sleep.
The larger boy tossed on the first pieces of clothing that he snatched off the
floor, only bothering with putting on more than boxers in an effort to maintain
any shred of privacy he and Cas might have left after the other boy had woke
him up in the middle of the night with urgent, messy kisses all over his face
that ended up in them gasping and moaning as they touched each other, trying to
be as quiet as possible and probably failing in an effort to try to not wake up
Bobby.
He had asked Castiel afterwards, what had prompted the unexpected second round
of celebratory birthday… What even was it that they were doing? Dean figured he
would have to look up a term for it later, because asking Sam would be entirely
too embarrassing. His boyfriend had just buried his face in Dean's neck,
shivering as the larger boy trailed fingers softly up and down his spine and
said that he had a nightmare. Dean didn't push any further than that because he
knew that sometimes he needed to reassure himself that Castiel was okay when he
woke up in the middle of the night from a bad dream that the other boy was in
and fumbled with his phone so that he could shoot off a late night text message
to his boyfriend if they weren't staying the night with each other.
Dean headed down the stairs towards the kitchen, being careful to skip the
second stair from the bottom that he knew would creak insanely loud enough that
Bobby always woke up when he heard it. Luckily he had practically grown up in
the creaky old house so he knew all of its quirks and which floorboards would
give him away as he stealthily moved around the kitchen gathering ingredients
for pancakes and bacon, starting a pot of coffee because if he needed some
caffeine then Bobby sure as hell would be demanding the beverage as soon as he
appeared.
It was the bacon that gave him away, drawing the older man into the kitchen
missing his trucker hat and scratching at his beard as he groped blindly for a
coffee mug in the cabinets above the sink.
"Pancakes?" Dean offered, picking out the best of batch and sliding them onto a
plate with some still sizzling bacon for Cas, pouring some syrup onto the stack
and balancing a fork alongside the food so that he could carry it and a mug up
the stairs and wake up the other boy with breakfast in bed.
Bobby grunted in acknowledgment, sipping at his black coffee before scrubbing a
hand over his face tiredly. "Tell Cas he's lucky it was his birthday, next time
I turn the hose on you two."
Dean blushed all the way to the tips of his ears and nodded at the other man as
he started carefully towards the stairs.
"Yer dad asked where you and your brother were," the older man said as he
passed causing Dean to look up surprised. "Told him you were at my house and
that you'd be home later today. Rufus and I got him into bed so that's probably
where you'll find him when you make it back to the apartment."
"Did he say anything else?" the younger man asked, swallowing hard when he
thought of Bobby having to deal with his dad when he was being drunk and
belligerent. He had always felt guilty letting the older man go and take care
of his dad during the holidays, but Bobby had always insisted saying that he
liked to make sure that John was ok.
Bobby hesitated for a second before nodding slightly and moving towards the
plates of food that Dean had prepared. "He had some choice things to say about
your brother's boyfriend, don't think he quite gets Gabriel's sense of humor."
"He say anything about Cas?"
"No, I don't think he remembers meeting him t' be honest with you." Bobby said
sounding slightly relieved. "You know how John can be when he gets a burr in
his saddle, one track mind. But just keep an eye out fer your brother, maybe
they should stick around Gabe's house for a while."
"I'll pass the word on." Dean replied, trying not to think about what his dad
might have said in order to make Bobby so concerned about Sam.
John had been making vague, unclear and often inebriated threats about
disowning Sam if he had concrete evidence that something was going on with the
younger man and Gabriel. He would grumble on and on about how Sam was lucky
that that was all that John would do and Dean would just try to ignore the
older man's ranting as he carried him to bed or gently unwrapped his fingers
from whatever beer can or bottle he was holding.
They only had a couple more months until Dean's own eighteenth birthday and
then he and Sam could talk about what they were going to do about their dad.
For now, he just needed to focus on getting back up Bobby's stairs without
spilling hot coffee all down the front of Cas's favorite band shirt, the gold
one with the sailor girl on the front, the one for the band that Dean sounded
more like melodic talking than singing.
He slunk into the bedroom and set the food down on the coffee table that Bobby
had next to the bed, taking a second to look down fondly at Cas who had
sprawled out on his stomach in the empty double bed, scooping the pillows up
under his head with the blanket having slipped down to the small of the other
boy's back.
The cold morning sunlight bled into the room around the neglected gauzy
curtains that had been covering the windows for as long as Dean could remember
and a glance outside had him smiling when he realized that it had finally
snowed hard enough to stick, like the weather had been waiting for Castiel's
birthday to happen before it finally made up its mind about winter. He had
already started mentally compacting the perfect snowball in his head, one that
would look amazing exploding in Gabriel's face and pretty much satisfy the
protective need he had to pummel the other man anytime he saw Gabe touch Sam
without making his brother hate him, when he saw it.
The marks were pale and innocuous and, at first Dean thought they were shadows
cast by the snowflakes stuck to the outside of the window, but when he moved to
block the light they were still there, marring the perfect flesh of Castiel's
shoulders and back. Lacing over the cute, scattered moles and freckles on his
boyfriend's skin were thin, slightly raised scars that angled down into a sharp
V at the base of the other boy's spine. There were so many of them and his mind
unwillingly conjured up the image of blood sluicing down Castiel's back in
angry rivulets that stemmed from the marks when they had been fresh and
violently red.
Dean reached out a shaky hand to touch the marks, running the flat of his palm
over the smaller boy's protruding shoulder blades that bore the majority of the
evidence that someone had hurt Cas. He felt so angry at himself for never
having asked Castiel about the scar on his chest before, if it was the only one
and who had put it there because it was obvious now that they was more to the
story of why his boyfriend had to see a therapist than he had been told.
Castiel groaned softly and arched up into Dean's touch like a cat being petted,
the muscles of his back caused the scars to ripple and flash an almost silvery
white as they moved when the smaller boy turned his head to crack a sleepy
eyelid at Dean. He swallowed back the bile that had risen up in his throat as
he thought of him not being able to protect Cas like he deserved and tried to
breathe when the other boy smiled at him, blearily.
"Dean," Cas murmured, sliding back on the bed and patting the empty space next
to him. "Come back to bed, darling."
"I made pancakes," Dean choked out, sitting down quickly next to the other boy
as the room started to spin sickeningly around him. He kept his hand on
Castiel's back, trying to decipher the raised lines on his boyfriend's skin so
that he wouldn't have to ask about what had caused them only to hear about how
the world had failed his fragile, perfect angel.
Castiel's smile widened and Dean felt his heart twist painfully when the other
boy pulled him down into a soft, kiss. How could anyone hurt Cas? He was just
so sweet and gentle and even though he knew the other boy was probably a better
marksman than freakin' Robin Hood, Cas wouldn't raise a finger against anyone
unless it was self-defense, so whoever had done this must have been someone he
trusted. Someone that the other boy never would've fought against.
Dean broke the kiss when he felt the other boy's hand slide under his pilfered
shirt and turned his face away from Cas so that his boyfriend wouldn't see the
distraught expression that he was sure was on his face. He needed to stop
thinking about this before he completely ruined the wonderful morning they were
going to have, building snow men and making snow angels if it was the last
thing Dean ever did. Cas would tell him about it when he was ready.
He watched the other boy sit up cross-legged on the bed, pulling a pillow into
his lap so that he could use it as a table as he picked up the plate of food
and began to dig in, groaning in an exaggerated way when he took the first bite
and looking at Dean with an adoring expression on his face.
"These are wonderful, Dean." Castiel said offering a bite to the larger boy
which Dean declined because he felt like if he opened his mouth he was going
throw up.
His boyfriend tilted his head and narrowed his eyes shrewdly at Dean, chewing
slowly and taking a sip of the coffee that he had perched between their almost
touching knees. "What's wrong with you? Were we too loud last night? Did Bobby
say something ?"
Dean shook his head at the other boy, crossing his arms over his chest and
tried, unsuccessfully, to force down the question as it fought its way to the
forefront of his thoughts. "Cas, babe. Who did it?"
"Who did what?" The smaller boy asked lowering his fork and moving slowly to
place his plate and coffee mug back on the bedside table.
"Baby, just…please tell me. Who left…who put those scars on your back?"
The wall slammed down behind Castiel's eyes so fast that it felt like someone
had punched him right in the gut as the breath rushed out of his lungs. Dean
hadn't seen the other boy look so cold and robotic since the first time that
they had met and even then, the blue eyes that shone when Cas laughed or smiled
had sparked with something that day when he and the other boy had talked in
Chuck's darkened classroom.
He hadn't known it until just now, but Dean had come to live for the way that
the other boy's eyes changed with his mood, ranging in color from a pale,
almost nonexistent blue when the other boy was confused about something to a
midnight navy when he would pull Dean in for a desire filled kiss. But now they
were a flat, slate grey and the larger boy wished he knew what it was that made
Cas feel like he couldn't trust him, because that's what it all came down to.
Trust.
"I don't want to talk about it," Castiel said moving quickly off of the bed and
snatching up the green Henley that Dean had been wearing the evening before,
pulling it over his head with stiff, jerky movements and grabbing his jeans off
of the floor. "Can you just take me home, Dean? I'm ready to go home."
"Cas," Dean said getting up and grabbing the other boy's hands which were
clenched at his sides, his boyfriend fought to pull away for a moment before
simply stilling his movements and avoiding Dean's eyes as the larger boy clung
to him. "Just tell me how it happened. Was it an accident? Was it when you fell
down those stairs? Who did that to you?"
"It's nothing, Dean." The other boy said robotically, the muscle in his jaw
twitching and his adam's apple bobbing spasmodically giving away the fact that
he was trying to keep something back. "Just drop it."
"I'm not going to drop it, Cas!" Dean shouted, pulling down the collar of the
Henley so that he could put his hand over the scar on the other boy's chest.
"Was it the same person who did this? You have to tell me!"
"No. I. Don't." Castiel bit off each word angrily and tore out of Dean's grasp
heading for the doorway of the bedroom.
"You promised, Cas! Don't fucking run away from this, just tell me who did it
and I'll leave it alone."
Dean watched as his boyfriend's back tensed and the knuckles on the hand that
was gripping the doorknob turned white with frustration.
"I don't see why it's important." The smaller boy hissed, turning his head
slightly so that his face was in profile against the backdrop of the faded
white doorway.
"It's important because I want to protect you from whoever did it, Cas." Dean
said running a hand through his hair as he moved to stand behind the other boy,
putting a hand on the tight muscles in Castiel's shoulder. He frowned when the
smaller boy didn't so much as twitch in response when normally Cas would have
been leaning into the touch.
"You can't." Castiel said softly, opening the door and starting down the
stairs.
The smaller boy stopped by the front door, acknowledging Bobby with a curt nod
of his head towards where the older man was watching with a look of confusion
on his face as Cas shoved the laces of his sneakers into his shoes, not
bothering with tying them before he threw his pea coat on and started rooting
around in the pocket of Dean's leather jacket that was hanging up on the coat
rack next to the door.
"Cas, what are you doing? Just talk to me," Dean said putting himself between
the other boy and the door as Castiel triumphantly held the keys to the Impala
up when he found them in the coat.
"Either you take me home or I walk," the other boy said sternly.
"You would rather walk home in the snow than talk to me?" Dean asked, trying
and failing to keep the hurt out of his voice as he looked at the stubborn
expression on the other boy's face.
Castiel's face fell for a second when Dean mentioned snow and he thought that
his boyfriend would crack and tell him what he wanted to know, but then the
other boy's face hardened even more and he threw the keys hard at Dean's chest.
"Yes."
Dean searched the other boy's face to see if he was bluffing, but a sad part of
him knew that Castiel was far from joking in that weird half-serious way that
he did sometimes. So the larger boy just sighed and grabbed his jacket before
shoving on his boots and stalking out to the Impala with Cas moving silently
behind him.
He didn't wait for the car to heat up and he didn't try to get Castiel to
snuggle with him in the cold leather interior like he normally would, Dean just
wanted his boyfriend to stop hiding things from him. Cas had been getting
better over the last couple of weeks with telling Dean when something was
becoming too much; when too many people were around for them to kiss or when a
movie became too gory for the other boy to sit through and the two of them
would get up and go hang out with Garth's mom until the scary part of whatever
they were watching was over. Those were things Dean didn't even have to ask
about anymore, he just knew when to stop pushing.
But something about the scars on Castiel's back made Dean what to prod and
cajole the other boy until he told him what the fuck was going on. He felt like
if Cas just opened up to him then he could help, like all of the other times
when he could just soothe away the panic attacks with soft words and tender
kisses, but maybe that wasn't going to be enough this time.
Maybe Dean couldn't fix this and maybe Cas knew that. Maybe that was why he
didn't want to talk to him, because it would mean that the other boy had to
admit that Dean wasn't good enough to be what he needed in order to not have to
see a therapist anymore. Dean knew that he wasn't enough, but god he wanted to
at least fucking try to be.
When they reached the Novak house, Gabriel was outside sliding around on the
sidewalk precariously as he sprinkled rock salt on the porch and path leading
up to the doorway. Dean watched the other man for a minute before he realized
that Cas was still in the car, that he hadn't bolted yet like he had thought
the smaller boy would do as soon as they got to his house. He had his hands
clenched together tightly in his lap and was staring at Dean like he would
never see him again, a look of complete and utter panic on his face even though
his eyes remained detached and flat as the tears spilled over and down his
cheeks.
"Baby," Dean said brokenly reaching out to cup the other boy's face only to be
stopped when Castiel backed away from his outstretched hand. A strangled sound
of disappointment escaped him as his hand fell limply onto the seat between
them.
"You want to know who did it, Dean?" Castiel asked desperately. "Why you can't
protect me from them?"
"Only if you want to tell me, Cas." He replied all of the fight draining out of
him as Cas sniffled in the seat across from him.
"If I tell you then you go home and just…leave me alone. Can you do that Dean?
Can you just give me some time?"
Dean nodded numbly, this was it. He had pushed too hard and now Cas was done
with him, but this way at least he would know who to take his anger out on for
hurting this beautiful, kind person that he loved so much.
Castiel took a deep breath, reaching out and opening the door of the Impala,
letting the cold winter air rob the vehicle of the warmth that had started
coming from the rattling heating vents. "I did it to myself, Dean. The scars, I
did it to myself."
===============================================================================
"Bless me Father for I have sinned…" Castiel began in the narrow confines of
the confessional booth at St. John Church, which had been the only Catholic
church that he could find that hadn't already shut its doors after Friday
morning mass for the remainder of the day after the holiday. "It has
been…well…a long time since my last confession."
He knees were already starting to hurt from kneeling near the mesh screen that
separated him from the priest and he was starting to feel stupid for thinking
this was what he needed in order to feel better, but after admitting to how
Dean how weak and broken he was the only thing he could think of doing when he
couldn't reach Rachel at her emergency number was the comforting stillness he
always had as a child after confessing to pulling his sister's hair or
purposely stealing the batteries out of the remote so Raphael had to get up to
change the channel to get to whatever game was playing.
Castiel hadn't been to a mass since before leaving Lake Forrest, all of the
pomp and circumstance just served to make him feel more out of place and
unwanted, and he hadn't confessed anything more than venial sins even then
because like had told Dean after their first kiss, he had always known that he
was attracted to other men, the graphic dreams of Elvis in his early teenage
years only solidifying the fact that he was going to the part of hell reserved
for homosexuals and sodomites.
All of that coupled with the fact that he was struggling with the image of God
that his father and Raphael had convinced him of when they had him locked in
the basement of their house in Pontiac, their hope being that through self-
flagellation and stripping him of the few beliefs he had about his creator that
his recently revealed homosexuality would just disappear. That God would "cure"
him through some modern day miracle and Castiel would be forgiven for killing
himself in an effort to make the world a better place if he didn't have liking
other men hanging over his head as well when he faced St. Peter for judgment.
"Continue my son," the disembodied voice of the priest said, snapping him out
of the dangerous direction that his thoughts were taking him.
"Father," He began licking his chapped lips and still tasting the coffee that
Dean had brought up to the bedroom for him at the back of his throat, how his
boyfriend had tried to put enough sugar into it to make it tolerable, just the
way that Cas liked it. "I am having a hard time forgiving others. My fath- they
used God as an excuse for what they did, for the wrong reasons. Sometimes all I
can think about is getting revenge on them, how I would hurt them for what they
did to me, for making me weak."
"The lord has told us to forgive those who trespass against us—" The preist
began sounding bored.
"Yes, I know." Castiel said impatiently. "But Father, they have made me
question everything about myself. My sanity, my faith, everyone's motives. I
feel like I can't trust anyone anymore. They have taken God away from me."
"No one can take God away from you, my son. Oftentimes we find ourselves
questioning his motives, why he lets the terrible things that occur in our
lives happen. A person's faith is tested every day, just waking up is a
constant struggle for some, but when you take the time to see the wonders of
God's creation, in a flower or the smile of someone you love. When you stop to
appreciate that he created each of those things to be unique, but still reflect
his image, his love for us then it's easier to trust that your questions will
be answered when he is ready to answer them and not a moment before."
"What if he never answers?"
This was the question that he kept struggling with because Castiel hadn't
stopped praying. Even when he was asking Dean if there was something else out
there and wondering if testifying against his father was pointless because if
God worked in mysterious ways that only he knew about well then that meant that
everything was predetermined and you couldn't change your fate. There was no
free will, there was no choice, everyone was on the path that had already been
set for them and fighting for anything was futile.
"That is what faith is for," The priest replied, like that solved anything.
Like faith would help him put what happened with his father behind him so that
he could start to feel like Dean wasn't going to decide one day that Castiel
wasn't worth all of the damage and the baggage that came along with him and
leave him for someone else.
"But what came first, Father? The faith or the questions?" Castiel asked
desperately, hooking his fingers into the mesh, feeling the thin wire dig into
his fingertips painfully.
He heard a slight chuckle come from the other man before light spilled in
across the screen, illuminating the profile of the priest as he stepped out.
"If you can answer that, son, then you have just solved all of the problems of
theology in one existential crisis."
When the door clicked shut, Castiel sat in the darkness of the booth for a
moment, more confused that before he had entered the coffin-like space and
cursing himself for thinking that this would help when he had never really
taken it seriously even before when he still went to church. He exited the
confessional and went to sit in one of the pews, still not ready to go home
yet.
Cas knew that he needed to call Dean, explain about his father and give the
other boy yet another opportunity to call their relationship off because he
knew that it was a lot to ask of anyone to deal with his messed up family, but
he hoped that his boyfriend would accept the challenge. He gazed at one of the
stained glass windows as he thought, hands clasped loosely in front of him and
inhaling the scent of Dean that lingered on the other boy's shirt that he was
wearing as he tried to muster up his courage.
"She's my favorite saint too," A female voice said beside him, causing Castiel
to jump slightly in his seat. "Saint Rita, patron saint of lost causes. Story
of my life."
Castiel studied the woman for a moment; she seemed just as frustrated about her
life as he was. She was probably a couple of years older than him, her big
brown eyes were focused on the stained glass window that he had been facing and
a sad, smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, like she couldn't decide if
she wanted to laugh or cry about being faced with the image of the long-dead
woman before them.
"She wanted to suffer like Christ did," Castiel replied as the woman swept her
long brown hair off of her neck in a business life way and tied it up with a
band that had been around her wrist. "I could have told her that it wasn't
worth it."
"Me too," The woman replied, turning an appraising eye on him. "All the chick
wanted to do was be a nun, but her parents just made it so hard for her. Took a
thorn in the forehead before she finally made it. Guess we all make sacrifices
for the things that we want."
There it was again, another woman talking to him about sacrifice, like he
hadn't already given up enough when he left Pontiac and his few friends at Lake
Forrest in order to escape his father and Raphael. But that had been more out
of self-preservation and less about a genuine sacrifice, like the ones that
Gabriel and Anna had made by picking up their lives and moving to another state
for him. Like Dean who was putting his relationship with his own father in
jeopardy for wanting to be with him.
"How are you supposed to know when you've given up enough?" He asked the other
woman who just shrugged and started rummaging around in her purse for
something, finally coming up with a tube of lip gloss that she applied in a
perfunctory way.
"When you get what you want, I guess. Until then you just keep on going and you
find a way to live without the things that you've given up. If you're lucky,
the thing you wanted is worth all the trouble it took to get it."
"What are you giving up?"
"The trick is to not focus on what you're losing, blue eyes." The woman said
standing up briskly and giving him a cheery, practiced looking smile that
couldn't hide the grief he could see in her eyes as she straightened out her
brown leather jacket and hooked her purse over her shoulder. "Just think about
what you're going to end up with. Happy Thanksgiving."
"Wait," Castiel said clambering to his feet and trailing after the woman as she
made her way towards the church's exit. "What's your name?"
"Oh honey," She said shaking her head sadly at him. "That's the first thing
that I let go of, my name. You just be sure that what you want is worth it
before you start letting go of things."
"He's worth it," Cas breathed coming to a stop next to the Cadillac that
Gabriel had let him borrow when he had ran up to his older brother after trying
to reach his therapist asking for a ride to a church somewhere.
"Well, then ask Rita for some help and get ready for a whole lot of shit
because everything get harder before it gets easier, believe me."
The younger man watched as the woman climbed into her faded Volvo and pulled
out of the parking lot carefully, heading away from the residential part of
town on the freshly plowed streets. Castiel pulled his jacket tightly around
himself and climbed into the car, pulling out his phone and dialing Dean's
number as he waited for the old car to warm up.
"Hello? Cas?" He heard Dean's voice say through the phone sounding muffled and
miserable.
"Dean, can I come over?" Castiel asked hesitantly, he had been the one to ask
to be left alone and now here he was feeling like if he didn't see Dean and
kiss him breathless then the world was going to spin off of its axis. "I need
to talk to you."
"Of course, swee—Cas ."
His heart sank a little bit when Dean stopped himself from calling Cas
sweetheart, it was by far his favorite endearment that the other boy used for
him. He liked how Dean's voice would twang in a distinctly southern way just a
little bit when he said it and he could almost picture his boyfriend dressed up
in a pearl snap shirt and cowboy boots when the pet name was uttered.
"I'll be right there," He said hurriedly, disconnecting the call before he put
the car in reverse and headed towards Dean's apartment with a newfound resolve.
===============================================================================
Dean hadn't ever been dumped before so he didn't really know what to do with
himself as he waited for Castiel to show up at his apartment. That had to be
weird too, right? Cas had like, just told him that he didn't want him around
anymore, just a couple of hours ago and now he was coming over to Dean's house
for something.
After a couple of minutes spent pacing and chewing his lip, trying to tell
himself that begging the other boy to stay with him was not pathetic and it
shouldn't make him feel like a girl for seriously considering doing it, Dean's
heart sunk as he realized that Cas was probably just coming over to give him
back his stuff. His books and his school stuff that had migrated into Castiel's
room, getting purposely left or genuinely forgotten anytime he went over to the
other boy's house. He hope that Cas would just keep some of it because he
didn't know if he would ever be able to look at that AC/DC shirt that the other
boy still had after they had spent the night together on Halloween without
bursting into very unmanly tears.
He went around the apartment gathering a pretty sizeable pile of Cas's things
and for the first time he realized how comfortable he had gotten with the other
boy so quickly. They hadn't even been dating a month yet, but it felt like they
had always been together because that's how right being with the Cas felt. Dean
still couldn't believe that he had managed to screw up something so great so
fast. This had to be a new record even for him and god, Jo was going to fucking
murder him when she got back from Kansas City.
When he heard a knock on his front door he moved to answer it quickly because,
yea his dad was a pretty heavy sleeper, but that didn't mean that he wanted any
witnesses for the breakdown he might be about to have.
Cas's cheeks were pink from the cold and he still had on Dean's shirt from the
day before which had to be a good sign, right? What kind of person walked
around in their ex-boyfriend's clothes? He watched as a frightened look crossed
the other boy's face, Dean was trying to think of something besides how much he
wanted to kiss Castiel even though the image of the other boy pulling away from
his hand in the car kept looping through his head like a clip show of the worst
moments of his life.
"Cas—" Dean began somberly before he was shoved back into the apartment, almost
falling over from the force of Castiel throwing himself into his arms as hands
grasped the back of his neck and strong legs wrapped around his waist.
Chapped lips met his own for a desperate kiss that Dean returned with the
enthusiasm of a man in a desert finding an oasis after just having given up
hope of survival. He staggered backwards trying to find his balance as he
brought his hands down to grab Castiel's thighs so that the other boy wouldn't
slide off of him and onto the floor. Dean felt one of the other boy's hands
leave his neck and then heard his front door slam loudly from where Cas had
reached out to shut it.
Dean smiled into the kiss at the smaller boy's actions even as he spun around
to press Castiel firmly against the wall near the doorway and swept his tongue
around the other boy's. He groaned when he felt the legs around him tighten as
he ran his tongue over the roof of Cas's mouth and the other boy tugged
slightly on his hair.
Castiel was the first to pull away, gasping for breath as one of Dean's hand
slipped under the Henley to softly touch the scars at the base of his spine,
almost like the other boy thought that the marks would still cause him pain if
he was too rough. He gasped against Dean's neck as the hand continued tracing
his scars, slowly and reverently.
"Why did you do it?" Dean asked, looking into the blue eyes that he loved so
much and hoping that this meant that he hadn't screwed things up with Cas.
"I was very sad and confused and lonely," Castiel said kissing at Dean's cheeks
softly as the larger boy continued to support his weight against the wall.
"And now?"
"Happy. I'm happy, Dean."
The larger boy smiled and leaned down to press a kiss against the spot on
Castiel's chest where he knew the other scar was the one that had never seemed
ominous until that morning. "So we aren't breaking up or anything, right?"
"Of course not," Castiel said pulling back sharply, knocking his head a bit on
the wall behind him with a wince. "Did you think we were?"
"You told me to leave you alone, sweetheart." Dean admitting nuzzling his nose
against the other boy's neck in an effort to reassure Cas.
"I didn't mean forever," his boyfriend sighed, melting into his arms just a
little bit and baring more of his neck for Dean.
"Well, I know that now," Dean muttered sarcastically, starting to place sucking
kisses down Castiel's neck causing the other boy to groan lowly again.
"What the fuck is all of that noise!?"
Dean felt Castiel's hands freeze and tense from where they were starting to
pull his shirt up and the larger boy turned his head very slowly to see John
standing in the dark hallway that led back to the bedrooms, rubbing his eyes
with the heel of his hands in just a stained white t-shirt and dark red boxers.
His dad looked at Dean with a bleary frown on his face as he ran a hand through
his disheveled hair.
"I'm trying to fucking sleep, Dean. Can you keep it down?" John asked sounding
like a huffy child who had just been told they couldn't have ice cream until
they finished their brussel sprouts. "Take your horse-playing somewhere else,
shit."
John turned to go back to his room, muttering to himself about not getting the
goddamn respect he deserved anymore and Dean held his breath until he heard the
door shut firmly behind his father. He looked at Cas, who had an expression of
abject terror on his face, before both of them burst out laughing with Dean
dropping the other boy's legs only to keep him from falling as they pressed
close so they could cling to each other, the adrenaline coursing through them
at almost having been caught.
"We'll I guess we know where you got your cluelessness from," Castiel said
teasingly, snatching Dean's jacket off of the hook across the hall from them
and holding it out invitingly.
"I think we need some pie," Dean said wrapping and arm around the smaller boy's
waist and hauling him in for another kiss. "And then you're going to tell me
everything."
Castiel hesitated for a moment before nodding, "And then we can make snow
angels."
"Really?! You're the best boyfriend," Dean said rushing them out the door
before Castiel could change his mind.
Chapter End Notes
     More fluffiness next chapter, I promise. My brain just couldn't work
     anymore, I blame a mixture of too much caffeine and too little sleep.
     Anyway all the comments are awesome!!!! seriously, i love you guys
***** Last Word *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The conversation got away from Dean almost as soon as they got back to the
Novak house, him driving behind Cas in the Impala so that his boyfriend could
get the Cadillac back to Gabe before the older man freaked out. They failed to
follow through with their plans of pie first, snow later mostly because as soon
as Dean got out of his car Cas jumped him again, knocking him back hard onto
the snow covered lawn and shoving a handful of flaky powder in the larger boy's
face.
Dean had sputtered and coughed and tried to fight back, but Cas was really
strong and his eyes were sparkling with laughter in a way that was completely
different from how hardened and absent they had looked earlier that day when
his boyfriend had been trying to run away from another conversation that he
didn't want to have.
The first time that the other boy kissed him in the snow, straddling his hips
and sliding a hand up to smush more of the icy coldness into his hair as the
cold winter sunlight framed his head above Dean like a halo well, he would've
been content to stay there forever. Even though the snow was melting underneath
him and seeping through his clothes as they kissed lazily in front of the Novak
house, causing him to shiver as the chilly water reached his skin.
"Cas, babe," Dean protested as the smaller boy sat up and laid Dean's arms out
to his sides, frowning to himself before he squirmed in the larger boy's lap
and made an impatient 'get on with it' gesture with his hands. "We need to
talk; you're going to tell me what happened."
The other boy's face darkened for a second before he sighed and ran a hand over
his face, "We will Dean, but just do this for me first."
"And what exactly am I doing?" Dean asked glancing over to where Cas had laid
his arms out straight at his sides.
"Dean, you're the one who is obsessed with snow angels so I had assumed that
you would know how to make one."
He smiled up at the beautiful boy above him and quickly started moving his arms
up and down at his sides as Cas supervised with an overly serious look on his
face and trying to do the leg part the best he could with the other boy still
sitting astride him. When he finished, Castiel nodded in approval and put a
steadying hand on Dean's chest so that he could get up without disturbing the
snow around them.
Cas put out his hands to help Dean back up and dusted the snow out of the
larger boy's hair once he had clambered awkwardly to his feet so that they
could survey their handiwork from the edge of the sidewalk.
"It looks like I have a really big butt," Dean said sourly, pointing out where
the hips of his angel looked disproportionately wide from where Castiel's legs
had intended the snow when he had been sitting on him.
"You have a fantastic butt," Castiel replied lowly, patting the wet material on
the back of Dean's jeans in a teasing way.
Dean hummed contentedly and leaned into the other boy so that he could press
another kiss to Cas's lips and try to avoid being serious for just a little
while longer as they enjoyed the freshly fallen snow and each other before they
had to go back to school for a couple more weeks, deal with finals and
Castiel's last minute projects that he had been stressing over for his advanced
classes before they were free for winter break.
"Why does your angel have such a big ass?" Gabriel called from the porch,
wrapping a scarf around his neck as Sam bundled out the front door of the house
with Anna fussing over the younger Winchester, throwing a pair of gloves in his
direction before she made a face at the cold and rushed back inside. "Maybe you
should lay off the pie,Dean."
"See!" Dean said petulantly, throwing a middle finger vaguely in Gabriel's
direction and burying his face in Castiel's neck. "Tell the bad man he's wrong.
Tell him I have a great butt."
"You do that on purpose," Cas grumbled to his older brother who had dragged Sam
out into the yard where they were kneeling and starting a snowman, pausing
every now and then to fling a handful of snow at each other.
"I do a lot of things on purpose, Cas." Gabriel said eyeing a clump of snow in
a scientific way before promptly diving over and shoving it down the back of
Sam's shirt. The younger boy shrieked and batted the other man away, standing
up quickly to try to shake the icy slush out of his clothing. "That for
instance, I did that on purpose."
"You are going to get it, Gabs." Sam gasped casting about in the front yard for
something that he could use against the other man before just giving up and
tackling Gabriel to the ground, pinning the smaller man's arms to his sides.
"Guys, a little help here?"
Dean's shot away from Castiel and the smaller boy instantly missed the warmth
of his boyfriend as he tugged his coat tighter around himself, watching as the
two Winchesters assaulted his older brother with snow shoved in his face until
Gabriel was crying uncle and squirming underneath Sam trying to get away.
"Moose! I thought you loved me! Cas, save me!" Gabriel called piteously as Dean
trundled to his feet with a self-satisfied smile on his face, dusting the snow
off of his hands and patting his younger brother on the back as he grabbed
Castiel's hand to drag him into the warm house.
"Pie time," Dean declared happily, grabbing onto the front of the smaller boy's
coat and pressing a chilly kiss to his forehead.
===============================================================================
"Dean," Castiel asked nervously as the other boy pulled the green Henley over
his head. "Is this really necessary?"
The larger boy took a step back, holding loosely onto Cas's hands as Dean's
green eyes raked over his chest, pausing on the scar above his heart, a frown
creasing his brow before he leaned forward and pressed a soft chaste kiss on
the mark.
It wasn't the kind of kiss that made Castiel want to rip his boyfriend's
clothes off and let the other boy completely take him until they were both
sweaty and sated, gasping each others names like they were the most precious
words ever spoken. No, this kind of kiss made him feel that fluttering in his
chest that had started happening anytime he thought about the words 'love' and
'Dean' and 'forever' being used in the same sentence.
"Yes," Dean said challengingly, locking eyes with Castiel for a moment before
gently turning him around by his hips and pushing him down on his stomach onto
his bed. "Just talk, Cas. I'm listening."
Cas laid on the bed, trying to will his tense muscles to uncoil because this
was Dean and he trusted that the other boy wasn't going to hurt him, his
boyfriend had never had anything but his best interests at heart. So he
deserved to know, about everything that had happened after Daniel and he knew
that Dean wouldn't use the information against him or try to hurt him with it
because they loved each other, probably, he was pretty sure Dean loved him.
They had only turned on the lamp that was on his bedside table and his dark,
heavy curtains blocked out most of the fading afternoon light that was
reflecting off of the snow outside, but still he could see Dean's shadow as the
other boy climbed onto the bed, straddling his upper thighs before he felt a
soft brush of fingers on his neck. Cas buried his face in his arms and focused
on how he was breathing so that he wouldn't start having a panic attack once
the words finally worked their way out.
Dean's strong hands moved over his back, the calluses he had from working on
cars at Bobby's shop rasped against his skin, catching as they brushed over the
slightly raised marks that he had put on his back earlier that year. He melted
into the bed, letting the calming touch wash over him and give him the strength
that he needed to talk about his dad.
Castiel let out a shaky breath and clenched his fists in the sheets under his
hands.
"Do you know anything about the Catholic Church, Dean?"
"My mom was the church person in my family," Dean murmured above him.
"Well my whole family was a church person," Cas said sarcastically. "My uncle
Zach is a deacon at the church that my farther presides over, my oldest
brother, Raphael is going to seminary school or at least he was before we
moved, and all of my aunts and cousins clean the church and decorate for
holidays. The church was like my second home and until I got old enough to
understand how much they disapproved of my lifestyle, I really enjoyed it."
"How is your dad a priest, Cas? I thought that they were supposed to be
celibate or something."
"Well, after my mom died, I told you my dad changed. According to Gabriel he
used to be a lot more laid back about the church and God, he would even skip
mass some Sundays if there was a team playing that he wanted to watch, but
after…he went looking for answers. A reason why he had lost her, he was angry
for a really long time until my uncle got him to go back to church.
He grabbed on to the doctrine like it was a life-preserver and that was the
version of my father that I knew the best. The one who made us go to every
mass, confess and ask for penance when we did something that he thought that
God didn't agree with. His God was a lot darker than mine, a lot less
understanding of the fact that by giving his creations the ability to choose
that he was also giving them the opportunity to choose wrong. To make mistakes
and learn from them and live their lives so they could love and worship like
they wanted to without having to be afraid that God wouldn't forgive them."
"I thought you didn't believe in god, babe." Dean said, trailing fingers across
the tops of his shoulder blades where the scars started before he felt the
larger boy lean down and press a kiss to the marks.
"I believe there's something," Cas explained. "I just don't know how good they
are at listening when we ask for help. Are you going to keep interrupting me?"
"Probably," the other boy replied, his lips moving slowly and softly across his
back. "I don't really understand what this all has to do with you hurting
yourself."
"I'm getting there." The smaller boy grumbled, exhaling heavily into the cavern
of his arms. "So I told you about everything that happened with Daniel, about
how before that no one really knew that I was gay. Afterwards, there wasn't
really a way of keeping it a secret anymore. All of the rugby players trashed
my room and carved some stuff into my door that spelled the whole thing out for
the world to see. Everyone knew. Everyone at school and the entire faculty.
They took me to the hospital, the nurse said that I needed x-rays for my ribs
and I was having a hard time staying conscious because of hitting my head. I
remember there being a lot of blood, most of it was mine, but I'm pretty sure I
got one of those assholes before they ganged up on me. Maybe broke his nose or
something."
"There's my badass boyfriend." Dean said smugly, pulling back and continuing
his tracing of the overlapping scars. Castiel imagined that the story was
already there, written out like Braille that Dean was trying to read with his
lips and his fingertips.
"Yea well, no one is really badass when they're trapped in a hospital bed,
darling. The doctors in Chicago pumped me so full of painkillers for my ribs
that I didn't know which way was up. The school called my dad, who showed up
with Raphael to get me and they wanted to call the police to, start an
investigation into the whole thing so they could find out exactly who had
pushed me down the stairs, but my father told them that he didn't want to press
charges against anyone for doing God's work.
I guess I should've known then that something bad was about to happen, but it
was my dad and he said stuff like that all of the time. He was always
blustering on about the righteous fury of the lord and how he wished that he
could get all of the sinners to open their eyes to their vile ways so that the
world would be a better place. He said once that if he could gather up all of
the evil people and lock them away somewhere then there would be no war or
famine or sadness. I used to think that it was a nice sentiment, him wanting
peace on earth, but I know now that's not how he meant it."
His chest was starting to get tight and even though Dean's caresses were
keeping the worst of the tremors away be could still feel the muscles in his
arms twitching like they had from exhaustion when the scourge had just felt
like it weighed a million pounds. Castiel felt like he needed to move, stretch,
run do something to release the tension that he was feeling, but he didn't want
Dean to get mad at him again and think that he was avoiding telling him the
truth, because he really did want to talk about this. He finally felt like he
was ready to give up this burden to someone else, share the weight of it so
that it wouldn't continue to crush him, and he wanted it to be Dean.
"We can take a break, sweetheart." His boyfriend said softly, leaning down near
his ear so that his t-shirt covered chest was against Castiel's back and
pressing a kiss into his temple. "You don't have to tell me everything today. I
don't want you to get upset, we'll get there. We have time."
"We do?" Castiel asked turning his head out of his arms so that he could see
the other boy's face.
"Babe, we have all the time in the world." Dean replied with a smile.
===============================================================================
"What did you two get up to over the holiday?" Jo asked innocently in class on
Monday, gesturing between Cas and Dean who were sitting close together in study
hall, the smaller boy's arm flung casually over the back of Dean's chair and
the larger boy's hand that lay between them somewhere where she couldn't see it
under the table they were sitting at.
Dean and Sam had come over for dinner at the Harvelle house on Sunday night
after Ellen insisting that she still had way too much pie left at her house for
the younger girl and her to eat by themselves, both boys had been smiling and
happy in that way that Jo had come to recognize from seeing the expression on
Dean's face so often, the look that meant that they were probably getting laid
and regularly.
The last time Sam had looked like that it had just been for the short week that
he had been dating that mouthy brunette girl, Ruby, his freshman year and Jo
had tried to be supportive, but Gabe was a whole lot more fun than the broody
girl had been and Dean liked the other man, in that roundabout protective way
that he had of showing it so Jo was pretty sure he hadn't walked in on his
younger brother smoking weed like he had with Sam's ex. And Dean, well he
looked like that after every party all smug and cocky, but now with Cas it was
underlain with something else, a lightness she had never seen in her friend's
face until recently.
Both boys glanced at each other, doing that silent conversation thing that the
whole gang agreed was so disgustingly adorable and annoying. Dean broke first,
shaking his head at Castiel and blushing when the other boy leaned in to
whisper something in his ear that Jo couldn't hear. The larger boy shifted
awkwardly in his seat, his eyes darting up to Jo for a second before he licked
his lips and jumped up from the table, his chair squeaking loudly on the tiled
floor as Dean rushed away into the rows of books that ran along the library
walls.
"What is his problem?" Jo asked earning a shrug from Castiel in return.
"Whatever, did you have a good birthday, Cas?"
"I believe that good is probably the most appropriate way to describe it, yes."
Castiel replied cryptically, a smiling tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Did you enjoy your time with Adam's family?"
The blonde made a face, tossing her hair over her shoulder and drumming her
fingers on the table in an agitated way as she thought about Michael breathing
down her neck all weekend about Dean and Cas, asking if the pair were still
together and trying to get her to give his phone number to the both of them.
The rest of her boyfriend's family were only slightly better, she could only
compare them to ghouls instead of creepy, skin crawling weirdos, which she
couldn't say about Adam's cousin.
"Not really, but we tried to make the best of it. We went to this cool old
drive-in and watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The concession
stand was selling cider and s'mroes, it was nice."
Dean rushed back up to the table, dropping a large, faded copy of Merriam-
Webster's dictionary in front of Cas and ignoring the dirty look that the
librarian gave him over the romance novel that she was reading for being so
loud. He had a proud look on his face and sat down, opening the dictionary
quickly and rifling through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
Jo and Castiel watched as he ran his finger over the definition he had found,
his green eyes widening slightly as a blush crept up his neck.
"Frottage, Cas?" Dean hissed at the smaller boy who just grinned serenely in
response. "We're really just going to start bringing our personal business up
in public now? It's bad enough that Bobby knows all about it."
"Darling, if you didn't know what it meant, and you read a lot then I highly
doubt your average high schooler is going to bother with breaking out the
Webster's like you have." Castiel replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Oh my god!" Jo finally managed to snort out, covering her mouth and looking
apologetically at the librarian so that she wouldn't come over to reprimand
them and hear what the two boys were talking about. "You two are totally
boning!"
"No!" Dean said quickly, looking over at Castiel who was just sitting there
with a pleased expression on his face for finally having made the larger boy
embarrassed about something for once. "Not boning! Just...wait how do you even
know what that is anyway, Jo?!"
"It's French, moron." Jo said pointing at the spot that Dean's hand had moved
to cover in the open dictionary. "Cas, Garth, and I we speak it, Dean. Well,
pretty much and Pam has had us translate some um...realistic poetry in class.
If you're so embarrassed about it, I suggest you don't bring it up in front of
Becky either, she's the one who told me what it meant in the first place."
"I'm not embarrassed," Dean snapped. "I just don't want the whole school
discussing mine and Cas's bedroom escapades."
"Dean, most of the student body is already well aware of what you get up to
with the people you date," the smaller boy said in a resigned kind of way.
"Cas, I'm doing this for you. You get all twitchy anytime I try to kiss you in
front of other people and now all of a sudden you want to go dropping fancy
words for sex around like its no big deal, what gives?"
"Well, maybe I'm willing to give up some privacy if it means that I get to kiss
you whenever I want," Castiel said lowly, leaning in Dean's space until the
larger boy caved and let Cas wipe the frown off of his face in the best way
possible.
"Blech," Jo said waving her hands at the two boys until they parted with a soft
suctioning sound. Several other students at a nearby table were looking at the
two boys with expressions that ranged from horror to interest and all of the
emotions in between. "Yes, we're all very happy that Cas has finally decided to
grow a pair, but honey maybe keep your bragging about sleeping with the most
sought after boy at school between just the two of you."
"I'm not going to hide, Jo." Castiel said sternly, grabbing Dean's hand and
shooting a menacing look at the table nearest them that made the other students
duck their heads back down over the various essays and assignments that they
were supposed to be working on. "I've given up a lot to get to this point and
I'm done taking shit from people about who I want to be with."
Dean pressed his face close to the smaller boy's jaw, murmuring softly in a way
that Jo was pretty sure she wasn't meant to hear, "You're so sexy when you're
full of righteous indignation, sweetheart."
Jo put her hands up in defense and sat back in her seat. "Cas, honey. You know
we're all on your side right? I want you two to get down and do the nasty as
much as anyone, probably not more than Becky, but hey as long as you're happy
I'll kick anyone's ass who tries to say something to you two."
She watched as Cas and Dean went back to giggling and talking softly as they
looked up curse words in the dictionary. Pretty much acting like the morons
that she knew them to be looking happy as they held hands on top of the table
for the world to see. The student body at Lawrence High wasn't known for being
intolerant, but the last couple to come out of the closet had been when Jo and
Dean were freshmen and the hate speech that had been carved into the two girls
lockers had caused PFLAG to come rushing to their aid when the administration
did nothing to punish the vandals, threatening discrimination lawsuits if the
boys who did it weren't expelled.
"Since both of you are out and proud now," She began ignoring the cough of
'faggots' that came from somewhere else in the room as the two boys looked up
at her. Castiel glanced around the room with a murderous expression only to
ruin the whole intimidating effect he was going for by sticking his tongue out
at Alistair and Azazel who were sitting several tables away, snickering to
themselves. "I guess you're coming with the rest of us to the winter ball."
"Fuck yes we are," Dean said at the same time that Castiel replied "No way in
hell."
"Oh shit," Jo muttered looking between the two boys were were having a heated
staring contest that if the stubborn set of Dean's jaw and the way that Cas's
lips were pursed in frustration was anything to go by, wasn't going to end
anytime soon.
When the bell rang, they were still staring and Jo still hadn't finished her
essay on the French monarchy so she dragged Cas away to Pam's class after the
other boy dropped a dry, tense kiss on Dean's cheek before they parted company.
===============================================================================
"We are going," Dean said angrily, catching Castiel putting the last of his
books away before gym class on Friday.
His boyfriend let out a tired sigh and ran his hand over his face, the tie for
his dress uniform was crooked and his shirt was untucked and wrinkled from
where he had been wearing it all day. Dean felt slightly bad for bringing the
dance thing up again, but why the fuck had Cas even bothered signing that
fucking petition if he didn't want to go to the dance?
They had been arguing about it all week and it had really been putting a damper
on their cuddling and make out time when they weren't too busy slapping
together any assignments that were due before school let out for the winter
break next week. Dean hadn't really seen the point going back for just two
weeks after Thanksgiving, but it was just how the school had always maneuvered
the holidays and even though he wrote his government paper over the fascist
regime of sadistic public school faculty members who teased them with almost a
whole week off for Thanksgiving just to slam them with finals and deadlines for
two weeks before setting them free again he hadn't really put too much effort
into it so Dean didn't think he'd be changing any minds anytime soon.
"I don't want to go, Dean. I don't like dances and everyone is going to stare
at us," Cas began the now familiar argument that just made the larger boy roll
his eyes because the excuses were lame and he had heard them, evolved his pleas
for the other boy to go with him around them, and waited for his boyfriend to
make up new ones which he hadn't yet. "Can't we just hang out at my house or
something? I'll watch Star Wars."
"You're going to watch Star Wars anyway, that's not something you can use as a
bargaining chip, babe." Dean replied tersely.
Castiel bit his lip and looked down the hallways before taking another step
closer to Dean and running his fingers lightly along the edge of Dean's open
flannel shirt that he was wearing over a grey t-shirt. The smaller boy's voice
dropped in that way that made Dean's blood start flowing south and he looked up
at the other boy under his eyelashes, the blue darkening slightly as his leaned
in to whisper to Dean.
"We can not watch Star Wars and do...other things."
Dean groaned low at the back of his throat, his eyes shutting involuntarily as
he thought of all of the other things that they could be doing instead of
dressing up in monkey suits and dancing to bad pop songs that neither of them
liked.
"That's not fair, Cas." Dean said softly, as the other boy's hand worked its
way inside his flannel and down his side to rest on his waist, fisting the
material of his shirt and tugging him even closer until all the larger boy
could see and feel and smell was the other boy and fuck, they hadn't done much
more than kiss and grind against each other all week because they were too busy
or kept getting interrupted and his fantasies in the shower were just not
cutting it anymore now that he knew what Cas felt like naked and pressed
against him for real.
"I never said I would play fair, Dean." Castiel replied licking his lips and
tugging suddenly on Dean's hand, leading him down the hallway with determined
strides as the bell rang and the other students rushed off to their last
classes of the day.
They fell into Pam's empty, dark classroom that felt eerily silent without the
soft French music the teacher usually had on playing in the background, Castiel
firmly attached to Dean's neck as the smaller boy began to bite and suck in all
of the spots that Dean liked best.
"Cas, you've lost your mind. Someone is going to catch us," Dean moaned
fumbling behind him to shut the door, thumbing the button for the lock without
realizing it right away.
"Don't care," Cas muttered against his skin, sliding his hand up and under
Dean's shirt in one smooth motion that made him gasp when the smaller boy raked
his nails lightly over his chest and across his nipples. "Need you."
"What if Pam comes back?" Dean asked trying to shake off the haze of lust that
was starting to crowd out his higher functions, he just loved it when the other
boy got a little rough and his voice got all needy and demanding.
"She always leaves after her last class of the day. If we're quiet no one will
hear us."
He felt the other boy's thigh slide in between his own, pressing against the
erection that was already straining against the zipper of his jeans and putting
Dean in a position where he could feel how hard Cas was too. The larger boy
rolled his hips down on to his boyfriend's leg, biting his lip hard to hold
back the groan that was not going to go unheard if it made its way out of his
throat.
Dean felt Cas's hands fumbling with his belt and the fastenings on his jeans
and it took everything that he had to reach out and grab the other boy's wrists
so that he could stop this before it went too far. Pam's classroom was right in
the middle of the hallway and Dean knew that there were full classes going on
on either side of them and as much as he wanted this he also wanted to take Cas
to that fucking dance and if his boyfriend was just trying to buy him off with
sex then the other boy was going to be severely disappointed.
"What exactly were you planning on doing, babe?" Dean said taking a deep breath
and willing himself to calm down even though he could feel Castiel pressed into
his hip and it was hot as hell, the whole possibility of them almost getting
caught.
"I thought I would give you a blow job, Dean."
Dean felt his dick twitch as the image of Cas kneeling in front of him, chapped
pink lips wrapped tight around him as he thrust shallowly into the wet heat of
the other boy's mouth floated unbidden through his mind, making him whimper
because he had been thinking about how that would feel since the first time he
had jerked off after waking up with raging hard on for the other boy only a
couple of day's after Jo's birthday party. Back then he had felt like he was
doing something wrong by putting Castiel in a position that would never ever
happen, but now that Cas was his it was something he had really been looking
forward to.
He cleared his throat as Cas smirked triumphantly at him, straining against the
grasp that Dean had on his wrists so that he could continue on with something
the larger boy so obviously was interested in.
"No offense, Cas, but I don't think your first attempt at a blow job is going
to be enough to get you out of going to that dance."
A hurt look crossed the smaller boy's face and he abruptly stepped away from
Dean, shaking off his hands so that he could wrap his arms around himself.
"I forget that the bar has been set pretty high for that kind of thing." Cas
said bitterly. "You're right, I probably wouldn't be good at it."
"Baby," Dean said reaching out to pull the smaller boy back once he realized
how what he had just said sounded to his less experienced boyfriend. "It's not
that I don't think it wouldn't feel good, fuck do you know how much I think
about doing stuff like that with you? I just don't think you understand how
much I want you to go to that stupid dance with me. I want it more than sex,
Cas. And I don't want a lot of things more than that."
"So, you want me to go to the dance that bad, huh?" Cas asked his eyes sparking
with something that made the heat pool low in Dean's stomach. The other boy's
voice dropped to a growl as he pulled on Dean's shirt so that the larger boy
had Cas pressed up tight against the wall, their breath mingling when his
boyfriend pulled him down for an urgent kiss.
"I want you to go with me, Cas." Dean panted, his hands settling on the smaller
boy's hips, thumbs brushing against the sharp angles of Castiel's hipbones
underneath his untucked shirt. "You know I want you to."
"Show me," Castiel demanded in a rough voice, pushing on Dean's shoulders.
Dean swallowed thickly as the order made his cock go right back to how hard it
had been before the other boy had tried to pull away from him, harder when he
remembered that Cas was wearing his ROTC uniform and could probably kick his
ass if he really wanted to. It was just so fucking hot and his hands
immediately went to pulling the other boy's clothes off so that he could touch
Cas and prove to him that he wanted to do everything with him, take him to
dances, show everyone how much he loved him, spend the rest of his fucking life
with him if Cas wanted him to.
He got a hand in Castiel's boxers and started stroking him, feeling the other
boy's fingers clench on his shoulders and in his hair as he kissed his
boyfriend's jaw and tried to figure out a way they could do this without making
a huge fucking mess that would give them away.
"Dean," his boyfriend growled, pulling harder on his hair than he normally
would in order to get the larger boy to look up at him. "I want you to show
me...how...so it's good when I do it."
"Oh!" Dean breathed, his hand stilling awkwardly between them. "Show you. Cas,
you know I've never- "
"But you've had other people do it to you," Castiel said desperately, biting
his lip and blushing. "You know what to do, sort of. So just show me what you
like, unless...you don't want to?"
Dean frowned taking a second to switch the roles in his mind and surprising
himself with how much the thought of having Castiel dominating him turned him
on, and god help him he did really like how the other boy looked in that
uniform.
"No, I uh...I want to, Cas." Dean croaked out, his cock throbbing painfully in
the the tight confines of his jeans.
The other boy pushed on his shoulders, watching with pupils blown wide with
lust, the blue of his irises just a dark navy ring that Dean could barely make
out in the dim classroom as he slowly dropped to his knees.
"Just uh...okay," Dean said pulling on the elastic waistband of Castiel's
boxers until his boyfriend's hard length sprung free, startling him back a bit
when it bobbed up to almost hit him in the face.
He wrapped a hand around the other boy's cock, giving it an experimental stroke
and watching wide-eyed from this unfamiliar vantage point how Castiel arched
into his touch, moaning lowly in a way that had Dean reaching up his other hand
to cover the smaller boy's mouth. Dean could do this, had been doing this,
touching Castiel and letting the other boy touch him, but it was different now
that he could see up close how his boyfriend's cock was leaking precome from
its reddened tip, how the vein that ran the length of Cas's erection seemed to
pulse under his fingers. He could feel the heat of the smaller boy's arousal
washing over him, smell that musky minty scent that always lingered on his skin
after he spent the night with Castiel and being this close, knowing what Cas
wanted him to do had his gut clenching and his mouth watering.
"Okay," He muttered shakily, more to himself than Castiel. "You can do this,
its just a dick. A dick going in your mouth. It doesn't make you a six."
"Dean," Cas said softly, turning his face so that the hand over his mouth
rested on his neck instead and he could look down at the larger boy. "You don't
have to, I'll go to the dance okay? I don't want you to do this if it makes you
uncomfortable."
"Babe, I hate to break it to you," Dean said defiantly holding Castiel's gaze
with his own as he leaned forward to run the tip of his tongue down the other
boy's length, earning a shuddering gasp from his boyfriend. "But you were
always going to go to that dance. You never had a choice."
"Then why are you..?" Castiel asked finding his voice when the larger boy moved
back to look down at where Cas's hips were moving into the slick tightness of
Dean's hand, almost against his will, but it just felt so good and Dean's
perfect filthy mouth was right there and all he wanted to do was feel it on him
so why the fuck was he still talking and not doing something more assertive
right now?
"Because I want to, because you're hot as hell when you come, because I like
how your voice gets all deep when you moan my name, because I'm giving you a
preview of what will happen after the dance once I get you out of your tux,"
Dean murmured, running his lips down Castiel's cock as he spoke until he could
mouth along the sharp jut of his boyfriend's hipbone. "Take your pick."
"Fuck!" the smaller boy cursed softly as Dean's hand left his neck to run down
his chest and firmly gasp the hip opposite the one he was leaving stinging,
bruising kisses on, stilling the way he was thrusting into the air between them
in an effort to find something, anything to ease the pressure on his cock.
"Patience," Dean chuckled, moving back to stroking the other boy, keeping a
hand on his hip so that he felt like he had a little bit more control over what
he he was about to do.
Castiel just moaned and ran a hand through his hair in a soothing way before
pushing hard on the back of his head, urging him to get on with what they both,
if Dean's own leaking, confined erection was anything to go by, wanted so
desperately. That little bit of dominance was all that it took for the last bit
of hesitance that Dean had to disappear and he thought about resisting a little
bit to see if Cas would get more rough with him, something he didn't think he
would mind very much, but god feeling the velvet hardness of the other boy
against his lips already had him wanting so many other things, but he needed to
do this first before he got too ahead of himself.
Dean licked his lips one last time before taking a deep breath and guiding the
glistening head of Castiel's cock into his mouth, he had to adjust to the
taste, the salty bitter almond flavor that was different from how his own come
tasted when he had let girls kiss him after they finished going down on him. He
wasn't surprised to find that he enjoyed it, just knowing that this was what
Cas tasted like when he was turned on and that no one else knew but him, had
Dean bobbing his head eagerly on the other boy's hardness and moaning a bit to
himself.
Dean had to check himself the first time that Castiel gasped when his bottom
teeth unintentionally scraped along the underside of the smaller boy's cock, in
Dean's experience teeth weren't good, they weren't always bad either, but he
knew that he was not being exactly gentle with his boyfriend because he was
hard too and it was difficult to focus on every little thing that his mouth was
doing when he just wanted to moan and jerk off and let Cas thrust into his
mouth. He was scared of choking though, of gagging on Castiel's dick and making
this whole thing decidedly less sexy. His boyfriend may be shorter than him and
look slender under those unassuming cardigans that he liked to wear, but he was
not small in the areas that counted.
He felt Castiel's fingers clenching in his hair as he worked his way down the
other boy's shaft, taking in a little more of the other boy's heated flesh with
each pass. What he couldn't work into his mouth, he stroked with his hand,
letting his tongue do most of the work as it teased over the slit of Cas's
dick, flattening it out so that it rasped along the other boy's frenulum and
oh, fuck his boyfriend really seemed to like that because Cas jerked forward
into Dean's mouth and murmured encouragement in that throaty, authoritative
growl that made the larger boy moan around the cock in his mouth.
"Don't stop, Dean." Castiel ordered. "That feels so good, you're so good at
this."
Dean let go of Cas's hip in order to palm his aching erection through his jeans
and the smaller boy took full advantage of his new found freedom by arching his
back forward into the other boy's caresses, causing his dick to hit the back of
Dean's throat, making him panic slightly and try to pull away from his
boyfriend only to feel the grip on his hair tighten as Castiel let him come up
gasping for air.
"Calm down, darling" Cas murmured soothingly, trailing a finger down Dean's jaw
and running it over his tingling lips which felt bruised and puffy under the
other boy's touch. "You're doing great, just...let me...I'm going to show you
how fast to go."
"Cas, I don't think I can-" Dean began because he didn't think he could handle
deep throating the other boy. He prided himself on his sexual prowess, but
everything he was doing with Castiel was new and different and that for sure
was something that he was going to have to work himself up to before he was any
good at it.
"Dean!" Castiel snapped, his voice becoming hard and commanding. "I'm not
asking you to think, I'm telling you to let me think for you."
Dean moaned when he felt himself responding to the other boy's tone, this was
what he had always pictured Castiel acting like when he was in those ROTC
meetings, all alpha-male and in charge and powerful. The smaller boy pushed his
head back down to take in his cock, not letting up on the pressure that he put
on the back of Dean's head until the larger boy let out a muffled gasp.
Dean squeezed himself through his jeans as Cas started moving slowly in and out
of his mouth, setting a sedate, but steady pace that allowed the larger boy to
twine his tongue fluidly over the length as it filled him and stretched his
lips, pushing softly at the back of his throat enough so that he noticed it,
but not enough to make him choke like he was scared of doing.
Castiel huffed and groaned softly above him, biting his lip when Dean looked up
at him under his eyelashes as sweat started to bead on his forehead, running
down his neck in rivulets that Dean wanted to lick off so that he could
categorize it as another flavor of Castiel, another taste that no one else
would know but him. He moaned when he thought about running his mouth over
every inch of the other boy, parts of the human body that he had never been
interested in before he thought of them attached to Castiel.
"Do you like this?" The smaller boy ground out deeply, picking up the pace of
his thrusting so that Dean had to put a hand on the wall next to Castiel's hips
in order to keep himself steady. "Does it turn you on, Dean? Me doing this to
you. Uhhh, god. Me fu—fucking your mouth?"
Dean groaned and tried to keep up with Castiel, swallowing the saliva that had
built up in his mouth and finding a new thing that Cas liked when his cheeks
hollowed out and the suction of his swallowing was felt by the other boy. He
did it again, reveling in the way that the other boy who only cursed when his
emotions got away from him, let out a string of swears that would put the
surliest of sailors to shame.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Dean! Shit! Oh my god, your mouth feels like heaven,
fuck!"
It was too much, the way that Cas's nails were digging slightly into his scalp
and the heavy, hot weight of how his boyfriend's cock felt in his mouth, the
taste, the smell. All of it was making Dean pretty sure that he was going to
come in his pants and at the very least he had to make it out of the building
with some of his dignity intact. If anyone saw them leaving the classroom once
this was over he was fairly certain that they would know what they had been up
to, but he didn't need a massive come stain on his jeans to give them away when
they might still have a chance of getting away with this.
So he sat up on his knees, working open the buttons and the zipper as well as
he could one handed so that he could take his own achingly hard cock into his
hand and start to stroke himself as Cas snapped his hips forwards with a
possessive growl.
"I didn't say you could touch yourself, Dean." Castiel moaned with a little
huff that was probably meant to be a laugh when Dean responded by grazing his
teeth along the other boy's length again.
The smaller boy thrust his hips forward again, hard. Tugging on Dean's hair
until he opened his eyes from where they had fluttered shut as the sensation of
his stroking hand coupled with the movement of the other boy in his mouth
overwhelmed him."Okay, fine. But next time, you wait. You'll wait until I say
you can."
Dean let his eyes fall shut again and moaned at the way Cas was still bossing
him around, even when his boyfriend was on the edge of coming, he still managed
to use that deep voice in ways that made Dean's head spin. His hand flew over
his own cock, which was already wet and still leaking precome as he rapidly
approached the point of no return. Dean twisted his wrist and curled his
tongue, wishing that his hands were softer, his fingers longer more like Cas's
as he moaned his way through his orgasm around the other boy who's own dick
started pulsing and throbbing in his mouth once Cas realized that Dean was
coming with a muffled shout as he covered his own mouth so that he wouldn't be
heard moaning Dean's name.
Dean debated for just a moment about spitting out the other boy's come, but as
it flooded into his mouth, trickling down his throat thickly even as his own
semen started to cool rapidly on the floor and wall in front of him he just
decided that he had already done this much, he couldn't get much gayer so he
might as well swallow. It would be one less mess to clean up after everything
was said and done.
He got most of it, feeling some trickle out of the corner of his mouth as he
let the other boy's softening cock be pulled from his mouth by Cas who was
leaning heavily against the wall behind him, breathing heavily into the hand
that wasn't stroking Dean's hair and looking thoroughly disheveled in his
rumpled, sweaty ROTC uniform.
Castiel looked down at him, blue eyes glazed over and a smile tugging at the
corners of his mouth when he brought his hand down out of Dean's hair to brush
away the whitish stream of come with his thumb, softly pushing it against the
larger boy's lower lip to be sucked off with Dean just quirking a mischievous
eyebrow at him.
"I think you should skip your meeting,babe." Dean suggested tucking himself
back into his jeans before clambering to his feet, only wincing slightly at the
ache in his knees as Castiel did the same.
"Yea," Castiel said smiling softly to himself, suddenly shy as he ran a hand
over the back of his neck. "I probably wouldn't pass inspection in a million
years.
"That," Dean replied, leaning in to kiss the other boy even though his own lips
pulsed tenderly when they brushed Castiel's. "And we have to go rent some tuxes
before they're all gone. C'mon."
Castiel groaned and allowed himself to be pulled out of the classroom by Dean
who looked entirely too satisfied with himself
Chapter End Notes
     Hey guys, fluff and stuff! Yay! Thanks for everyone who is sticking
     with me, commenting, and generally showering me with lovely feels.
     Feel free to look me up on tumblr:deathsteelwriter...I may be
     starting something else soon because I def have been inspired
     recently.
     Also! Fun Fact: I almost named this chapter Star Wars Hips because I
     was listening to Lifter Puller as wrote this, but that song is so not
     anything like the chapter so I didn't, just some trivia. All of the
     chapters are named after songs.
     Also! That frottage conversation is based on one I had back in high
     school with one of my friends when I still wrote MCR/The Used
     fanfiction that never got finished because I had a life back then,
     unlike now. Hilarious awkward conversations in real life, courtesy of
     me.
***** High School Never Ends *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Listen up you, you little hormonal little pricks." Pam said angrily, striding
into her Monday morning homeroom late and slamming her purse down on her desk.
"I have a little personal announcement to make this morning."
She surveyed the startled students and tried unsuccessfully to reign in her
anger at having been pulled into her boss's office first thing this morning
while she was checking her mailbox in the administration building only to be
lectured like some prepubescent teenager who couldn't keep it in their pants.
Pam had been gently reminded that while her relationship with her fellow
instructor wasn't something the school board frowned on, they preferred for her
and the Spanish teacher to keep their personal life from bleeding into their
professional life.
When she had replied with confusion, no one had even seen her and Virgil
speaking to each other since that one time they had been caught kissing at the
beginning of their relationship several months earlier by Chuck in the faculty
break room and even then the other teacher had just shrugged and kept
scrounging around for a bottle of whiskey that he had stashed somewhere in the
room, Naomi had informed her that the custodial staff had found some "evidence"
that something had happened in her classroom sometime on Friday after her last
class and Virgil's ROTC meeting let out.
Pam had just narrowed her eyes shrewdly at the principal and asked what kind of
evidence the administration thought they had on her. The other woman's response
had been short, disdainful, and made Pam's blood boil when she thought of
someone, one of her students probably being the one to get lucky in her
classroom before she and Virgil could. They had already taken care of his
classroom, rattling the framed medals and knives that he had on the walls above
his desk on a Tuesday when they had been working late and gotten into an
argument where they had both been yelling at each other in different languages
before the other man had just grabbed her hard and kissed her.
By the time she made it down the hall and into her classroom, the teacher
didn't know what she was more pissed off about, the fact that she and her
boyfriend had been wrongly accused of having sex in the school like some
deranged, lust-frenzied rabbits or the realization that someone else had beat
her to doing it in her own classroom which was pretty much her most personal
space aside from her small, cozy house.
She leaned hard over her desk, facing her students as she leveled them with her
most menacing glare. Pam's raked her gaze over the hushed, teenagers before her
trying to figure out if it was one of them or someone else in one of her other
classes might have been the one to get her slapped on the wrist by Naomi for
pretty much the most embarrassing thing ever. Her eyes were drawn to the center
of the room, to that group of smug asshat jocks who were always staring at her
cleavage and calling her 'Pammy' like they knew her. She fucking hated being
called Pammy.
"I don't know what you guys think this school is," She began keeping her voice
low and dangerous so that the room would remain quiet so they could hear her.
"But I can tell you what its not. It's not Degrassi or the Playboy Mansion or
some end of the world backwoods hut where its acceptable to go around having
sex in empty classrooms just because you feel like getting off with whatever
bimbo flavor of the week dumb enough to open her legs for you."
The room was so silent that you could hear a pin drop and that Novak kid's
mouth had dropped open in shock. Yea he probably wasn't used to getting these
kind of lectures at that fancy private school he came from, but if Pam was
going to do this, probably get in even more trouble for treating her students
like the adults they were about to be, well then everyone was going to hear it
whether or not they were too innocent to even consider doing whatever had
happened in her classroom that left semen streaked on the wall and floor a
couple of feet in from the door.
"Now, I think I've been pretty nice about the whole thing up until this point."
She continued pacing out from behind her desk, idly picking up the sheet of
morning announcements from the office that she got every day before heading to
class. "I didn't care that some of you wanted to eat lunch in my classroom or
use it to study during your free periods. If this is the space that you feel
comfortable in, great, but if you think you can come in here and treat it like
your own personal sex cavern, then you're wrong. I will not be the butt you
guys' joke any more. Grow up, get laid in a bed like an adult and if your
mommies and daddies have a problem with it, then get a fucking job and get a
hotel room like the rest of us. Any questions?"
Her gaze flicked back to Jo Harvelle who timidly raised her hand, bouncing it
off of Winchester who was blushing more than she had ever seen the running back
do and yea, she knew that he had a crush on her, but Pam also didn't think that
he was the type of person to get embarrassed by a little frank discussion about
sex.
"Ms. Barnes? Pam?" Jo began, getting a curt nod from the teacher to go on.
"What is Degrassi?"
The older woman rolled her eyes, "Look it up, Harvelle. Any real questions?"
Silence. Great, she had been hoping that her little speech might be enough to
make the guilty party come forward or at least look abashed enough that she
could pick them out from the rest of the class.
"Good, on to other announcements." She said looking down at the paper in her
hand as she perched to sit on the edge of her desk; at least they hadn't fucked
on her desk whoever it was. "First, you all know that winter break starts next
week so make sure any missing assignments are turned in by Friday because
you'll get your report cards mailed home over the holidays and flunking French
sure would put a damper on your New Year's plans."
A hushed murmur ran through the room as students high fived each other for
making it through the semester, Pam could remember what being a senior in high
school was like. It had been a while ago, but she knew that more than half of
the graduating class was just coasting on the good grades they had already put
out for the last three years and the rest had no idea what they were going to
do after graduation. If they were anything like she had been, well then most of
them were going to find out that they were little fish in a much bigger pond
than they had ever imagined existing.
"Alright, shut it. I'm just as happy to be getting away from you guys for a
month as you are to be getting away from me, so stow your celebrating til I'm
done. Second announcement, this one from the bigwigs up on the school board,
I'm sure most of you have seen the petition circulating around about school
dances, well the administration wanted me to make it clear that they have never
denied same sex couples entrance to a dance like Lawrence Free State did during
their homecoming. They want everyone to enjoy school activities, but the dance
is off campus at The Oread Hotel and the school will not be providing
additional security to keep anyone who might want to protest the dance out. So
for everyone, just take that in account before you buy tickets, if you think
you won't be comfortable then the administration suggests that you don't go."
"Hear that fags?" Alistair said turning around with a wolfish grin plastered on
his face to where Dean Winchester had reached out to put a comforting hand on
Castiel Novak's shoulder. The smaller boy had a distraught look on his face
that quickly turned thunderous when he realized that the gangly footballer was
talking to them. "No one fucking wants you at that dance, so things might get
ugly if you decide to go."
Pam watched with an arched eyebrow as Dean clenched his jaw and started to get
up from his seat, interesting. Alistair jumped up followed quickly by Azazel
and all the rest of those moronic flunkies that followed the older boy around.
"Things are already pretty ugly, Alistair." Dean replied lowly, looking behind
him as Castiel stood up slowly from his desk, the smaller boy's movements were
calculating and graceful and Pam could see the same kind of reserved power in
her new student that she saw in Virgil sometimes when he was doing the
kickboxing that made up the majority of his workouts.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Azazel said venomously behind his
friend.
"It means look in a mirror, dude." Ash drawled lazily, getting up to put
himself beside Dean and Castiel.
"You stupid fucking hick-" Azazel started trying to push past his friends and
Pam figured that she should probably put a stop to this before she had to
explain away a hate crime to Naomi too.
"ENOUGH!" She shouted, pushing into the melee of boys who were letting their
testosterone get the best of the situation.
Pam reached out and put a manicured hand on Castiel's arm which had already
tensed up to throw a punch in Dean's defense and the other fell on Alistair's
shoulder, causing the taller boy to leer at her in a way that made her skin
crawl.
"See boys," Alistair said lisping and sliding over the words like a snake.
"Pammy agrees with us—"
"Out." Pam said coldly, turning her back on Dean, Castiel, Ash, and now Jo who
all stood behind her against the larger group of footballers.
"Excuse me?" Alistair asked blinking at her and smiling toothily.
"I said get out of my classroom," the instructor seethed; it was the Pammy that
did it. Pushed her over the edge of her patience with the taller boy and his
narrow-minded small town homophobia that he assumed, wrongly she endorsed. "I
don't care where you go, but if anyone stops you tell them your intolerance was
making it hard for the rest of us to breathe."
The boy scoffed slightly in disbelief before the smile faded off of his face
when Pam's stony expression didn't falter. Alistair narrowed his eyes at her
before gesturing towards the door with his head, "Let's get out of here boys.
This isn't over queers."
"Like hell it isn't," Pam muttered, striding back to her desk and pulling out
her phone.
She looked up to see the rest of the class regarding Dean and Castiel with
looks of confused and begrudging acceptance as the larger boy knelt down in
front of the cadet who was sitting back at his desk with his head in his hands,
trembling slightly. Jo was hovering over him worriedly and Ash was rifling
through the smaller boy's backpack, coming up with an iPod and some headphones
that he wordlessly handed to Dean before going back to his own seat and pulling
out his phone. Dean quickly untangled the wires of the headphones, slipped one
of the earbuds into Castiel's ear and fiddled with the device until the other
boy looked up at him with a shaky smile and glistening eyes.
A buzz echoed through the room when the smaller boy leaned down and gave Dean a
soft kiss on the lips before Pam figured that she needed to put a stop to their
little love fest as cute as it was before someone started taking pictures and
put together a very hostile smear campaign against the two boys.
"Don't you all have something better to do," She snapped to her students
causing them to jump and go back to whatever they had been doing before she
walked into the classroom.
Pam turned back to her phone, shooting off a quick text to her close personal
friend; one Sheriff Jody Mills asking for a favor that she was pretty sure
wouldn't be a favor at all.
===============================================================================
Virgil liked to take his girlfriend to lunch; it was still strange to think of
the French teacher in those terms because not so long ago the lurching he got
in his stomach any time he was around the infuriating woman had been written
off as hatred, until it wasn't. It was amazing, the way that they could banter
and argue and still end up tangled up in each other like they were always meant
to be that way.
Maybe it was all of the gooey feelings for his fellow teacher that he was
having lately or maybe it was because he thought it was really amusing to see
those self-entitled jocks taken down a peg or two by a woman who was half their
size, but when Pam told him about her morning, the stoic ROTC instructor could
help bursting into laughter in the small, café that he had taken her to off
campus for lunch.
"It's not funny, Virgil." Pam said, pouting at him slightly. "Naomi is
breathing down my neck, pretty much looking for a reason to say that we can't
date anymore and now my classroom has turned into a soap opera. I'm completely
losing control of the situation."
"You are not losing control," the man replied, picking at the salad that he was
eating to appease his doctor who told him his cholesterol was entirely too
high. "Those boys deserved to be kicked out of your class; no one should have
to put up with that. Novak and Winchester are not doing anything wrong and
neither are we."
"Well, I called Jody. She said she would take care of it."
"You're sic-ing the sheriff on our boss? I don't think that will go over very
well, Pamela."
"No, grumpy." Pam replied using the nickname that she had given him long before
they had started dating; now it was affectionate and endearing when before it
had just made him more irritated. "She's going to chaperone the dance, her and
a deputy if she can spare one. If anything happens there will be actual police
there to control the situation. Between you and her, those Neanderthals will be
too scared to try anything."
"Even if they do, it won't go very far and maybe Uriel will finally see that I
was telling him the truth about Wheeler and Lehne being a bad reflection on the
team's image. Even my cadets manage to comport themselves in a civilized way
when they are doing something that might draw negative attention to the ROTC.
Dupont and Novak are right up there with Miligan as my pride and joy this
semester."
"I still don't know how you knew about those two before I did," Pam said
narrowing her eyes at him as she took another bite of the sandwich she was
eating. "I'm usually very good at reading people."
"Well, Winchester took me a bit by surprise, but since Novak got here his
grades have gotten better and he hasn't skipped my class once this year so I
can't say the boy's not a good influence on him. And Gilda, well she's got a
lot of fight and fury in her and for someone who doesn't say much, she sure as
hell says things that matter. They're good kids, all of them."
"You're such a softy, Virgil Sanz." The woman said smiling at him.
He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders from where he had leaned
towards Pam. "Well, don't go telling everyone. Bad for my reputation."
Later, after he'd finished with his lecture about the basics of rifle care and
marksmanship, enlisting Miligan and Novak once again to demonstrate how to
strip and care for the firearms that the ROTC would be familiarizing themselves
with over the next semester, he sees Dean and Castiel talking in the hallway.
Virgil has gotten used to Winchester waiting around for the smaller boy after
meetings and had taken to letting the footballer grade some of the assignments
for his freshman Spanish class in order to not be left just sitting around
bored while he waited for Castiel.
Virgil doesn't mean to over hear them, but Dean seems to be upset about
something and it's the tone, the fear that he isn't used to hearing in the
normally self-assured boy that catches his attention.
"No Cas, I'm not the one you should be apologizing to. She stuck up for us
today and we probably got her in trouble. We can't really afford to be making
enemies out of the teachers, too."
"You are just as much at fault here as I am, Dean. It wasn't me who—" Castiel
began only to have the other boy cut him off brusquely.
"You keep reminding me, but you know what? I didn't hear any complaints when
you saw me in that tux; it was the last one in my size, Cas. Next time, I'll
just keep my mouth shut and not do anything for you. How about that, babe?"
Dean crossed his arms and smirked at the startled expression that crossed the
other boy's face.
"Nonononono, that's not what I meant, darling." Castiel said quickly, catching
the other boy's face in his hands and pressing appeasing kisses on Dean's
cheeks until the larger boy battled him off. "I'll figure out a way to make it
up to her, okay?"
The instructor figured that he had probably heard enough, maybe he should cut
them some slack; let them know that they had more of the faculty on their side
in this whole thing than they seemed to think.
"Flowers," he said gruffly, from where he was locking the door to his
classroom. Naomi had sent an email out saying that all rooms needed to be
secured if they weren't being used for a class or club meeting. "Ms. Barnes
likes flowers, tulips."
Dean and Castiel looked up at him startled and the larger boy visibly paled
when Virgil turned his gaze on him. The instructor tried hard not to laugh at
Dean's reaction because he liked the boy and maybe he should take Pam's advice
and lighten up a bit with some of his students, the ones that didn't need him
to put the fear of god into them in order to finish their assignments.
"Thank you, sir," Castiel replied, snapping off a salute to the older man
before turning to Dean with a shrug. "Flowers, easy enough."
Virgil strolled off to meet the other teacher; he wasn't going to tell her
about the gesture that the two boys were going to make to her for sticking up
for them. It would probably make her day and maybe help her forget about the
whole drama with their boss for a little while. Castiel and Dean watched until
he had rounded the corner before the larger boy pointed a stern finger at his
boyfriend.
"We'll get Pam some flowers and no more sex at school."
Castiel shuffled his feet petulantly and looked up at the other boy under his
eyelashes, "Fine, but I'm going to keep changing in the stalls in the locker
room for gym. Your staring is becoming a problem."
"Mystaring, sure." Dean said slinging his arm around his boyfriend's shoulders
and steering him towards the exit.
===============================================================================
Chuck hated dances, he doesn't know how he gets wrangled into chaperoning these
things every damn time, but he suspects that it might have something to do with
how Naomi always sidles up to him, dropping the stern authoritarian act and
ignoring the whiskey that he's pretty sure his boss can smell on his breath
even when he tries to lace it with coffee, and asks him all sweet if he will
just do her one more little favor.
He can never say no to that woman and Chuck's pretty sure that she knows that
because otherwise why else would she keep a high functioning alcoholic like him
on the payroll? It might also be because since he started teaching writing and
literature, Lawrence High's graduates have had SAT scores that are through the
roof. But Chuck has never believed that he was the sole reason for his students
success, all of these kids had the potential to put out great work, just most
never had a teacher who cut the shit and gave them honest feedback, he tried to
do that for them. When they came to him with problems, he never sugarcoated his
advice, life was pretty much crap and you just learned how to make the best of
what you had.
Friday was the last day before winter break and most of his classes were only
half full; students either decided to cut or their parents called into the
office with some excuse about why their kids couldn't make it in even though
Christmas was still weeks off. Chuck had given his last final the week before,
wanting to get it out of the way so that he could work on his new novel and not
have to watch his students for cheating.
He had been pretty inspired lately, this one was different from the stuff that
he usually wrote; the dark broody series of books about two brothers who chased
down demons and monsters because it was 'the family business'; saving people,
killing things. Those had a pretty big cult following, but they still didn't
make enough so that he could pay the bills off of them and quit teaching, not
that he would that is. Quit teaching. Chuck's new book was a love story,
something real and awkward where everything got turned around and fucked up and
messy before it got better. He wasn't sure what the ending was yet, but he
figured it would come to him when he got there.
His AP English course was six students, pathetic. When they got seated in their
desks, Chuck just waved a hand at them to do whatever they wanted and went back
to pecking away at the keys, scratching at his beard, and dumping more whiskey
out of his flask that had turned up empty after he had lost it for a week or so
there around homecoming, causing him to almost have a heart attack when he
thought one of his students had gotten ahold of it.
He heard desks scrapping along the floors and papers shuffling as the students
moved around to sit somewhere else if their partners weren't there. Chuck
glanced up to see that the students had pulled their desk into a lopsided
circle with Becky sitting next to Dean and Castiel as the other three students
jostled around to sit next to who they wanted. The two boys looked surprised to
have anyone wanting to talk to them as the small group started discussing their
plans for the dance that evening and the upcoming holidays.
Castiel especially seemed like he didn't know what to do with his hands that
were fidgeting on the tabletop as he smiled and forced chit chat with the
students he didn't know every well. When Dean reached over and put his hand on
top of the other boy's, stilling his anxious movements and leaning over to drop
a kiss on the side of Castiel's face without stopping his conversation with the
rest of the group, Chuck decided to include the gesture in his novel.
He had already loosely based some of the characters on students at school,
making them older and their problems more real and life altering besides who
was dating who or what colleges they were applying to. But he was having a hard
time with writing the little affectionate scenes, the ones between his two main
characters because he didn't have that kind of interaction in his own life,
hadn't had it for a really long time, since his wife divorced him for someone
capable of expressing their feelings out loud rather than through a hastily
scrawled note or another dead man's poetry.
In fact, his two main characters were an awful lot like Castiel and Dean, only
they were a heterosexual couple because his publisher told him that would sell
more books if he actually wanted to get a review in a real paper this time.
Chuck didn't think that he had done it on purpose, but something about those
two personalities: Dean's confident, charming gestures paired with Castiel's
stilted, quiet strength just resonated as genuine and he hoped like hell the
two boys would never have to go through some of the shit he was putting his
characters through in his novel. He already felt too much like a cruel and
capricious God, taunting his protagonists with happiness only to have it
derailed by something else that kept them apart. But that was life and it
wasn't easy, rarely did it have a fairytale ending.
"So you two are going?" One of the girls in the group asked in an awe-struck
tone.
"Of course we are," Dean said nonchalantly, smiling over at Castiel who's brow
had creased with worry. "We aren't scared of those assholes. Right,
sweetheart?"
"I don't want any trouble," Castiel admitted to the group. "But I'm also not
going to let them bully us for wanting to go to the dance together."
"Damn straight!" Aidan Rogers declared, slapping Castiel heartily on the back.
The baseball player had always seemed sincerely enthusiastic to Chuck about
helping others and he was Vice President of the Young Democrats club, so he was
more open-minded than some of the other jocks at Lawrence High. "I've got your
back, bros. If shit goes belly-up, Josie and I will help you out. My girl's a
black belt."
"Are you wearing matching tuxes?" Beck sighed, looking up at Dean and Castiel
with a starry eyed expression on her face as she propped her head up on one of
her hands.
"Well there wasn't a lot left to pick from—" Dean began shooting the smaller
boy a dirty look as he spoke.
"You'll just have to wait and see, Becky." Castiel said stopping Dean with a
squeeze of his hand from where it was still in the other boy's grasp. "The only
ones who have seen them are Sam, Gabriel, and Meg."
"And they aren't even going! Unfair!" the girl cried dramatically from the seat
beside Dean, causing the larger boy to wince at her shrill tone.
"Sam can't take Gabe because he's not a student and really, Becks? There was
never a chance of Meg going, we'll just have to ask Luc if he can scrounge up
her old prom pictures for us later so that we can make fun of her." Dean said,
rubbing at his ear.
"Let's just say we both look very dashing," Castiel said gazing at the larger
boy with a look of adoration on his face. "What about your dresses, ladies?"
Chuck smirked at how the younger boy artfully steered the conversation off of
him and Dean and tuned them out again, frowning over a particularly emotional
scene he was trying to write about his protagonists coming to terms that the
other has changed since they last saw each other. It was a recurring theme in
all of his writing, growth and change and realizing that despite mistakes,
everyone deserves to have good things happen to them. It was something the
brothers in his series still hadn't really figured out yet, despite obvious
hints from other characters they met along the way.
He didn't even really notice when the bell rang until the less familiar noise
of the students sliding their desks back into place startled him out of his
writing zone. Chuck watched the students, feeling like there as something he
was forgetting about as they gathered their bags.
"Right, uh guys," He said clearing his throat so that his voice wouldn't come
out all croaky sounding, when was the last time he had talked to someone today?
Something besides a dismissive grunt or a muttered answer when one of his
students asked him a question, the instructor couldn't remember. "So, I know
you don't want to think of homework over the holidays, but if you haven't
started those short stories then maybe you should get on it. I'm going to be
expecting something to prove that you've been working on it by the end of
February."
"Shit," he heard Dean mutter, the larger boy rubbing a hand over the back of
his neck and glancing at Castiel who was standing beside him. "Guess we better
get on that, babe."
"Also, those of you going to the dance tonight, have fun." Chuck added feeling
like he should show his support for the two boys somehow. "I'll uh, see you all
there I guess."
At the end of the day, he trundled home in order to toss on his badly abused
wrinkled brown suit, Chuck even thought about shaving, but it just seemed like
too much effort and that was why he only did it when Naomi started giving him
that disapproving look, the same one that she got near the end of the school
year when he got really sloppy and obvious with his drinking because that was
right around the time that Rebecca had left him. It had been almost five years;
Chuck didn't know why he still let it get to him so bad.
His first thought when he got to The Oread Hotel was that at least it had a
bar, so if he emptied out his flask or god forbid, lost it again in the
confusion of the dance he had a back up source of alcohol. If he was careful
then no one would notice the glassy-look he got in his eyes when he was forced
to watch all of those happy teenagers dance and laugh like he had never done
during his own high school years. Chuck hadn't blossomed until college, when
the girls were more likely to be impressed by your ability to quote Tennyson
rather than throw a football.
Naomi was already there, looking elegant in a sweeping blue ball gown that
dipped low on her back and sparkled when she moved, striding over the dance
floor to oversee some of the students who were helping decorate for the dance.
Her hair wasn't pulled up in its normal tight bun that she always wore it in at
school, instead the red tresses curled softly over her shoulders, pinned back
at her temple to keep her bangs out of her face by a tasteful comb that had
little white flowers on it.
In all of the years that Chuck had worked for the woman he had harbored a
secret crush, first when he was still struggling to save his floundering
marriage and then later when the principal would make a point to stop by his
dusty apartment to check on him when he wasn't answering her phone calls about
lesson plans. She could be gentle and sincere, forgiving to a fault and a lot
like Virgil in the way she kept her stern façade in place in front of students
in order to maintain order at the sometimes hectic school.
The man knew that the whole PFLAG thing was really stressing her out,
especially since she could not blatantly support the debate one way or another
because the school board wanted her to remain an impartial figurehead, only
stepping in if it looked like the situation was going to boil over into
violence or a lawsuit like it almost had several years earlier. Chuck knew that
Naomi's younger sister was a lesbian, he had met her once a long time ago when
his boss had first started at the school and she had been out celebrating her
sister's pregnancy with her sibling and the other woman's partner; they had
happened to be at the same restaurant where he and Rebecca were having another
forced, uncomfortable date as suggested they should do by their marriage
counselor.
"Chuck, oh thank god you're here," Naomi gushed spotting him and rushing over,
the heels she was wearing clicking on the dance floor and causing her to tower
over him by a couple of inches. "Can you please explain to these children how
balloons need helium to float? They just keep inhaling it and singing like
those annoying chipmunks. I can't take much more of this."
"I'm just an English teacher, Naomi. Gerlach, that's who you need to do the
scientific explanations, not me." Chuck said smiling at her as she reached out
to try to smooth the wrinkles out of his brown, corduroy jacket and biting her
lip in that cute way that he had always liked.
"Well, you're better with the kids than he is," Naomi said straightening his
tie next with a sigh. "Seriously, Chuck. Do you even own an iron?"
"You know I do, Naomi." He replied, slightly distracted by how the light in the
hotel's ballroom glittered off of her hair and composing long-winded poetic
descriptions in his head about how beautiful she looked. Not that he would ever
tell her, Chuck had never thought he was good enough for his boss, she had seen
him at some of the lowest points in his life and that alone should be enough to
make any woman go running in the other direction, not just Naomi who had her
life so much more together than he did "You bought me one for Christmas last
year, secret Santa."
"Well, then I guess someone will just have to teach you how to use it." She
said glancing up from his tie before she pressed a hand to her temple and her
cheeks pinkened. "Can you just go talk to them? I'm already starting to get a
headache. Hell, take the helium away if they can't handle being around it."
"Will do, boss." Chuck replied ambling over to the students before a thought
struck him and he turned around to face Naomi, continuing to walk backwards in
a way that he thought was way more suave than he could normally pull off.
"Anything else you need me to do?"
"Save me a dance?" The woman replied, biting her lip again and making Chuck's
heart skip a couple of beats as he nodded dumbly back at her, ruining the
smooth effect he had been going for by tripping over his own feet and almost
falling before he turned back around to direct the students in their
decorating.
===============================================================================
Naomi didn't even have to force a smile when Jody Mills walked into the hotel
ballroom; when Pam first told her that she had called in reinforcements for the
winter ball it was like a huge weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. The
school board had tied her hands, not allowing her to hire outside security or
respond to any of the angry and threatening emails that she had been receiving
from parents in response to the article that the paper had run over PFLAG's
latest campaign to make her life harder than it had to be.
Most of the angry old, white men that made up the board wanted to outright ban
same-sex couples from the dance, but the principal had reminded them of the
backlash from the last time they had hesitated about enforcing the school's
zero tolerance bullying policy. They didn't seem to think that homophobia was
the same thing as bullying though; a few even quoted scripture at her when they
tried to justify their position, but her fierce expression had caused them to
back down fairly quickly.
After her last meeting with them she had heard one of them called her an 'ice
queen', an insult that had been muttered as she left the room so they could
talk about her sister and her family and why she supported such deviant
behavior behind her back like a bunch of gossiping sorority girls. She did it
for the kids who otherwise wouldn't get a chance to do the little, normal
things that they deserved to do. Kids like Gilda and Castiel who just tried to
be the best they could even when no one was watching. The Winchester boys who
dealt with their miserable father that Naomi had seen once when she went to
pick Chuck up from a bar after he had had too much to drink, kids like that
deserved to have someone fighting for them.
The insult barely even stung, just like when men called her a ball-buster or a
cold fish or a bitch for being uncompromising and driven. Even since moving to
Lawrence to accept the principal position at one of the city's high school, the
only thing that she hadn't been called was heartless. Which was probably a
blessing in disguise because the woman was pretty sure that it would be the
only slur that could be thrown at her that might cause a reaction.
It was what her ex-boyfriend had called her when she couldn't continue to
support his dream of being a rockstar and told him to grow the fuck up. One
little insult, hurled at her as she was walking out the door to start her new
life doing what she loved, working with kids, a life that Scott had refused to
join her in because it meant leaving New York City where if he kept at it,
surely his horrible little bar band would eventually be discovered and why
couldn't Naomi just be supportive of him for once? He had determined that it
was because she didn't have a heart, that she was passionless and uncaring and
selfish.
But he was wrong, Naomi cared deeply for a great number of things. She loved
her sister and her niece and her sister-in-law who never took any crap from
anyone when they tried to profile the family that the trio had built together.
She had convictions and beliefs just about something as mundane as her job that
the drummer never would be able to understand and when she arrived in Lawrence
it was like the world had finally opened up to her, revealing that there were
much more interesting men than the shallow, goateed musician she had wasted so
much time on. Men who were layered and damaged and sincerely cared about the
things they were doing in their lives just as much as she did.
When she first met Chuck, he hadn't started drinking yet or maybe he had, but
it was limited to the times that he was nervous or anxious and just a quick
swallow from his familiar flask would be enough to keep him from stuttering or
fidgeting his way through a conversation with someone. He was married then,
unhappy, but trying to make it work with his wife who didn't like that he wrote
all the time, was tired of the ink stains on the tips of his fingers and the
way the typewriter would clack late into the night as he worked.
Chuck told Naomi at the first faculty Christmas party that she attended that
marriage was just a numbers game, where you were competing with the other
person to see who's affection divided and diminished slower. It was all a big
con to see who could outlast the other so that when it ended someone was the
bad guy and someone was the victim. The way he had sounded when he said it,
resigned and sad and defeated broke her heart, made her even more certain that
she had always had one than ever before.
Six months later when his divorce went through and she took the time to go over
to his newly acquired apartment, he had called it his 'bachelor pad' with a wry
smile that had failed to hide the fact that he was completely hammered from
her, it had taken all of her resolve to not reach out right then, tell him that
she cared and that she was willing to chance being a victim if it just meant
that he didn't have to be one anymore. But she didn't, it was too soon. He was
probably still in love with his ex-wife and she was his boss. How would it look
if she were to act on her feelings for him?
Later, it got even harder. When his drinking got worse, more obvious and the
school board started pushing her to fire him even though he was one of the best
teachers in the entire school. She couldn't do it then because it would just
seem like she was only keeping him around in order to be close to him, which
may be partially true, but it didn't explain away the fact that he loved
teaching, was amazing with the students and it would break his heart all over
again to lose the interaction he had with the kids. That was the first time she
stood up to the school board about something, staking her own reputation to
protect the job of a man who couldn't even iron or shave without being reminded
to by Naomi.
Naomi watched as Chuck took tickets for the dance from the tickle of students
that were staring to flow in through the doors, Jody's deputy by his side
making the teacher's grizzled, haphazard appearance even more noticeable when
he was compared to the officer in his neatly pressed uniform. She felt herself
start to blush again when she thought of dancing with him, Naomi didn't know
where that little burst of rebellion had come from, maybe she was finally ready
to take her younger sister's advice about telling the school board where they
could shove their stupid rules
Or maybe she was inspired by Pam and Virgil who were talking softly near the
punch bowl, smiling at each other in a secretive happy way that Naomi coveted
more than anything she ever had before in her entire life. She had felt bad
earlier in the week for putting the French teacher in such an awkward position,
chastising her like a love-struck teenager who couldn't control herself around
the ROTC instructor, but Naomi had to maintain some semblance of control or
next thing she knew she would be throwing herself at Chuck in his dim classroom
and that would be the end of her tenure as Lawrence High's principal
She tucked her hair back behind her ear and tried to set her features back to
the mask of impassivity that she wore around the students, but finding herself
smirking again when Chuck waved for her attention, pointing out the outlandish
white tuxedo that Uriel had chosen to wear to the dance this year as he walked
in hulking and glowering over the students like he would rather be anywhere
else, but chaperoning the winter ball with his fellow instructors. Naomi had to
hide her smile behind her hand when Chuck mimed a gorilla behind the larger
man's back, turning away quickly when Uriel looked back at him at him
suspiciously.
Something about this night had her feeling hopeful, more than the giddiness she
got around Chuck when he was being charming and adorable without the aid of
alcohol. The evening felt heavy with something, something unspoken and full of
promise and maybe she would tell Chuck tonight, distract him from the pain that
she knew drove the other teacher to drink and prove to herself and everyone who
doubted that she wasn't heartless, that she could care about more than the
bottom line, that she was more than just the school board's puppet, and that
they both could be more than victims of cupid's folly if they put their minds
to it.
Yea, maybe it would be tonight.
Chapter End Notes
     Minimal destiel-ly feels in this one, sorry. I don't know where
     exactly it got away from me, but can I just say I really liked
     writing a mini-Chuck back story? Like, whoa. I think I love Chuck.
     Next one though, that will be all of the dancey, formal winter-ball
     goodness complete with tuxes for Dean and Cas that will make your
     heart stop. Promise.
     The comments are always appreciated and thanks to everyone who is
     bookmarking or subscribing, you're the wind beneath my wings.
     *ALSO* I realized I picked a really shit day to post this so I may be
     editing which days I post after tonight, depending on how much it
     interferes with me/all of you watching the new season. Let me know if
     another day works better for you guys!!!
***** I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Thanks for picking up my suit, Gabriel." Castiel said, looking over at his
brother who had collected him from his last ROTC meeting of the semester in
Bonnie. The Cadillac was gleaming, freshly washed and polished by his older
brother who claimed that the snow and the cold just made the old girl's bones
tired.
Dean had darted off after gym class, promising to pick him up for the dance so
that they could go to dinner with their friends at the fancy restaurant that Jo
had made reservations at before going over to the hotel where the winter ball
was being held, fashionably late was what the girls said they were doing.
Leaving the entire school waiting and holding their breath with anticipation of
whether or not the newest, most scandalous couple at Lawrence High would
actually turn up after hearing the threats that Alistair and his cronies had
been going around making about them.
Castiel was only about halfway sure that Becky was exaggerating when she had
told him during Calculus the day before that everyone was talking about him and
Dean; wondering if the whole them as a couple thing was a big joke, gossiping
about who was the bottom and who was the top (he was surprised by how evenly
split that opinion was considering Dean's romantic history), and even starting
a pool to see how long they were going to last; most were saying that Dean
would get tired of him by graduation.
He really hoped that wasn't the case and had gently refused to speculate about
the seriousness of his relationship with the other girl because Castiel was
still completely terrified that he was going to jinx everything, do something
that made Dean wake up and realize that he wasn't anything special. He was
going to say it tonight and he didn't know what he would do if Dean didn't say
it back. Probably nothing, because he knew that just having the other boy
around was enough of a miracle, it would be too much to hope that all of this
was love. He still wasn't wholly convinced that he deserved something like
that.
"It's not a problem, Cas." Gabriel replied smirking over at him. "The picture
you sent didn't really do it justice though. That color, baby bro, its like,
POW! Good to see you finally realized that I'm the fashion forward one in this
family."
"You're advice had nothing to do with it, Gabe." Castiel scoffed, going through
the list of things that he had to do before Dean showed up in his head. "Our
choices were pretty limited, Dean says I dragged my feet so much about saying I
would go that we were lucky that we didn't end up with ruffled shirts and
pastels."
"Oooh, imagine it Cassie." Gabriel said dreamily. "Me and Sam, in matching
powder blue tuxes. Our wedding is just going to be fabulous."
"Right," the younger boy replied disbelievingly. "And where are you planning on
going for that? Kentucky? I'm pretty sure they are the only ones who will let
you marry a sixteen year old, Mrs. Robinson."
"Someday, doubter. I'm talking about the future, y'know? The big picture.
Speaking of, have you and Rachel talked anymore about the trial, what you're
going to do afterwards? Are you going to keep seeing her?"
"If I need to I guess," Castiel said, shifting in his seat as they pulled up to
the house and waited for the garage door to slowly open.
He had talked to his therapist the day before about everything that had
happened on Thanksgiving when her office was closed so he didn't have his
regular appointment, how he had tried to reach her but ended up finding solace
in a place he hadn't expected, his boyfriend. It had been a trial to go that
long without seeing her, but by beginning to talk to Dean about his dad the
therapist had said that he was taking the first steps towards not needing
outside support from a professional.
She had given him a lot of shit though, about stopping his meds just because he
felt better. Rachel said that meant that they were working and he had to admit
that the voices had only popped up once or twice since he had gotten back on
them. He had told Dean about the pills too, especially after he had began to
hear the hatred spewing out at him for real from his classmates and he had
fumbled with the bottle that he kept in his backpack at lunch one day when he
had rushed to take his forgotten morning dosage in order to make them stop.
Dean had asked what they were for, frowning when Castiel explained that
sometimes the anxiety just got to him and taken it upon himself to quietly
remind the smaller boy about them in the mornings when they met in the parking
lot to walk in together. They had fallen into an easy, comfortable routine with
each other; spending the afternoons together when he got out of his ROTC
meetings, staying the night with each other on Wednesdays after movie night and
some Saturdays if Dean wasn't too tired from working in Bobby's shop, and then
jogging on Sunday morning though those outings had devolved more into them
making out against trees in the nature park or talking with the Golden Girls in
Stonegate Park before they scampered off to church.
His blue-haired lady friends really liked Dean, they said he reminded them of
Clark Gable, but Cas secretly thought he looked more like a young, lighter
haired Elvis; a sentiment that both embarrassed and elated him because he had
had a crush on the crooner from pretty much the first time he had seen G.I.
Blues and later when he saw the singer in Love Me Tender he knew. He knew that
he would never want anything but a strong jaw and a deep voice and perfect
cupid's bow lips that formed into dazzling smiles that were only meant for him.
But he hadn't told Dean any of this. They did endearments and the other boy
would call him beautiful, compliment his eyes and his smile, but Castiel had a
hard time doing that kind of thing in return. He just wrote it all down in the
notebook that Rachel had given him, little observations he made about his
boyfriend that contrasted sharply with the dark nightmares he had written at
the front of the journal. It felt like he was two separate people living
through the pain and the betrayal of his father and oldest brother, but also so
full of love and joy that sometimes he felt like he was going to explode. And
that's why he had to tell Dean he loved him, before his heart burst out of his
chest like a cartoon character seeing a pretty girl.
"Cas? Are you listening or thinking about that ugly boy again?" Gabriel said
waving a hand in front of his younger brother's face.
Castiel blushed at having been so obvious, staring off into space with a stupid
smile on his face probably, like Meg told him he did anytime something reminded
him of his boyfriend. "Yea, I'm listening."
"Then what did I say?"
"Uh," he tried to find the answer in the context clues, Gabe was halfway out of
the Cadillac with the garment bag containing his tuxedo hanging off of one
finger. Probably something about the dance. "You asked when Dean would be
here?"
"Wrong. Sam told me they'd be over about six-ish if he could get Dean to stop
preening and freaking out over how his car looked. No, I told you to go ahead
and go shower and stuff. I'll steam your tux so that we can avoid distracting
from all of your prettiness with a wrinkled suit."
"Oh, thanks Gabe." Castiel replied dumbly, climbing out of the car and
following his older brother into the house.
Castiel climbed into his ensuite shower so that he could wash off the grime
that he had accumulated doing bear crawls in the cold, dirty slush that the
snow had melted into with the rest of the rifle squad, which was comprised
mainly of himself, Adam, a few underclassmen that had not been on the drill
team with him during football season, and Kevin. Gilda said she didn't like
guns, which he thought was weird since she hadn't had a problem with them when
she was throwing them around, but his friend said that the real thing was
different, too heavy and dangerous feeling not to make her skin crawl. He felt
the opposite way about firearms, after all in the right hands they were
perfectly safe.
Something was making him feel off though, maybe it was that he just felt so
disoriented by all of the winter ball stuff, Cas had never been to a dance
before. Mostly because he didn't know the first thing about dancing, but also
because he didn't see what the big deal was. To him it just seemed like an
excuse to dress up in fancy, uncomfortable clothes and spend the night hanging
out with the same people you spent time with every day at school. He would much
rather be in Dean's cramped bed, watching a pirated movie that had really bad
picture quality on Sam's tiny laptop than wasting his evening with the other
boy trying to prove something to the rest of the school.
But his boyfriend wanted to go and Castiel liked to make Dean happy, it didn't
hurt that the tuxedo that the larger boy ended up with looked absolutely
amazing. He also hadn't forgotten what Dean had said to him about previews and
what might happen after the dance. The thought of finally trying his hand at
what he had attempted to do in Pam's classroom made him nervous and excited and
achingly hard.
Dean had felt the need to demonstrate on him a couple of more times over the
last week, pretty much anytime they were alone long enough for the larger boy
to get his clothes off, but refused to let Cas return the favor. Either taking
care of his erection before the smaller boy came down from his post-orgasm high
or coming as soon as Castiel gripped his cock, lasting only a couple of strokes
before Dean buried his face in Cas's neck moaning the smaller boy's name as he
came hard and fast and unexpectedly.
Never, ever in a million years would Castiel have thought that he could have
that kind of effect on another person, especially not someone as worldly and
experienced as Dean. It was heady and intoxicating and perfect. He wasn't a
complete moron, he knew about sex. Much more than the skewed and twisted
version of the birds and the bees talk that his father had given him when he
had been broken and helpless, thoroughly convinced that not only was the kind
of sex he was interested in was wrong, but all sex that didn't come with a ring
and a binding contract before God would land him straight in hell.
But that didn't stop him from wanting. Wanting things he didn't even know how
to begin asking for from Dean. It had been hard enough to tell the other boy
that he wasn't some fragile little virgin who had to be treated gently, though,
the virgin part was right since the only person to ever even come close to
touching him had been Daniel and that was just kissing. Nothing even close to
the things that he had already done with Dean or the things he wanted the
larger boy to do to him.
But he could tell that the whole actual sex aspect of their relationship was
freaking Dean out a bit, that's why he had taken control of the situation in
Pam's classroom. Mostly for Dean because the other boy was too stuck in his
head to be enjoying something that Castiel wanted to be a mutually pleasurable
experience, but also because being able to stop was something he thought that
he might need to do if everything got to be too much. Now though, now that he
knew what it felt like to have Dean's rough, callused hands on him touching him
and stroking him it was like he was addicted, like if he didn't feel the warm
skin of the other boy's against his own regularly then he was going to go into
withdrawals.
He couldn't stop thinking about it, imagining scenarios where he and Dean might
be able to find a moment alone together so that they could kiss or touch or
explore each other like he wanted to do. Castiel was no stranger to his own
body, he knew where he liked to be touched and how in order to bring about his
orgasms in the most efficient way possible. Back before it had felt so much
more delicious to linger like Dean did as his boyfriend touched him, with
barely there caresses that he would trail down past his erection in the shower
or in his bedroom anytime he found himself wishing that Dean would just take
him like he had all of his pasts conquests, hard and shuddering pressed up
against a wall or something like when Castiel had almost got them caught by
John after his birthday.
His locker room fantasies had been the ones that were becoming the most
distracting and when Dean had called him out about it earlier in the week, they
had barely made it to the Impala before the larger boy had been on him, hands
buried in Castiel's hair and straddling the other boy's hips in the passenger
seat as they kissed furiously like it would be the last time they ever got a
chance to taste each other.
Everything about their relationship felt so urgent and frantic and sudden that
sometimes Castiel just wanted to slow everything down so they could revel in
their time together. Or maybe speed it all up so they were grown and out on
their own already, maybe in a little apartment somewhere that just belonged to
him and Dean. God, he had to stop thinking that way. Planning a future together
when they hadn't even discussed what they were going to do after graduation
yet.
Had Dean applied to colleges? Some place far enough away that he didn't have to
worry about his father finding out about him or maybe stay in Lawrence, get a
place for him and Sam until the younger Winchester graduated. Even though Sam
was practically living at the Novak house ever since something John had said
about throttling Gabriel if he ever steeped foot in their apartment again.
Castiel just wished that Dean would realize that his younger brother was fine,
didn't need protecting as long as he had people like Gabriel and Bobby and
Ellen who would help out the younger boy if he needed it.
Cas had stowed his own blank college applications that the guidance counselor
had given him on Tuesday away somewhere in his desk in his room where Dean
probably wouldn't find them and where he could try to forget about them. He was
going to wait until Dean brought that up, but it was one of the sacrifices he
had already decided he would make for the other boy. One of those things that
he had learned was worth giving up if it meant that he got to stay with Dean.
Engineering was something his father had always thought he should do anyway,
beyond its practical applications it had never held any real interest for him.
It was only when the hot water started turning tepid that he realized how long
he had actually been in the shower thinking about Dean and his future and fuck,
Gabriel for bringing it up because he was finally just starting to get over the
past, live in the present and he did not want to be worrying about this stuff
when he still needed to get dressed and figure out his hair and just make it
through tonight without having a panic attack from how everyone was going to be
staring at him and Dean.
His suit was hanging up on the back of his bedroom door and there was a small
gift bag sitting on his bed. Castiel eyed it suspiciously, deciding that since
he didn't have much time until Dean arrived to pick him up that he would get
dressed first and then worry about whatever joke his older brother was playing
on him later.
Gabriel had teased him mercilessly over the weekend when he had emerged from
his bedroom on Saturday night for dinner with his hair hopelessly mused and his
face all red from Dean's stubble scratching against his skin, as the larger boy
made himself presentable to join the rest of them. Sam had joined in, earning a
punch on the arm from Dean and Anna had just rolled her eyes at all of them,
texting Kevin with a secretive smile on her face. It was uncomfortable in a way
that felt okay, a way that made him feel like he finally had his family back
together.
He pulled the pants of the suit on over a pair of fitted navy boxers,
begrudgingly accepting that it wasn't too terribly uncomfortable as the
expensive fabric brushed over his skin, causing goose bumps to break out over
his chest and neck. Castiel put on the shirt next, it was a familiar feeling
doing up the small black buttons on the traditional tuxedo shirt with its
little pleats that ran across his chest and down the front; it was exactly like
putting on his old Lake Forrest uniform. The cufflinks came with the suit,
matching the buttons on the front and not being anything extraordinary. He
refused to wear a cummerbund, much like Dean had sternly stated that he was
going to die before he wore a bowtie, but besides that and the color his suit
was fairly conventional.
Castiel decided to try to do something with his hair, thought for just a second
about asking Anna if he could use some of her hair gel again before he
remembered that Dean didn't like how it smelled and just tried to flatten it
the best he could with his palms while it was still wet and sort of manageable.
He gave up with an annoyed huff and just sat down heavily onto his bed in order
to put on the shiny, black dress shoes that also came with his suit. The gift
bag thumped lightly against his side and once again he ignored it after
glancing at the clock above his stereo, tying up the laces hurriedly and
snatching the jacket for his suit off of the hanger along with the bowtie
before he glanced around the room to make sure he had everything he needed for
the evening.
A soft knock on the door brought him out of his panic as he fumbled with his
wallet and phone, shoving them into the satin lined pockets of his pants. He
whipped around to see his sister in her own eggplant purple dress, poking her
head sheepishly into his room, eyeing him up and down an approving look on her
face.
"Blue," Anna said softly. "I should have known it would be a blue suit."
Castiel looked down at himself and slid his suit jacket on, actually enjoying
the feel of the satin that lined the inside, covered the buttons and lapels
against his neck. He glanced up at his sister and bit his lip nervously, "You
don't think it's too much? Gaudy? It feels a bit gaudy."
"Not at all, Cas. It's perfect. Dean's gonna freak."
"I doubt it; he's already seen me in it."
"Well, that was before you got all cleaned up for him." Anna replied waving off
his self-deprecation that she has gotten used to ignoring. "Cas, can you do me
a favor? Zip me up? I don't know where Gabriel has gotten off to."
"I thought he was driving you and Kevin?" Castiel asked moving around behind
his sister so that he could fasten up the zipper and eyehook on her dress. It
was almost 1950s looking, with a full tea-length skirt that the girl was
probably going to freeze in and a wide off the shoulder neck line that paired
with the pearls Anna was wearing perfectly.
"No, he pawned it off on Mrs. Tran. Said he and Sam had some big date planned,
he also told me that he would do all of my chores for two weeks if I stayed the
night at Gilda or Becky's."
"You weren't supposed to tell him about that, Na!" Gabriel barked peevishly
from the doorway.
"Does that mean I'm out of snow shoveling duty if I don't come home tonight?"
Castiel asked with a raised eyebrow and Anna turned around and started brushing
non-existent lint off of the shoulders of his suit jacket.
"No," Gabriel said confusedly. "Did you not open the present I left for you?"
"I didn't because I just assumed it was exploding ink or some joke that would
just make me look stupid and have to shower all over again. I don't want to
leave Dean waiting around for me to finish getting ready."
"Well…Anna can you just go already? Don't you have to cake on another pound of
makeup or something?" Gabriel teased, shifting on his feet uncomfortably.
The two brothers watched as she left, sticking her tongue out at Gabriel and
swanning out of the room like she was Princess Di. Gabe looked pointedly at the
small red gift bag, clearing his throat and wringing his hands until Castiel
relented and dumped its contents on the bed unceremoniously. He picked up the
small key cautiously; raising an eyebrow at his older brother who shrugged
helplessly and blushed like this was the most uncomfortable moment of his life.
"There's a card." Gabriel offered lamely, gesturing towards the bed and looking
anywhere but at Castiel. "Just…uh…think of it as a late birthday present."
Cas picked up the envelope, thumbing open the unsealed flap and pulling out a
small yellow card that had a bumblebee on the cover, underneath it said 'I've
heard some buzzing…' He flipped the card open and something fell out dropping
ignored at his feet as he read the inside, his eyes widening and his face
heating up until he knew that he had to be just as red as Gabriel who was
biting on his nails anxiously like he had when they were kids.
"I've heard some buzzing, that you've found a bird to sting. Be safe baby bro,
kisses Gabe." Castiel intoned, having to clear his voice when it came out
cracked and awkward at first. "You have got to be kidding me."
He looked down at his feet, noticing for the first time that what had fallen
out was a small, square shiny package labeled 'Trojan'. Castiel groaned and
buried his face in his hands, the card crinkling in his grasp as he fought back
the hysterical laughter that was threatening to claw its way out of his throat.
"Cas, I just want you to be careful." Gabriel began crossing his arms over his
chest and trying to settle his face into a mask of concern. "So just,
y'know…use protection or whatever."
"Where do you even find a card like this?!" Castiel spit out letting a giggle
escape him before he slapped his hand back over his mouth.
"The internet." Gabriel grumbled, jutting his chin towards the bed where the
key lay, attached to its fancy, embossed white plastic fob. "That's a key, to a
hotel room at the place where the dance is. I know you and Dean can't really go
back to his house if you're gonna…y'know…John. Just, can you give me and Sam
some privacy for fucking once? You're not the only Novak who wants to get laid
in this house."
"We aren't having sex, Gabe." Castiel said, giving up all pretense of hiding
how ridiculous he thought this whole situation was and just laughing until his
ribs hurt and his jacket was probably all wrinkled.
"I know that," his older brother groaned putting up a hand to lean heavily
against the door.
Gabriel glanced up at Castiel who was still chuckling to himself and smirked
before crossing the room and snatching the bow tie that was sticking out of his
pocket and looping it around the younger boy's neck. His older brother flipped
up the collar of his shirt and started knotting the tie in a self-assured way,
which was great because Castiel had no idea how to tie anything but a Windsor
knot and had hoped he would have enough time to look up how to fix it before
Dean got there.
"I wasn't always the shining example of monogamy that I am now, Cas." Gabriel
murmured soothingly. "Did a lot of stupid things, put myself in a lot of
dangerous situations because I was sneaking around behind dad's back with guys
that didn't care even care what my name was. But when it's with someone you
love, it's different. My first time was not with someone I loved, pretty much
the opposite. So I just want something better for you, Cas. Just be sure before
you do it, they call it a first for a reason. There's no forgetting."
Castiel nodded at his brother, wondering when exactly Gabriel had grown up and
managed to get all serious and wise. He wondered if he would ever be able to
give advice like that before he swooped down and pulled the shorter man into a
tight, brotherly hug. There was a lot of back patting and awkward throat
clearing as they pulled apart.
"Thanks, Gabe." Castiel muttered, ruffling his older brother's shaggy hair a
bit and pushing away Gabriel's outstretched hand when he tried to do the same.
His brother just flashed that familiar mischievously grin before picking up the
hotel key and slipping it into the pocket of Castiel's suit jacket. Then the
doorbell rang and the bottom dropped out of Castiel's stomach.
"Relax, Cas. You look fine." Gabriel laughed moving towards the hallway and the
stairs and the front door where Dean waited.
===============================================================================
Sam was the one who brought it up and even then it was said a joke, Dean felt
like the most inconsiderate person in the world for not thinking of it. First
he didn't get Castiel a real gift for his birthday, just a sloppy hand job that
Dean enjoyed just as much as the other boy and now he had practically begged
Cas to go to a dance with him only to not bother with getting him a corsage or
a boutonnière or whatever it was that guys stuck into that buttonhole on their
jackets.
So now Dean was running late because he had peeled into the parking lot of the
local flower shop, catching the owner just as the man had been locking the
doors and pleading for something, fucking anything that he could give Cas to
make him not regret going to this stupid dance with him. The older man must
have seen something on his face because he had just sighed and beckoned Dean
into the store as he quickly put together two small bundles of flowers for the
boys to wear, white for Cas and a blue that matched the other boy's suit for
Dean.
"You're a lifesaver, mister really." Dean said scrambling to pull his wallet
out of the inner pocket of his grey suit jacket so that he could pay any amount
he needed to in order to get the flowers, he didn't even care if he had to dip
into this month's bill money, he would just work extra shifts at the shop or
whatever. He just needed this so that he could show Cas how much he cared.
The second time he had gone down on the other boy, it was because he had been
trying to force the words out, even though he knew how insincere it would
probably sound if the word love was blurted out hot on the heels of an orgasm.
But he figured that would be the best time to say it, Dean always got all sappy
about his lovers when they were in bed and he hadn't ever said that to some
random girl, but he had made promises he had no intention of keeping, called
them special and beautiful even when he didn't mean it.
But now he did, he meant every fucking word that he said to Cas. Every time he
called him gorgeous or stunning or talked about how he could stay in Cas's dim
room forever as long as they were together. He meant it and it frustrated him
to no fucking end that he got choked up and nauseous when he tried to say the
one thing he wanted more than anything. Some part of his brain would just start
screaming at him to shut up, don't say it because then Cas would leave just
like his mom had. So he tried to say it in the only way he knew how, with
kisses and touches and caresses that left both of them gasping and sweaty and
smiling secretly anytime they looked at each other afterwards.
"Forget about it, kid." The man replied gruffly, shoving two clear plastic
boxes across the counter towards Dean. "Just get out already so I can go home."
Dean nodded quickly and cradled the boxes against his chest before dashing back
out to the still running Impala where Sam was waiting with that self-satisfied
little smirk on his face that made Dean want to put Nair in his shampoo all
over again. See how Gabriel liked his little brother when he was bald and not
even in a badass Samuel L. Jackson kind of way.
When they pulled up to the Novak house, Dean found that he was suddenly
nervous. This was it, he and Castiel were finally going out on a real date, not
just grabbing something to eat at the diner before they went back to Dean's
apartment or going to movie night together. Dean couldn't remember the last
time be had been on an actual date, with like dinner and plans that involved
something more than having sex. And yea, he wanted to have sex with Cas. Like
really fucking bad, but all of this was different. There were feelings and
stuff involved so he wanted it to mean something, for both of them.
"Come on, Romeo," Sam said pushing gently at Dean's shoulder so that his older
brother would get moving. "The sooner you get your man, the sooner Gabe and I
can watch Sherlock without you judging us for ogling."
"Ogling what?" Dean muttered, forgetting who he was talking to for a second as
he adjusted his grey tie in the rearview mirror.
"Gabs and I have types, Dean." Sam replied rolling his eyes and unfolding
himself from the vehicle. "And let's just say that show has something for
everyone."
"Oh fucking gross, Sam." The older Winchester groused, hustling towards the
door his breath ghosting in the cold night air and his dress shoes crunching on
the layered, frozen snow.
"You're the one who asked," his brother said with a shrug opening the front
door and letting himself inside like he lived there. Dean remained on the door
step, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Are you coming?"
"Um, I know it's weird," Dean said blushing slightly. "But can you like, shut
the door? I want to ring the bell. Y'know so it's like a date."
"Whatever, lover-boy." Sam muttered, trying to slap a bitch face on over the
amused smile he was wearing, just managing to look constipated as he shut the
door soundly in Dean's face.
A couple seconds later the bell rang and Sam was already sitting on the couch
in the living room having decided that he was going to wait for one of the
Novaks to answer it because it was their house and he really just wanted to see
the look on Cas's face when he saw Dean in that suit, actually putting effort
into how he looked for another person for once. He knew his brother cleaned up
fairly well, Sam had seen him on that spirit day when he had been all giddy
about wearing his second hand suit that just made him look like an FBI agent,
but it was nothing compared to how he had been preening and primping for the
last couple of hours as he waited for Castiel to get out of his meeting.
Outside, Dean just tried not to throw up as he fidgeted with the buttons on his
suit jacket, trying to do them up one handed while balancing the boxes of
flowers under one arm. At least he wasn't very cold, his tux was much less a
tux and more like the fanciest suit he had ever seen. It reminded him of how
guys in pre-war England might have dressed and Sam had said that he and Gabriel
agreed and they knew a lot more about stuff from that time than he did.
It was varying shades of grey-all the way from his light colored shirt to his
dark tie with the pants and jacket falling somewhere in between, which had
helped him with his argument to get Castiel to rent the blue tuxedo that made
his eyes flash like lightning striking since it wasn't a traditional black
either. His own suit though had a vest, which he had almost not gotten since
Cas didn't want the cummerbund when Dean had asked him to get it. The smaller
boy had said it would just make him feel like he was being eaten by a boa
constrictor all tight around his waist, but after seeing how his boyfriend's
eyes had gotten wide as he took in the long row of buttons that cinched the
vest around his chest Dean had decided that he could deal with being hot once
they started dancing as long as those slim fingers that he loved feeling tug on
his hair took it off of him later.
He had shaved, going so far as to use the fancy cologne that Ellen had gotten
him for his birthday that he had never used, and parted his hair keeping it
down with some of the pomade that he didn't think Sam knew about because if he
did then his hulking younger brother would probably never stop making fun of
him about it. Dean spent about an hour just pacing around the house, looking
for an iron to get rid of a wrinkle in his pants that Sam swore he was
imagining and changing his socks and boxers like four times because it was
really the only thing he was able to choose about what he was wearing.
Everything else had come with the rented suit. Except for the cufflinks.
John had been watching Dean get ready from his favorite chair in the living
room, nursing just one beer for hours when normally be would already have been
halfway gone or out of the house at a bar already. But he was even being nice
to Sam, for probably the first time in weeks asking his youngest son how school
was going and if he thought the debate team would make it to state again this
year. Their father let out a low whistle when Dean had shown him the finished
product of his frantic primping and told the boy that he was going to be
fighting girls off in that get up. Dean and Sam had shared a pointed look when
the older man got up and rushed off to his room, returning a couple of minutes
later with a pair of cufflinks that he offered to his oldest son with no
explanation besides telling him to be careful, they were worth more than all of
their belongings combined.
They were dark silver, looked antique and they were probably something that had
belonged to the grandfather on his dad's side that John never talked about.
Octagonal in shape with a raised fleur de lis pattern; they reminded Dean of
the filigree that had been on the gun he had borrowed from Bobby for his
Halloween costume. There was an engraving around the edge of each cufflink,
written so small that Dean could barely make it out when he tried to read it,
something in a foreign language that he knew wasn't Spanish and was pretty sure
wasn't French either so that left him with no one to ask what 'Non timebo mala'
meant.
It was the nicest, most fatherly thing that John had done for him in years and
Dean almost thought that he could tell him about Cas and it would be fine. That
his father would understand that his sons wanted something different than John
had once had with their mother, that they were willing to put up with fighting
to be happy and that they just wanted John to be happy for them too. But then
Sam had opened his big trap, said something about Gabriel probably being able
to translate the words for him since he was taking a Latin class this semester
and John had closed up, grabbing a six pack out of the fridge and grumbling
something about not knowing why he even bothered trying before he went back to
his bedroom, slamming the door behind him and not coming out to say anything
when the two boys left the apartment.
The door opened right as he was adjusting his tie, again, and instead of it
being Castiel like Dean had been expecting it was Anna, looking suitably
elegant and timeless in her little housewife cocktail dress that his boyfriend
had told him about over the phone when Dean had been taking a break at work,
leaning up against one of the cars in the shop and trying to help as Cas
shopped for flowers to apologize to Pam. They didn't tell the teacher what they
were for and she had just smiled fondly at the purple flowers when they
presented them to her on Wednesday morning.
"Dean!" Anna said happily, stepping forward to give him a sisterly kiss on the
cheek and offering to take the boxes he was holding from him, which he refused
because he wanted to put the flowers on Cas himself and he knew he was being
silly, but he didn't really care. "You could've just let yourself in dork. Our
house is your house, Cas will be down in a minute. I think Gabe's trying to
kick us out of the house so he and Sam can—"
"Yea, I get it." Dean cut in quickly, seeing the older man trump down the
stairs with a wary expression on his face as he eyed Dean suspiciously. "What's
wrong with you, Gabby? Jealous that you can't look this good in a suit?"
"Yea, that's probably it." Gabriel muttered getting right up into Dean's face
and shifting his gaze back and forth between his eyes.
He was standing too close and it was super weird and uncomfortable, but Dean
wasn't one to back down from whatever it was that Gabriel was doing, trying to
start a fight? What the fuck was up with the Novaks and their issues with
personal space? So he stood there, clenching his jaw and staring resolutely
back into the older man's hazel eyes that were so different from Cas's, yet so
similar with how they shifted colors depending on his mood. Right now they were
dark and dangerous and calculating, searching for something in Dean's face that
would ease the worry Gabriel couldn't seem to shake for his little brother.
"What the fuck, man?" Dean croaked out, glancing over at Sam who was just
sitting on the couch chatting with Anna like nothing weird was going on less
than ten feet away from him.
Gabriel just watched him for a moment before nodding to himself and moving to
sit beside Sam on the couch. "You're right, Moose. I don't know why I didn't
see it before now."
"Right!" Sam exclaimed, gesturing at Dean like he was some prize on a game
show. "I mean, look at him. He's so gone, Gabs. You're worrying about nothing."
"Do one of you two yahoos want to tell me what's going on?" Dean huffed,
setting the flowers down on the table near the door and popping open the one
that contained his so that he could go ahead and try his hand at putting one on
in an effort to not look completely clueless in front of his boyfriend.
"Not really," Sam called merrily as Gabriel climbed into his lap, slinging his
arms around the larger boy's neck and sticking his tongue out at Anna who made
a little mew of distaste.
"It is very annoying when you two do that." A voice said floating down the
stairs towards Dean and his head shot up from where he was fumbling with the
straight pin that would attach the flowers to his jacket, poking himself hard
when he saw Cas.
Dean felt his heart squeeze and he was reminded of that scene in pretty much
every 90s teen comedy where the main character spots the boy or girl they are
pining after, the edges of his vision going all fuzzy and soft as warmth
blossomed in his chest. Amazing didn't even begin to describe how Castiel
looked in his tailored blue suit, wearing it like he was born to as he moved
gracefully down the stairs to pluck the boutonniere out of Dean's hand and pin
it to the lapel of his jacket with self-assured hands that didn't shake or
sweat like the larger boy's had started to as soon as the other boy had
appeared.
"You look very handsome, Dean." Castiel murmured, glancing up with those wide
blue eyes that made Dean feel like he wasn't completely selfish for wanting Cas
all to himself.
Anytime they were apart he counted down the time until they would see each
other again, even if it was just during the short times when they would be
separated during class. It made him feel like a needy fucking girl, but it just
felt easier to breathe when the other boy was around and he kept trying not to
think about what it would be like when Castiel started getting college
acceptance letters in the mail. He would have to be supportive even though Dean
knew each one would kill him a bit inside, Cas was just so fucking smart. So
much smarter than he was, just like Sam was and they would all leave him behind
someday.
But tonight they were together and that was all that mattered for now, Dean
would just worry about the rest of it when the time came. When they weren't
running late to meeting the rest of their friends at the restaurant that they
were already supposed to be at and when Cas wasn't biting his lip and looking
at him like all he wanted to do was rip Dean's suit off with his teeth. They
would worry about that later.
"Awww," Gabriel cooed, hopping up from Sam's lap and batting at the younger
Winchester until he gave the older man his cell phone. "Let me get a picture,
you two are so cute!"
"No." Dean and Castiel both said at the same time, not bothering to look away
from each other even as Dean fumbled with the rustic looking bundle of white
roses and greenery that made up the other boy's boutonniere, cursing his
clumsy, callused fingers and trying to will the image of Cas in another suit,
standing with him in front of all of their friends saying things that would
mean that no one, not even the god he didn't believe in could take them away
from each other out of his head before he passed out from how fast his heart
was beating.
"Come on," the older man whined, holding up Sam's smart phone that Dean had
gotten for the younger boy as an early Christmas present because his brother
just wouldn't stop talking about how everyone else had a nice phone but him.
"How many pictures do you guys have together? I need one for the mantel."
"He's not going to stop, is he?" Dean asked softly, smirking at the way that
Castiel just replied by rolling his eyes and sighing as he wrapped and arm
around Dean's waist, rubbing his nose against the larger boy's jaw.
Dean's breath hitched in his chest as he watched the way that Castiel just
melted into his side, closing his eyes as he nuzzled up against him, his
boyfriend's long, dark eyelashes contrasting starkly against that creamy pale
skin.
"Take it, Gabe." Dean said not bothering to look up when a smile broke out on
Cas's face at the sound of his voice. "Take your fucking picture."
He heard the click, saw the flash out of the corner of his eye, but none of
that mattered because then Cas was tugging him towards the door, calling out a
hurried goodbye to Sam and Gabriel, telling Anna he would see her there as she
waited around for Kevin to show up to get her. They rushed out to the Impala
and Cas let Dean open his door for him, ducking his head bashfully as he
climbed in. A million times they had ridden around together- from school, to
the nature park to jog, just driving around sometimes talking about nothing in
particular, but this car ride felt important, like it was a milestone or
something that they were sharing together.
Dean had to tamp down his fear the entire way over to the restaurant because he
just wanted to give Cas an out, tell him that if the other boy really wanted to
they could skip the dance and just keep driving until they ran out of gas or
road, whichever happened first. As long as they were together, everything would
stay perfect like this forever.
It was a very childish tactic, ignoring the fact that eventually it would get
back to his dad that both of his sons were dating other guys, but avoidance was
the only thing Dean knew how to do when people brought up things he didn't want
to think about it and it had gone as a sort of unspoken agreement that he and
Cas wouldn't talk about his dad until absolutely necessary. Sam was doing the
same thing, going home as little as possible in order to avoid arguing with
John, but that was only because Dean begged him to stop trying so hard to
escape their family, to escape from him. His younger brother had agreed, but
not before he got that pitying, knowing look on his face that Dean fucking
hated.
Jo was waiting for them outside with a annoyed expression on her face that
didn't take away from her stunning, strapless red dress that was revealed when
she took off Adam's tuxedo jacket that she had been wearing as she paced around
outside until Dean and Cas showed up. It was that fancy Italian place that Dean
had never in a million years thought about going to because he liked burgers
and Bobby's were better than most of the places around town. Plus they required
you to have reservations and made you wear dinner jackets and stuff so it was
more than a bit out of his price range.
Dean saw some other couples from school as they made their way through the
restaurant, following their friend towards the large table at the back that had
been reserved for their big party. Becky and Garth were already there, the girl
wearing a white dress that looked disconcertingly like a wedding dress and Ash
and Krissy were dressed in matching matte black from head to toe, looking
thoroughly bored with everything but each other. Adam waved at them and rolled
his eyes as he shrugged back on his jacket, Jo plopping down with an irritated
huff next to him.
"They almost didn't seat us," Jo griped to herself because everyone was either
too busy looking at the menu or had already heard it before Dean and his date
had shown up. "We could've lost the table because our whole party wasn't here,
guys. Try to be a little more fucking considerate next time."
"Jo, honey." Adam said softly, ignoring the way that the girl was agitatedly
fiddling with her knife in a way that had Dean's mouth going dry. Obviously the
younger boy had never seen the pictures of when Jo and her dad used to go
hunting back before he died; otherwise he would not be talking right now. "I
love you, but shut the fuck up. Everyone is here, we're all going to eat, and
then you're going to dance until those stupid shoes make your feet bleed."
"Shoes!" Castiel said loudly beside Dean, ducking his head inexplicably under
the table cloth and emerging a couple of moments later with a big smile on his
face. "You wore the shoes I got you. He's right though, they are fairly
impractical for dancing, Jo."
"How would you know?" Ash piped, tossing a rolled up piece of breadstick at
Garth who tried, unsuccessfully to catch it in his mouth. "I thought you didn't
dance, dude."
"Cas dances," Dean said confusedly, nudging the smaller boy in his side as he
leaned back to unbutton his suit jacket. "Right, babe? We're going to tear up
that dance floor."
"I don't dance, Dean." Castiel replied shortly, right before the waiter sidled
up to take their orders.
"What do you mean you don't dance? We're going to a dance, it's what you do,
dance."
"I know what the word means, darling." His boyfriend muttered sarcastically,
glancing apologetically at the waiter who was giving him a dirty look for
talking while he was trying to listen to Becky's order. "I'm just saying I
don't do it, that's why I didn't want to go."
"Well, you're going to dance with me right?" Dean asked, his voice sounding
needy and whiny in a way that he really didn't like. "I'm like the exception to
the rule or whatever."
"Probably not," Castiel replied, flashing a wide abashed smile at the young
waiter who had moved up silently behind them to take their order. "I'm so
sorry, I have no idea what I want. Can you come back to me?"
Dean watched as the attractive, blonde waiter started to frown, but Castiel
just looked up at him with that fucking adorable grin and his big, wide
innocent blue eyes and the other man smiled instead, glancing over at the
larger boy hesitantly before licking his lips and leaning down closer to talk
to Cas.
"Of course, handsome. Just call when you're ready, name's Alfie."
When he turned to Dean, the larger boy could only jab an angry finger at the
item on the menu that he wanted glaring until the young man walked away with an
infuriating little smirk on his face. Dean felt the familiar knot of jealously
twisting in his stomach, something that hadn't happened since he had still
thought that his boyfriend and Meg were dating.
"I'm sorry, darling." Castiel muttered, putting a hand on the nape of Dean's
neck and stroking at the short hair on the back of his head in a comforting
way. "I just don't dance."
"Fine," Dean snapped childishly. Part of him knew that he was acting like a big
stupid moron, Cas had not been flirting with that waiter, it wasn't his
boyfriend's fault that everything he did just oozed charm and sex, but that
didn't stop him from wanting to make the other boy jealous right back and now
he pretty much had no choice but to."I'll just find someone else to dance
with."
Chapter End Notes
     Okay guys, I've decided to cut back on the days I post. It was really
     hard for me to do, but I'm going to just start posting for Born to
     Run on Fridays so that I can watch the new season and work and write
     for other stories before they become sad and neglected. SO, FRIDAYS.
     Stick with me, I know this one is late already but I solemnly swear
     the chapters will be up on that day until this monster is over.
      
     You're all amazing, beautiful angels. The whole f'n lot of you!
***** Something *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Castiel was pretty sure that Dean was mad at him about something, because
otherwise why would he be punishing him like this?
He figured that it was about him refusing to dance, but how could Cas explain
that he was doing Dean a favor by staying as far away from the dance floor as
possible? That his spastic flailing could not be called graceful by any stretch
of the imagination and the stares and the whispers had already started as soon
as they had walked in the door so why should they make it any worse by having
people laughing at them too?
Castiel had asked Jo to explain all of this to Dean during a slow dance, when
their frightening friend would have his boyfriend trapped in the middle of the
couples spinning on the floor so that he had to listen to her. But so far, Dean
had avoided Jo like the plague, asking pretty much every single girl he could
reach to dance and causing Cas to feel ill from the jealously roiling in his
stomach.
The night had started out fine, even when Dean got all clingy in the
restaurant, sitting practically in his lap as they ate and wrapping an arm
around his shoulders any time their waiter came by to fill their drinks or see
if they needed anything. Maybe the larger boy was freaking out a little bit?
Thinking that just because Castiel didn't want to dance that they were going
through some sort of rough patch and would break up, that always seemed to be
the first place Dean's thoughts went. What if Dean broke up with him first, in
an effort to save face or avoid getting hurt? God, he just wished that the
other boy would do more than drop a tense kiss on his cheek or his forehead
every time he swooped back from the dance floor, smiling and red faced to take
a sip of Castiel's drink before disappearing again.
Not that he was left sitting alone, Gilda was there with him in her hunter
green dress chatting about school and PFLAG and inviting him to come to a
meeting again, saying it was a really good bonding experience for families. He
just nodded and bit the inside of his cheek as he watched Dean dip some busty
Asian girl in a very revealing dress as they danced, laughing with her as they
came back up to spin off somewhere he couldn't see them.
The ballroom in the hotel looked beautiful, probably would have looked even
more gorgeous without the badly draped streamers that wrapped around the fairy
lights that were part of the room's standard decoration and the sad half-filled
balloons that just kind of hung there with their stings limp like it was too
much of an effort to float like they were supposed to. It was situated on the
second floor of the hotel and had an attached balcony where decorative heaters
fought away the mid-December chill and melted the snow that was falling softly
into puddles before it even hit the ground.
"I'm just saying, Cas, if you're having a hard time coming out to everyone they
can really help you figure out what to say," Gilda went on, fiddling with the
straw in her drink and propping her head up in one hand as she watched Kevin
and Anna dancing and laughing to a fast song across the room from them.
"My dad knows I'm gay, Gilda. Give it a fucking rest already." He snapped
snatching up one of the white, sparkly paper napkins that had been set out on
the refreshment table when he went to get drinks for himself and the other
girl, ripping it to tiny little bits so that he would have something to do with
his hands.
"Jeez," the girl scoffed offended, straightening up like she was about to leave
him sitting there by himself like he probably should be so that he wouldn't
drown anyone else in the sea of self-pity that was dragging him under. "What is
your problem, Cas?"
"My problem," Castiel began, grinding his teeth a bit when he saw that Dean's
newest dance partner had a bad habit of letting her hands wander and that his
boyfriend wasn't doing anything to stop it. "Is that you don't know the first
thing about what it's like to be discriminated against or hated for being
homosexual. You walk around with your petitions and your sad little story about
not being able to go to a dance with your girlfriend like you are some kind of
martyr. But you aren't. You're just another silly high-schooler who is in love
with someone who doesn't want them, just like Dean doesn't want me. So I guess
we're just fucking perfect together, Gilly. Let's start a club about that."
"What are you talking about?" Gilda asked her expression warring between
confused anger and concern because Castiel didn't just talk to people like
that, especially not his friends. "I'm not in love with anyone and Dean do—"
"Aren't you?" Cas interrupted, turning away from watching his boyfriend let the
tarty girl he was dancing with rub her hands all over him. "You're in love with
my sister and you aren't fooling anyone about it. And she's here with your best
friend. It's got to hurt, Gilda, pretending to be happy when it's killing you
inside to watch them together. To know deep down that you aren't really what
they want."
The tears were stinging his eyes and his throat felt raw from trying to stop
the hatred that he was spewing at the girl sitting across the table from him,
but it felt like the perfect night that he had wanted to have with Dean had
been ruined all because he didn't know how to fucking dance. And wasn't that
the story of his life, trying to do something meaningful for someone only to
have it blow up in his face. Just like it had with Daniel.
"I'm not in love with her," Gilda hissed moving quickly to sit in the chair
next to him and picking up his hands that had balled into fists in his lap. "I
just like redheads, sue me. And Cas. Cas, look at me goddamnit!"
He looked up from where his gaze had dropped to her hands and where their knees
were touching, green against blue. Just like his and Dean's eyes when they were
reflected as they kissed or just laid in one of their beds talking and trying
to fall asleep but not wanting to stop looking at each other. And he was so
scared of driving Dean away by being jealous and stupid, but he would've have
just been happy sitting around all night, talking to their friends and making
fun of other people dancing and just being together.
"You know Dean loves you right?" Gilda asked softly, her voice carrying no hint
of resentment or anger for his having been so cruel to her. "He's told you he
loves you, hasn't he? Cas, sweetie, its so obvious that you two were made for
each other."
Castiel started crying then, just quiet tears that tracked down his face and
dropped off to land on the satin of his lapel, staining it an even darker blue
than it had been before. It wasn't happy crying or even relieved crying, he was
crying because it couldn't be true. If Dean loved him then he would stop
flirting with all of the girls at school who still wanted him and they had
talked about how much it bothered him after the whole Cassie incident and yet,
here he was doing it again. Was Castiel going to be forced to sit on the
sidelines and watch Dean do this for the rest of their lives, why couldn't he
just be enough?
"I can't be enough for him, Gilda." Castiel choked out, feeling foolish and
self conscious for being so emotional in front of most of the school. The
principal was standing near their table giving them a concerned look and she
had always scared the shit out of Cas, but now she was probably feeling sorry
for him just like everyone else. "I'll never be good enough for Dean. It's just
a matter of time before he sees that, sooner or later he'll realize that I'm
just a freak who doesn't know how to dance. And I love him, but that isn't
enough sometimes, people still hurt you even when you love them."
"You are so dumb, Cas." Gilda said in such a soft and soothing voice that at
first he didn't notice what she had actually said, but when he did all Castiel
could do was hang his head and nod because he agreed. "If you think for one
second that Dean would leave you or cheat on you with any of those girls then
you are the biggest moron I have ever met. He doesn't care if you can dance or
if you don't think that you're good enough, he fucking loves you. I don't know
why he hasn't said it yet, probably because he's as stupid as you are, but that
alone means that you're meant to be together if only to save the rest of the
world from dealing with your idiot offspring. I swear to god, Cas. You two make
me happy I'm a lesbian, if I ever care half as much about someone as you care
about Dean, I would tell them every damn day."
Castiel sniffled miserably, rolling his eyes when Gilda offered him what was
left of the mangled napkin that he had been ripping up to wipe away his tears.
She was right and he knew it, his whole plan for the night had been to tell
Dean that he loved him and letting petty jealously get in the way was not going
to accomplish anything. He should just drag the other boy out to the balcony or
up to the hotel room that Gabriel had rented for him and blurt it out so that
he would know, not that it was going to make him want Dean in his life any less
if his boyfriend didn't say it back, but knowing that it would eventually end
would just help him prepare for the inevitable.
"What's going on, guys?"
Dean walked up looking flushed and happy from the last dance that had just
ended, it had been something fast with thumping bass that Castiel wouldn't have
thought that the other boy would like because he hadn't and that's probably why
he had tuned it out, not noticing that it had ended while he and Gilda had been
talking. He hoped that his boyfriend wouldn't be able to tell that he had been
crying, but when Cas saw the smile slip off of Dean's face he knew that his
eyes were probably all red-rimmed and puffy, giving him away completely.
"Sweetheart?" Dean asked, dropping down in front of Castiel like he had in
Pam's classroom after their almost fight with Alistair and his friends. "Baby,
what's wrong?"
Castiel opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Gilda quickly pushing
herself up from her chair and grabbing Dean roughly by the arm.
"No," The angry sounding brunette barked, hauling Dean to his feet and pulling
him around to look at her. "You're coming with me and you."
She rounded on Castiel next, jabbing a hostile finger in the area of the room
where the DJ was set up, massive headphones in place on his bald head and a
bored expression on his face that was illuminated by the sticker-covered laptop
he had connected to the sound system.
"You go over there and you tell him to play something slow, something you think
you can follow to. Dean knows how to dance, just trust that he'll lead you."
Gilda said lowly, glancing over at Dean who had an annoyed look on his face as
he tried to hear what she was saying.
"Gilda, I—" Castiel started, intending to protest because even if he stepped on
Dean's feet while they were dancing it would still probably not be the worst
thing that could happen if he were set loose on the shiny parquet flooring.
"Cas, I'm not tossing with my eyes closed. Just do what I'm saying."
It was the ROTC phrase that made him believe that whatever she was about to say
to Dean was for the best. Tossing with your eyes closed was pretty much the
worst thing you could do with the heavy mock rifles that the drill team used.
Someone could get seriously hurt and Virgil used the saying to describe the
kind of trust and camaraderie that you had to have in your fellow cadets in
order to stay safe. He trusted Gilda and Kevin and Adam, maybe he should trust
that Dean wasn't dancing with his eyes closed either.
He nodded at the girl before heading off in the opposite direction that she was
pulling Dean, away from the balcony and deeper into the building. Castiel
skirted around the dance floor, eyeing it nervously like it might be quicksand
that would suck him in the minute he stepped foot onto it. The thought of being
on it with Dean scared him almost more than anything else in his entire life.
But then again, telling the other boy he loved him seemed scary at first too,
but it was something he just had to do and maybe this was too.
The DJ looked up at his approach, slipping one of the headphones that he was
wearing to the side and cocking his exposed ear at Castiel.
"Got a request, bro? I told those chicks that I am not playing anything by
Bruno Mars, so if you're looking for me to hate myself it's not going to
happen. I have a little bit of self-respect."
"Uh…Can you play something slow?" Castiel yelled over the music pumping out of
the speakers next to him. "Something easy to dance to?"
"Romantic or sad?" The man hollered back, nodding his head slightly as his
fingers flew over the keys of his laptop.
"Romantic."
"What's your girl's favorite band?"
"The Beatles," Castiel replied smiling to himself a bit, he didn't know a lot
by the band which got him a lot of strange looks, but he knew Dean loved the
Fab Four with the same ferocity that he loved the King, only probably not in
exactly the same way.
"I guess I would be too lucky if her name was Michelle, huh?" The man asked
quirking an eyebrow at him and smirking at some joke that Cas didn't
understand.
"It's Dean. Listen, just play something by The Beatles."
"Alright, man. Give it about ten minutes and you'll be golden. Hope your date
appreciates it."
===============================================================================
"What do you think you're doing, Dean?" Gilda spat once she had dragged Dean
outside onto the cold balcony, not appearing to feel the cold air or the snow
that was falling even though she was in a silky dark green ball gown.
Her legs were probably pretty warm under all of those layers of ruffles and
sequins that Dean didn't understand how she could possibly walk around in, but
her shoulders were just covered in the green lace that held up the dress, a
thin layer that was a darker shade of green than the rest, almost black in the
sparse light that filtered through the glass doorways that separated them from
the dance.
"I was trying to find out why my boyfriend was so upset, why Gilda? What should
I be doing? I know I shouldn't be out here with you while he's in there
crying." Dean said gesturing towards the doors.
"No you should probably be falling down on your fucking knees every day and
thanking god that that boy is too crazy about you to realize how much of a
self-destructive asshole you can be sometimes. Do you want to know why he's
upset, Dean? It's because of you."
"Because of me?" Dean asked feeling horrible all of a sudden for practically
ignoring Castiel since they had arrived at the hotel.
"Yes, because you just go and swan off with every bimbo in the room, letting
them molest you even though they know you're with Cas now. The whole school
knows, Dean, and most of them don't fucking care. You don't have to prove
anything to anyone by keeping up with all of that macho bullshit you used to
do."
"Castiel didn't want to dance with me," Dean replied angrily. "I'm not trying
to prove anything to anyone. I just wanted to fucking dance with him, it's a
fucking dance! It's what you do! I don't think that's asking too much of him."
"He doesn't know how, Dean!"
"Everyone knows how to dance, Gilda!"
"How many dances do you think he's gone to Dean? You do realize that Castiel
hasn't been able to take who he wants to a dance pretty much ever," the girl
groused, pinching at the bridge of her nose like she had a headache. "God, no
wonder Anna and Sam are always talking about how thick you two are. I thought
they were kidding, surely two people who are as madly in love with each other
as Dean and Cas have no problems communicating. Fucking perfect relationship
you two have! Remind me to never ask you for dating advice."
Dean's mouth was dry and his head was spinning, from more than just having been
dancing to pretty much every song since they had arrived in an effort to shake
off the cloud that had been hanging over him since the restaurant. After seeing
that waiter flirting with Cas who was just so amazing oblivious to it all, the
familiar fear of the other boy leaving him had started cycling through his
head, coming up with all kinds of fantastical and horrible scenarios wherein
Castiel realized that Dean had too much to learn about relationships and was
too far gone to be rescued by the genuine affection that the other boy showered
on him all the time.
But Cas must have said something to Gilda, admitted something to her that he
hadn't said to Dean yet because he knew that his boyfriend didn't just go
dropping around words like love every day. He wasn't one of those people who
used it flippantly to describe potato chips, like Garth or Ash not that Dean
doubted for a second his friends' ability to care deeply for a snack food, but
it was his mom leaving that made Dean so hesitant himself to throw the word
around at every semi-relationship he had had up until that point. He couldn't
even say it to his dad, he couldn't even say it to Sam.
"Did Cas say that?" Dean managed to gasp out, shivering from something besides
the cold air blowing over the balcony. "Did he say he, y'know…."
"Did he say he loved you?" Gilda asked like the answer should be obvious, so
why was he having such a hard time believing that his perfect, amazing
boyfriend finally had been the one to say it first. "Dean, are you serious? Of
course he loves you, why don't either of you believe me?"
"Did you tell him that I…?"
"Can you just not say it?" the girl asked, tilting her head and furrowing her
brow like she was studying a particularly hard math problem. "Like are you
physically unable to say it?"
Dean bit his lip and looked off over the Lawrence city skyline, twinkling and
illuminated like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, everything
covered in a soft blanket of snow with chimneys cheerfully belching smoke into
the night air. It was the perfect night, it was beautiful and he had almost
ruined it by making Cas think that he didn't want him, wouldn't always want
him. No matter what, even if the other boy did eventually come to his senses
and leave him, Dean knew that Cas would be it for him. There would never be
anyone else he could love, he would die for Castiel.
"I think I'm going to throw up," Dean said, rushing over to the edge of the
balcony and hanging his head over the side.
"You two are real pieces of work," Gilda muttered, moving over to rub soothing
circles on his back. "No wonder Jo is always so stressed out all the time. I
don't know what made you this way Dean, but he deserves to know. You need to
figure out a way to tell him that you love him."
"I've tried, Gilda." Dean admitted, his fingers going numb from gripping the
fridge stone barrier around the patio. "Every time I try to say it, it feels
like my throat is closing up and I can't breathe. It's killing me. I know he
deserves so much better, Cas is just so amazing and strong and beautiful and
I'm nothing. Gilda, I'm a fucking asshole. Most days I don't even know what he
sees in me."
"I'm sure it's the same thing the rest of us see," Gilda said shrugging and
tugging him gently back towards the door. "You're not a bad person, Dean. You
take care of Sam and you stick up for your friends and the things you believe
in. You're so self-sacrificing that it's painful to watch sometimes and you do
whatever you can to help people. No one is perfect and Cas knows that, in fact,
I think that's a bit of what he loves about you. That you're real. You just
need to get over this whole knight in jaded armor thing, you and Cas were made
for each other. Trust me."
They meandered back over to the large round table that the gang had claimed as
their own for the night, the girls abandoning their purses there since Cas had
been watching over them all evening and the boys steadily losing their suit
jackets as the room had warmed up from the body heat of the assembled students.
Jo and Adam were sitting there with Cas who was wringing his hands and watching
the dancing couples nervously.
"C'mon, Adam." Jo whined propping her foot in its precariously high stiletto up
on her boyfriend's lap. "My feet are killing me, help me get them off."
"I told you," Adam muttered, struggling with the thin straps and nudging Dean's
boyfriend in the arm as Gilda walked up with him in tow. "Maybe I should just
find a boyfriend too, and then I wouldn't have to deal with all of this girly
shit.
Dean watched as Castiel jumped a bit at the contact, forcing a smile on his
face as Jo sighed appreciatively once the first shoe clattered to the floor.
His boyfriend looked up at him then and those blue eyes; they just did Dean in
every time, made him feel like they were the only two people in the room and
like he could drown in them and be completely fine with it.
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," Dean began as the other boy stood up, he caught
Castiel's hand in one of his own and turned it palm up, running his fingers
over the smooth skin reverently. "I didn't know—"
"Will you dance with me, Dean?" Castiel asked softly, stopping the larger boy
by placing his other hand on Dean's waist.
"You don't have to, babe." Dean replied, shaking his head a bit and feeling
like even more of a jerk for making Cas think that he had to do something that
he wasn't comfortable doing, he was always pushing too hard and he knew that
eventually it would be what drove the other boy away.
"I want to," Cas said, stepping close and kissing Dean's cheek causing the
larger boy to shiver from the barely there touch of the other boy's lips.
"You'll have to lead though and I may step on your feet so I'm going to
apologize in advance for that."
"Are you sure?" Dean asked glancing over at the crush of people who were
bouncing and swaying to some fast song off the radio that he only vaguely knew.
"Yea," Castiel said holding on to Dean as he approached the dance floor like it
was lava, toeing it carefully before fully stepping on to it and letting out a
heavy breath. "The DJ should be playing our song in just a minute; you might as
well go ahead show me what I need to do."
Dean had started thinking of a couple of songs as 'their song' which he knew
was really cheesy and girly, but it also made him smile anytime he heard any
version of 'Call Me Maybe' or when he would fast forward on the tape that Cas
had made for him in Bobby's shop so that that last song played, the one that
Dean had used to tell Castiel how much he liked him that night they had first
kissed. He hoped that was the one that Cas had asked the DJ to play because it
was slow and it was really long and it would give him an excuse to hold the
other boy close like Dean knew he wanted to forever.
===============================================================================
When Naomi saw Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak step out on to the dance
floor, she was more than a little surprised. All night she had been watching
the two boys, keeping an eye on them and Gilda while Pam and Virgil supervised
Alistair and all of his rowdy football friends who had set up at a couple of
tables across the room from the boys they had been threatening all week.
Castiel didn't seem all that interested in dancing and she just thought that
maybe he was nervous about being the center of attention; given his past
history with bullying at his old school she didn't exactly blame him.
She had watched the little drama unfold between Gilda DuPont and the older boy,
keeping her distance as they talked so that she couldn't hear what they were
saying, but staying close in case she needed to intervene when he started
getting upset. Naomi didn't feel sorry for him, in fact she was extremely proud
that one of her students could come back from everything that Castiel had been
through, the bullying and the suicide attempt and all of the custody problems
going on between his brother and their father, and still manage to stand up
against intolerance at his new school when he had every reason to be a neurotic
mess about confrontation.
So when she saw the boys start to nervously situate themselves for a dance
together, laughing when they couldn't figure out where to put their hands and
Dean talking to Castiel softly as the other boy stared down at their feet,
biting his lip with a look of concentration on his face, Naomi decided to hunt
down Chuck and cash in on that dance that he owed her. She made a slow circuit
of the ball room, stopping to ask Pam and Virgil if they had seen him and
feeling fifty different kinds of disappointed when Uriel was eventually the one
who pointed her in the direction of the hotel bar with a disgusted look on his
face.
Chuck was hunched over at the bar, scribbling furiously on a napkin and
muttering to himself between little sips of the whiskey that he was drinking.
Naomi saw that his flask was sitting next to him and all she wanted to do when
she saw it was throw it through the floor to ceiling windows that lined one
wall of the bar and faced the snowy skyline. Chuck straightened up when he
noticed her approach, running a hand over his face and blinking at her with
wide, glazed over blue eyes and a goofy smile on his face as he swayed slightly
on the bar stool he was sitting on.
"I was going to ask you to dance, but I doubt you can even stand." Naomi said
drily in an effort to disguise her disappointment. She tried to glance over at
what he had been writing, but the man quickly covered it up with his hand. "Do
I need to call you a cab, Chuck?"
Chuck shook his head vigorously, shoving the napkin in his pocket as he stood
up stumbling a bit so that Naomi had to catch him lest he fall over. He frowned
to himself and looked up the couple of inches separating them due to her heels
and let a sheepish smile settle onto his face.
"I'm shorry, Naomi." Chuck slurred, leaning into her with his arm around her
waist as she led him towards the elevator, intending to take him home because
it's not like she hadn't done it a million times before.
"What are you sorry for?"
"I was nervush," Chuck mumbled into her hair. "About dancing with you. I was
trying to find shum courage."
"The bottom of a bottle is a shit place to look for it, honey." Naomi replied
trying to keep the hurt and anger out of her voice.
"I know," the man agreed tightening his hold on her waist when they started
walking out to her car which was next to Chuck's own gas-guzzling Toyota. "I
just don't know how else to do it. Writing and alcohol, it's all I've got."
"You've got more than that, you big fucking moron." Naomi muttered, dropping
him heavily into her passenger set and leaning over him to buckle his seat
belt, his face close enough that if he wasn't drunk she probably would have
just broken down and kissed him. But if he wasn't drunk they wouldn't be this
close to begin with.
The only times Chuck ever touched her was when he had been drinking and she was
supporting him as she carried him out of another bar or into his apartment that
was stacked full of piles of books that she had to maneuver him around in order
to get him to his bedroom. And she shouldn't find his obsessive, messy personal
library adorable, Naomi knew that she was just replacing her need to take care
of Scott with her need to take care of Chuck, but she did, she wanted to be so
familiar with her coworker's apartment that she could traverse the stacked
hardbacks in the dark or blindfolded. She wanted to integrate herself so far
into the other man's life that people wouldn't know where she stopped and Chuck
began.
But it wasn't going to happen tonight, so she bit her tongue when her friend
took her hand on the drive over to his apartment because she knew that to him
it was just a way of connecting with someone, looking for the contact that he
hadn't had since Rebecca had left and it could be anyone because she had seen
him buddying up to random strangers in bars when she picked him up, quoting
Hemingway and Bukowski like they were his comrades in drinking away the pain.
She thought back to the dance and Dean and Castiel and wished for probably the
millionth time that Chuck had even half as much courage as a highschooler.
===============================================================================
When the fast song ended, most of the couples left the dance floor and Castiel
cursed the rest of his classmates for being cowards just like him when it came
to slow dancing. Most of the evening the floor had only been half full of
swaying, spinning couples when a slow song played and even though Dean had
danced every single one of them with some girl or another, his boyfriend seemed
more enthusiastic about getting his feet trampled dancing with Cas than he had
all night. He let the other boy pull him towards the center of the dance floor
in between songs, marveling at how the fairy lights still managed to pick up
the freckles and the vibrant green of Dean's eyes.
The larger boy's arms settled around his waist and pulled him close so that
Castiel could drape his arms around Dean's neck. They had figured out that this
would probably be the best way to dance together, that way Dean could still
lead and Cas wouldn't be tempted to look down at his feet every five seconds if
there was no room between them. It didn't hurt that having Dean pressed up
against him helped calm the nervous muttering inside his skull that was telling
him this was a bad idea, he was going to embarrass the both of them somehow he
was sure of it.
Castiel looked over at the DJ and the man gave him a thumbs up just as the
opening riffs of the song started, a bluesy sounding trill that made Dean
chuckle softly when the other boy heard it.
"You asked for this song?" Dean asked, moving so that their foreheads were
pressed together as the larger boy started to sway them softly in time with the
music using a gentle guiding pressure on his waist.
"I asked him to play something by The Beatles, I know you like them." Castiel
murmured, focusing on the way Dean's eyes flittered over his face and letting
himself get lost in how the other boy 's hands felt on him and made dancing
together so much more wonderful than he had thought it could be.
Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover…
Dean smiled and moved so that Castiel's head was on his chest and he rested his
cheek in the other boy's hair, noticing for the first time how many people were
staring at them. Some had expressions of open hostility on their faces, but
most just looked curious and a lot of the girls that he had been dancing with
all night were watching them with dreamy eyes.
Something in the way she woos me, I don't want to leave her now…
"Dean?" Castiel asked causing the other boy to hum above him. "This song is
called 'Something' isn't it?"
The larger boy just laughed softly above him and pressed a kiss into his hair
with a sigh. "Only you could know so much about music, but be clueless about
The Beatles, sweetheart."
"Well, I guess you'll just have to explain their allure to me because I just
don't get it." Castiel replied.
Dean shushed the other boy as the realization hit him, this was it. This was
how he could tell Castiel that he loved him, by using someone else's words just
like he had the night of Meg's Halloween party. So much of their relationship
already revolved around music and using it to tell each other how they were
feeling since they were both so hopeless with communicating emotions.
So Dean started singing, he knew all of the words to every Beatles song, had
loved them ever since his mom had sung him to sleep with 'Hey Jude' when he was
a kid and his boyfriend had unknowingly asked for the one song that addressed
his hopes and fears for their relationship and it would explain his feelings so
much better than anything he could come up with.
"Somewhere in her smile she knows that I don't need no other lover," he sang
softly, trying to pour significance into the words that had been written before
he was even born. "Something in her style that shows me I don't want to leave
her now. You know I believe and how."
He saw a few other couples join them on the dance floor as he sang, smiling
when he realized that Adam and Garth were dancing together looking stiff and
awkward right in front of the table where Alistair and Azazel were sitting with
the Sheriff standing sternly next to them. Gilda and Anna were dancing together
with Ash and Kevin doing exaggerated dips and spins close by. Jo and Becky were
watching him and Cas with matching teary eyed expressions on their faces,
barely even pretending to dance just kind of shuffling from side to side
because they were so busy starring.
The next part was the important bit and Dean knew that so he brought one of his
hands up from Cas's waist so that he could cup the other boy's jaw and look him
in the eyes as he sang it.
"You're asking me, will my love grow? I don't know, I don't know." He didn't
know, honestly. Dean didn't know if he could ever love Cas anymore than he
already did and he just hoped that his boyfriend understood that that's what he
was trying to say.
Dean wasn't a bad singer, at all and by comparison Castiel felt pretty much
tone deaf. The other boy's voice as he sang was soothing and it made him forget
that there was a fairly large group of footballers nearby who wanted nothing
more than to kick his and Dean's ass. When his boyfriend brought his face up to
sing to him about love, the fierce look of sincerity on the other boy's face
made his knees shaky and his breath catch in his chest.
Castiel felt like everything around him had gotten all white and fuzzy and
distant, the only things that mattered being him and Dean and the music and how
they felt as they moved around the dance floor together. It was his movie
moment, the one he had been wanting with Dean during football season only now
it was so much better because Dean loved him.
Dean Winchester loved him.
He swallowed hard and moved his own hand up from Dean's back to pull his
boyfriend's face closer to his own; stroking his thumb over his boyfriend's
racing pulse point at the base of his throat as his fingers worked their way
into the larger boy's short hair.
"I love you too, Dean." Castiel breathed.
Dean's smile was like a supernova, like a bomb going off, like puppies and warm
brownies and everything that was right with the world all rolled up into one,
shimmering ecstatic package that made Castiel thankful for every horrible,
terrible thing that had ever happened to him because it had all brought him to
this moment, to this person who loved him.
Dean didn't know if he would ever just be able to say it, but he hoped that one
day he could. That one day he could just walk up to Cas, take him by surprise
as he wrapped his arms around and tell him in his own words how much he adored
him, how thankful he was that the other boy wanted to be with him. How he would
do anything for him, protect him forever from everything that had ever or could
ever hurt him again. He would get there, it wasn't going to happen overnight,
but Dean knew that eventually he would get there.
===============================================================================
Ash knew that Cas probably hadn't meant to let it slip that his older brother
had shelled out for a hotel room for the night. But it was too good of an
opportunity to pass up, so as soon as the dance started getting boring he made
the suggestion to Dean and Garth that they should make an alcohol run and take
the party upstairs.
Garth declined going, saying that his fake ID never worked for him anyway and
he would just blow their cover when they tried to buy alcohol from that liquor
store that always employed apathetic, stoners from the college. So Ash pried
his friend away from where he had gotten surgically attached to Castiel at some
point over the evening and made Dean drive them across town to get beer.
He took the opportunity to study his friend while they were alone, giving him a
once over from head to toe to try to figure out how serious Dean was about
everything he was doing with Cas. How far exactly was Dean willing to go before
the other boy decided it was too hard to fight for this relationship, that it
was going to cost him too much to try to hold on to his family and Cas too?
Ash was smart, he could see the paths that each of the people in their group
were laid out on and examine the different variables that may change who they
would eventually become. For example, if Jo was stupid and got herself knocked
up by Adam then she would end up stuck in Lawrence for the rest of her life,
settling when she could eventually end up the CEO of some big corporation
somewhere. And if Adam fucked off and went to play soldier somewhere then it
would give their friend the opportunity to do something with her life besides
wait around for the younger boy to grow up.
But Ash kept those opinions to himself, he was a scientist at heart; curious to
see how everything would pan out so he couldn't interfere or it would ruin the
whole experiment.
With Dean and Cas, it all became blurry though. Their paths kinda faded out for
him when Ash started thinking in the long term and he didn't know what that
meant, it scared him just a little bit. Tonight felt like one of those turning
points though, one of the little decisions that his friends made that caused
the thick black lines in this head that illustrated their lives as they
converged and intersected and parted again to stretch a little farther and show
him a little bit more about where their futures could be going.
When they trundled back into the Impala after hitting up the liquor store, Dean
carting two large cases of beer and Ash lugging a couple of brown paper
shopping bags that had chips and licorice and other assorted party foods, Ash
decided that he could interfere about this one little thing. He figured if he
did it in a mostly impassive way then it wouldn't throw his two friends too
terribly far off of where they were going to end up.
"Dude," Ash said tilting the bag in his lap towards Dean as the larger boy got
back behind the steering wheel of the large black car and checked his phone
which had just chimed out that he had a text message. "I got you something."
"Oh," Dean glanced up, smirking at the message that was probably from Castiel
if the goofy expression on the larger boy's face was anything to go by. He
shoved a hand into one of the bags and rummaged around blindly for a minute,
coming up with a plastic wrapped issue of Busty Asian Babes that Dean just
cocked an eyebrow at. "Well…uh…thanks Ash, but y'know…um…not that I don't
appreciate a rack anymore, but um…right now…that's not really…what I'm in to?"
"Yea, dude I know." Ash said snatching the magazine out of Dean's hand and
shoving it back in the bag, digging his own arm deep into the bottom to pull
out the things that he had gotten for his friend. Stuff that he knew Dean
probably hadn't thought about needing even though the guy had had more sex than
anyone else he knew. "Here man."
Dean stared dumbly at the package of condoms and bottle of lube that his friend
had thrown into his lap.
"Ash, what the hell? Is this like you giving me your blessing to get laid or
something?" Dean asked trying to not sound panicked even though Ash could hear
it in the other boy's voice.
"Just don't make a big deal out of it man," Ash drawled pulling out his own
phone and gesturing with his chin towards the road. "I figured you wouldn't be
completely over the whole gay for Cas thing until you knew the guy loved you.
And he said it, you said it. Congrats you love each other, now just go bang it
out somewhere already. Jesus."
The other boy just cleared his throat and smiled to himself a bit before
heading back towards the hotel, but Ash could sense it. He had always been able
to tell when Dean was getting trapped in his own head because the other boy got
all huffy and the gloom just rolled off of him in waves that were suffocating.
It wasn't until they were back at the hotel that Dean finally spoke again and
all Ash could do was roll his eyes at how easy to read his friend was
sometimes.
"Do you think Cas wants to…y'know?" Dean asked awkwardly, shifting in his seat
and loosening his tie like it was choking him.
"Dude, if you want to then I'm pretty sure he wants to." Ash replied, climbing
out of the car and adjusting his jacket around himself against the cold. "And
the guy got a hotel room; if that's not enough of a hint I don't know what is."
Chapter End Notes
     Hey guys, so yes. There will in all likelihood be sexy times in the
     next chapter, so just if you don't want to read it I'm giving you a
     week's notice that it's going to be happening. Also many thanks to
     all of the people commenting, seriously you make my heart beat all
     wonky and wonderfully anytime I get amazing feedback. Keep it coming
     as I struggle to write the first major slash scene of my life over
     the next week.
***** Tear You Apart *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
As a rule, Dean didn't talk to Becky about the stories she wrote. He avoided
any references to Buffy or vampires or watches because even that eventually got
back around to Watchers and Spike giving Giles blowjobs in a mausoleum while
the rest of the Buffy crew was running around staking baddies. The whole gay
aspect had never bothered him and now that it actually had some relevance to
his life he kind of regretted marking all of her emails as spam for the last
six years.
So it was after he and Ash made it back to the hotel room with all of the
alcohol and snacks, skirting the lobby and the eagle-eyed desk clerk who lived
there and taking the elevator up to the room that Castiel had on the seventh
floor, that Dean took a deep breath and steeled himself for what was bound to
be the most awkward conversation of his life. Becky and Garth were standing off
in a corner, laughing at Adam who Jo had wrangled into rubbing her feet on the
green couch that the hotel had placed in front of the king sized bed.
"Hey...uh, Becks?" Dean said sidling up to the pair with his hands shoved deep
into the pockets of his dress pants after he set Castiel up with a drink before
leaving him on the balcony talking to Gilda and Kevin. "Garth, man can I borrow
her for a little bit?"
Garth was clutching on to his side and wheezing from trying to hold back his
giggles caused by the unhappy look on Adam's face. "Take her, Dean. Just make
sure I get her back because I am so happy I got the sane one out of all of
these chicks."
That was the first time that Dean thought he had heard Becky be called anything
but nuts so he figured his friend was probably finally past his unrequited
crush on Jo if he was actually happy with the mousy senior who used to trail
after them in the hallways with a star-struck look on their face. He pulled the
girl over to one of the chairs that was situated near the bed and perched
himself on the mattress across from her, striping off his jacket and tossing it
behind him as he tried to think of how to ask the other girl the questions he
had.
"Becks," Dean began wringing his hands and biting his lip because he could
already feel the blush starting and the room seemed a million degrees hotter
than it had when he first walked in. "This is so fucking weird, but...um...I
need you to tell me about your fan fiction."
"Are you making fun of me, Dean?" Becky asked, the happy smile she had been
wearing disappearing off of her face like it had never been there. She crossed
her arms over her chest and he could physically see her clamming up in the same
way that Castiel used to do when he tried to talk to his boyfriend about his
family.
"No!" He blurted putting his hands on her shoulders and trying to fight back
the embarrassment he was feeling. "I just...I've never read it and I'm curious
about the stuff you've written, that's all. I want you to tell me about it,
about um the...slash part of it..."
The other girl narrowed her eyes at him shrewdly and pursued her lips as she
studied his face. Dean felt cold air hit the back of his neck and turned around
to see Anna stepping outside on to the patio, bundled up in a tuxedo jacket
that she had borrowed from someone and moving to put and arm around Kevin's
waist as the younger boy told a story that had Castiel throwing his head back
with a wide smile on his face as his familiar laughter filtered through the
glass to reach the spot where Dean was sitting with Becky. He sighed a bit as
he watched his boyfriend being happy and carefree with their friends and Dean
didn't want to ruin the evening that he had only just managed to salvage by
being completely clueless about whatever it was Cas wanted to do in bed.
Castiel loved him and Dean was supposed to be the one who knew what he was
doing.
"Oh," Becky said softly behind him, causing Dean to turn around quickly as his
heart shot up to his throat. "So you and Cas...you haven't...oh, shit Dean. I
don't know how much help anything I've written will be."
"It's gotta be better than nothing, Becks." Dean said softly hoping he didn't
sound too desperate, had he stopped to think about it beforehand he would've
looked something up online or even swallowed his pride and asked Sam what he
should be doing as mortifying as it would be to ask his younger brother for
advice about sex. "I literally have no experience with that kind of thing. Cas
and I...we've just sort of been making it up as we go."
"That's like 90% of having sex, Dean." Becky replied seriously, pulling her
phone out from a pocket that was somehow hidden in the folds of her sliky,
white halter dress. "Okay, where do we need to start? What have you done?"
"That's like really personal, Becky." Dean murmured tugging at his tie until it
was mostly undone around his neck.
"Oh-kay, so should I just assume that you're looking for advice on how to do
the big IT? The rest is probably nothing you haven't done before, right?"
"Yea, big IT." Dean replied, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
"Well the first thing you need to know is..."
===============================================================================
Castiel was willing to humor his friends for a while, it had been his own fault
for telling Ash that he had a room when the other boy had been musing to him
about using the credit card he had stolen from his dad to get a hotel room
where they all could go party together as the dance started to wind down. The
night had gotten so much better after that first dance and Dean telling him he
loved him and Castiel felt like he was floating on a cloud, he probably
would've agreed to just about anything.
He had come in from the cold balcony to find Dean and Becky having what looked
to be an intense conversation over near the bed so he had taken up a spot on
the couch next to Jo and Adam who were cuddled up together looking tired and
idly flipping through the millions of channels on the hotel television. Castiel
hadn't seen Ash or Krissy in a while and just assumed that they were off
somewhere making out because it wouldn't be the first time the couple had
disappeared without telling anyone where they went.
Castiel decided to turn a blind eye to the fact that his younger sister was
cuddling up close to Kevin Tran ignoring all of his brotherly instincts which
were irrationally telling him to punch the younger boy in the face. Anna was
also allowed to have one beer without him telling Gabriel. The girl had already
tried it and declared that it was disgusting before dragging Kevin off to find
a vending machine somewhere so she could get a soda.
Gilda had come in and started playing a drinking game with Garth that she was
sure to win because the other boy was a complete lightweight when it came to
alcohol and Cas was nursing one beer all to himself because he didn't really
like the taste either and all he truly wanted was for Dean to come sit with him
so that he could just get wrapped up in the other boy and continue to bask in
the glow of this amazing person who loved him.
Dean loved him.
It was still wholly unbelievable and surreal and none of it felt real, but when
Cas took the time to think about it he decided he deserved this. After
everything that he had been through with his father and Daniel why should it be
so hard to believe that someone could find something in him to love? He just
needed to keep hearing it and saying it to Dean so that the other boy didn't
get freaked out when all their friends left and the two of them were alone with
nothing but their feelings for each other.
He glanced up from where Jo and Adam were currently alternating back and forth
between some show about a huge, dysfunctional family from England and a
documentary about the Civil War to see Dean hovering near him, still in his
vest with the top couple of buttons on his dress shirt undone and a shell-
shocked look on his face. Castiel smiled at the other boy and patted the narrow
space left beside him on the couch that wasn't taken up by the other couple.
"I think I broke him," Becky said sliding up behind Garth and wrapping an arm
around the teetering boy's shoulders.
Castiel just shot his friend a confused look and the girl shrugged before
hoisting Garth to his feet and placing a loud smacking kiss on his cheek. Dean
dropped heavily into his lap and nudged at Jo's thigh with his foot until the
girl scooted over with a grumpy little noise of protest. The larger boy wrapped
his arms around Cas's neck and this was nice, but Castiel knew that if they
were alone that amazing looking vest would already have been stripped off the
other boy and cast off somewhere in the room never to be seen again.
"I want brain bleach," Dean murmured settling his face into the crook of Cas's
neck with a resigned sounding sigh. "But I can't have it, Cas. Baby, you
wouldn't believe the sacrifices I make for you."
"Why don't you tell me about it, darling?" Castiel said putting his arms around
Dean's waist and pulling the larger boy close.
"Mm-mmh," Dean mumbled against his skin, placing a soft kiss on his jaw causing
goosebumps to break out over the smaller boy's skin even though he had already
warmed up from his time outside on the balcony with their friends. "I could
show you...later."
Castiel swallowed hard and thought back to the condom from Gabriel that he had
put into his wallet, almost as an afterthought before he had gone down the
stairs in his house to find Dean looking timeless and amazing in his rented
suit. He hadn't really thought about it while he was sitting there watching
Dean dance with other girls, mostly because he had been too upset, but after
their dance when his boyfriend had started kissing him and touching him and
generally showering him with affection the image of the small foil wrapped
package had kept flittering to the forefront of his mind.
"Hmmm," Castiel hummed mostly because it was the only noise he thought that he
could make that wouldn't come out all cracked and prepubescent sounding. He
tried clearing his throat, but nope, that wasn't going to help anything either
so instead of speaking he just nodded slightly and tired to think of anything
else but Dean naked because getting an erection in front of all of his friends
was not on his list of things to do tonight.
Dean just kept kissing his jaw though and it was distracting and wonderful.
Castiel was tempted to tell all of their friends to just fuck off already
because his fingers were twitching with the urge to take Dean's clothes off and
he had to reach up and undo his bowtie so that he could breathe because hot
under the collar may be just a phrase to some people, but Dean had put a hand
on his chest and was rubbing across his collarbones through his shirt and he
really needed to take his jacket off now.
He pushed gently at Dean's hips until the other boy got off of him and Castiel
moved over to the bed where he took off his jacket, laying it on top of his
boyfriend's that was already there and stuffing his bowtie into the pocket so
that he wouldn't lose it. Cas kept his back to the room for a moment and tried
to take back control of his body by breathing deeply and mentally taking apart
and cleaning a rifle in his head so that he didn't do something embarrassing.
"I think we're gonna head out," Jo said with a yawn, shaking Adam gently where
he had drifted off to sleep on the couch.
"Yea," Gilda agreed getting up and adjusting her dress with a sight grimace. "I
am so ready to get this thing off and then I have to find Anna, she's supposed
to be staying the night at my place tonight."
"We'll help you look for her," Garth piped imperiously, raising his fist in the
air like he was about to go fight crime or something. "Damsels in distress,
that's kinda my schtick."
"Moron," Becky muttered smiling up at him and shaking her head in an endeared
way.
"Okay, just let me go to the bathroom first." Gilda said striding across the
room and starting to open the door to the ensuite as she spoke. However as soon
as she started to enter the junior was stumbling back, falling in an
undignified heap on the floor with her dress puddled around her on the floor
and covering her eyes dramatically. "Oh, god! Sex! There is sex in the there,
right now! Hetero-sex! Ugh, more penis than I ever wanted to see ever!"
"Dude, some warning!" Ash's voice drawled out of the small room as he stumbled
out, quickly pulling his clothes back on and wiping at the red smears of
Krissy's lipstick that were on his cheeks and around his mouth. "Knock, Gilda.
It's called knocking."
"It's called get your own hotel room." Gilda complained from the floor as Adam
and Garth helped her climb back to her feet. "Or didn't you hear Pam's sex
lecture this week like the rest of us?"
"Ash, really?" Castiel said irritated as Krissy emerged behind her boyfriend
looking ruffled and embarrassed. "Didn't you think if anyone were going to have
sex in this room it should be me!?"
"Dude," Ash replied putting his hands up apologetically. "I thought Dean was
going to chicken out, but congrats. Sorry I knocked boots in your bathroom."
"Krissy isn't even wearing boots!" He said gesturing towards the girl who was
slinking past the other boy towards her handbag that was near the door to the
hotel room.
"Not the point, babe." Dean muttered behind him, giving Ash a smoldering look
as the other boy just shrugged and looked around at everyone moving towards the
door with a confused expression on his face.
"Did I ruin the party?"
"Ash, let's just go," Krissy hissed, catching his arm and mouthing 'sorry' at
Dean and Castiel as she hauled her boyfriend towards the door.
"Dude, it's like biology or whatever." Ash said still speaking and walking
backwards as he followed the rest of their friends out the door of the hotel
room. "Plus, look at her. Can you blame me?"
"Shut up!" his girlfriend said covering her face with her hands and stalking
out behind Gilda who was muttering about wanting to rip her eyes out.
"Okay guys, just uh...be safe and have fun and Dean, bro remember no glove, no
love." Ash said clapping his hands together briskly and shutting the door with
a soft click.
The silence was thick around them and Castiel took a moment to go over
everything that had just happened, puzzling over the things that Ash had said
about Dean and sex. Is that what Dean wanted to happen tonight? Because if the
way his heart was beating crazy hard in his chest he didn't know if he would be
entirely ready for something like that, but then again he trusted Dean. He
loved Dean and if his fantasies lately were anything to go by then he
definitely wasn't completely opposed to the idea of having sex with the other
boy either.
"Cas?" Dean said softly behind him causing him to turn so he could face the
larger boy. "Um...did you get a hotel room so that we...could..."
"Have sex." Castiel finished and it came out just as high pitched and awkward
as he had been worried that it would so he cleared his throat and tried again.
"Gabriel got the room for me so he and your brother could be alone, but um...I
can't say that the thought hasn't crossed my mind."
"Well," Dean said lowly as he moved to wrap his arms around Cas's waist,
tugging him close until they were pressed flush against each other and the
smaller boy could feel the other boy's breath ghosting over his face and neck.
"If anyone's going to have sex in this room, it should be you right?"
"I will admit that was rather dramatic," Castiel murmured, leaning up to place
a hesitant, close mouthed kiss on Dean's lips.
"Adorable," Dean replied bringing a hand up to the back of his neck and tilting
his head until they were at a cross angle from each other and could kiss in
earnest.
Castiel felt his boyfriend suck gently on his lower lip and brush his tongue
over the crease of his mouth, begging entrance from him in a way that Dean
normally wouldn't do when the larger boy would have usually just been kissing
him hard and desperate as a means to an end before they got interrupted or one
of them had to go home. It was slower and sweeter in a way that he had been
waiting for; they had time now when before it seemed like there was never
enough.
He parted his lips to allow Dean's tongue into his mouth and twined his own
around the larger boy's in an effort to explore the entirety of the other boy
so that he could commit it to memory. They had kissed a million times, but each
time it felt new and exciting and he discovered another thing that Dean liked
or he liked, it would never get old. Kissing Dean for the rest of his life just
felt like the most logical way of forever mapping out this fantastic person
that he had ended up with by some unbelievable miracle.
Cas gripped the back of Dean's vest and pulled him towards the bed, stumbling
backwards over his own feet and ending up almost sprawled out on the floor in
his attempt to seem like he knew what he was doing. Dean started kissing down
his neck and fumbling with the buttons on his shirt and Cas was kicking his
shoes off as the other boy gently pushed him into a sitting position on the
edge of the bed before pulling back from the kiss, panting slightly and
flushed.
"So...we're doing this?" Dean asked, biting his lip as he cradled Castiel's jaw
in his warm, callused hands and searched his face. "Are you sure, babe?"
What was he supposed to say to that? What teenager didn't want to have sex? The
only real hesitance that Castiel had had already gone out the window when Dean
had told him he loved him during the dance, but that didn't mean that he wasn't
scared. He knew it was going to hurt, probably less so for him than it would
for Dean because Cas had at least touched himself before, but that wasn't even
it.
What if they started this and then Dean decided he didn't want him anymore? Or
if it just opened up a whole new faction of people who Dean would flirt with in
front of him while he sat on the sidelines? What if this changed them somehow?
Sex was like this unknown variable in their relationship, but it was the
natural progress of what they had already been doing so they were going to get
to it eventually, he should just get out of his head and try to enjoy his first
time.
So instead of answering he just reached out and started undoing the buttons on
Dean's vest, reveling in how the other boy's breathing quickened when Castiel
pushed him back into a standing position and started untucking his dress shirt
from the grey slacks of his suit. His hands went to the larger boy's belt next
and Castiel had no intention of letting Dean stop him again when he just wanted
to see his boyfriend's eyes go all wide when he finally got to put the
practical knowledge that Dean had demonstrated on him into use.
"I need to go to my car, Cas." Dean said pulling back from the other boy's
shaking hands and cursing himself for leaving the things Ash had bought for him
in the Impala. He hadn't wanted to seem too eager, to make Cas feel like he had
to just because Dean wanted to. "Just...don't go anywhere. I swear, I'll be
right back."
It was so hard to tear himself away from the other boy who was sitting on the
edge of the bed in his blue slacks with his white button down gaping open
revealing the taunt muscles of his chest and abdomen, but Becky said if nothing
else lube was essential so he didn't hurt Cas. Dean raced down to his car as
quickly as possible, ignoring the desk clerk who yelled at him not to run and
ripped the bottle of lube out of its box along with a handful of condoms that
he quickly shoved into the pockets of his pants before speed-walking back to
the elevator.
He almost punched the shiny metal and mirror interior of the box when it
stopped on the fourth floor to let someone else on, but since it was Virgil
looking weirdly younger with a smile on his face and wine colored lipstick
stains on the collar of his dress shirt Dean just straightened up when his
teacher stepped into the elevator with him and tried to not think about how
awkward this all was. Virgil gave him a once over with a knowing look on his
face and the both of them just stared resolutely at their distorted faces
reflected back at them from the metal doorway in front of them.
"Having a good night?" Virgil asked as the elevator inched up through the fifth
and sixth floors at the slowest pace ever.
"Yea," Dean choked out, slightly grateful that he and Cas hadn't been kissing
for very long because the stubble burn he got from the other boy always gave
them away when they were around other people after getting hot and heavy
together.
"Where's Novak?"
"Um...in the room." Dean mumbled as quietly as possible, wincing away from the
judgmental look that he was sure the other man was going to give him.
"Oh, well..."Virgirl cleared his throat uncomfortably and reached out to press
the button for the second floor again, like it was going to make the elevator
move any faster so they could end this uncomfortable exchange. "Just...once you
get there, stay there. Alright?"
"Yes, sir." Dean muttered slightly confused by the worried tone in the other
man's voice. "Is something going on?"
"Something with Uriel's golden boys. I thought you two were involved, but since
you aren't just try to keep to yourselves for the rest of the night, okay?"
The elevator pinged at the seventh floor when the doors opened and Dean stepped
out with a loud exhale and a parting nod at the older man. He probably wasn't
going to tell Castiel about that, it was just too weird and talking about
Alistair and Azazel was the last thing he wanted to do with the rest of his
night.
While Dean was gone, Castiel had a miniature freak out. What if his boyfriend
didn't come back? What if he did come back? Could he do this? Yes, that answer
was a resounding fucking yes. If the way his cock twitched from just thinking
about having Dean's hands on him and his mouth on him and touching the other
boy exactly like he wanted to without fear of being walked in on by one of
their nosy siblings or an intolerant father was any indication of how ready he
was then maybe he should have gotten a hotel room much sooner than tonight.
He had to take his mind off of his anxieties so he kept busy, moving their suit
jackets off the bed and onto the couch, turning down the covers and shaking off
his shirt with twitchy, agitated movements that did nothing to help still the
nervous mess his insides were as he waited on Dean. After that was off he
realized how hot he was, like his skin was on fire so he decided to take his
socks and pants off too and open the door to the balcony even though it was
freezing outside because when had the room gotten to be ten billion degrees?
Castiel sat back on the edge of the bed where Dean left him and just buried his
hands in his hair, trying to calm himself down so that he wouldn't just pounce
on the other boy if he came back. It was only when he heard the door open that
he looked up, seeing the wide surprised eyes of his boyfriend first as he took
in the changes to his clothing and the room and then just watched as Dean moved
to shut the balcony door, shaking his head at Castiel in confusion.
"Are you nuts, babe?" Dean asked moving back in front of him and lifting his
face up with a couple of fingers under his chin. "It's fucking freezing in
here. Why did you open the door?"
"You came back." Castiel said reaching out to grab the loose sides of Dean's
vest.
"Baby, I will always come back. Do you hear me? I will never ever not come
back, I'm not going anywhere. You'll have to kill me to get rid of me, stuck
for life. You're going to hate me by the time I'm done with you."
Castiel stood up and lunged at Dean, pulling him into a kiss as he started
tearing at the buttons of Dean's shirt in an effort to get it off as quickly as
possible. He felt the chill now that Dean was here and the other boy was the
sun that had already started warming him and melting his frozen heart until he
could feel things again. Why had he ever been questioning giving himself to the
other boy? Dean saved him, loved him, would never hurt him like everyone else
had, and he could never hate him.
He wrenched Dean shirt off with a possessive growl, pressing their chests
together as the other boy's hands roamed over his back and down to his hips to
pull him closer. Castiel's hands were surer this time when he reached for
Dean's belt, quickly opening it along with the larger boy's zipper so that he
could push the suddenly burdensome grey slacks down the other boy's legs to be
kicked off along with Dean's shoes.
Dean pushed him back down on to the bed, climbing up beside him and scooting
them up until they were laying side by side on the pillows. His boyfriend ran a
hand back up his side and into his hair, licking his lips slightly before
bringing their mouths back together for a kiss that Dean dominated,
purposefully unhurried with his movements in order to make Cas slow down. It
forced him to focus on his breathing and his heartbeat which were going
entirely too fast to be healthy and he was grateful that the larger boy had
more experience with this kind of thing than he did.
His own hands found their way to Dean's butt, a feature that he thought was by
far his favorite it had been the one that he had allowed himself to admire even
before they had started dating and he was able to ogle it as much as he wanted
now without feeling like a pervert. Castiel's erection was straining against
his fitted boxers and he could feel Dean's arousal pressing against his own in
the narrow almost nonexistent gap that separated their bodies.
Castiel groaned when Dean ground his hips forward, seeking friction against him
in a way that was intoxicating and familiar because this was what they usually
did, mostly clothed dry humping with the odd hand job or hasty blow job thrown
in from Dean when they thought they had enough time before Gabriel came banging
on Cas's bedroom door. Once they had started getting completely undressed with
each other, but then John had come home unexpectedly and the two boys had
barely had time to find their clothes before the older Winchester had started
bellowing for Dean to help him with something.
Dean rolled over onto his back, pulling Castiel with him to straddle his hips
and the smaller boy saw it as his opportunity to start kissing and nibbling his
way down Dean's neck and chest, taking time on the spot behind his boyfriend's
ear that always made Dean moan in that throaty, desperate way he liked.
"Casss," Dean breathed beneath him, his hands tracing over the scars on his
back softly before the larger boy raked his short, blunt nails down in a way
that had him groaning softly into the hollow of Dean's throat as his mouth
worked downwards. "I just...god. I need you, you're everything. Everything."
Castiel looked up from where he was kissing around Dean's navel, the other
boy's erection nudging against his chest through the black boxers Dean was
wearing. The pupils of his boyfriend's green eyes were blown wide and dark with
lust and the other boy's hair had gotten tousled as they kissed, sticking up in
light brown spikes around his face. Dean was gorgeous, better than Elvis and if
that wasn't the highest compliment he could give someone he didn't know what
was.
"I love you, Dean."
"I-I know."
He smiled into his boyfriend's skin and slowly started pulling Dean's boxers
off, mouthing across his pelvis and down his thigh, purposely avoiding the
other boy's arousal that was jutting up from the thatch of darker brown pubic
hair, precome already glistening at the tip. Castiel kissed all the way down to
Dean's ankle, tossing the other boy's boxers away before standing up himself
and biting his lip before striping his own off and stepping out of them with a
bashful, self-conscious smile on his face.
Dean had seen Castiel naked before, mostly at least. But it was usually in the
dimmed lighting of one of their bedrooms and yea, often he only managed to get
one major piece of clothing off like a shirt or pants before he couldn't wait
anymore to touch the other boy or taste him and see his boyfriend's wide, blue
eyes locked onto his own as Cas came saying his name and groaning lowly in a
way that had just wrecked Dean's desire to hear a girl moaning probably ever
again.
He could hardly even remember what he had found so appealing about the soft,
fleshy forms of the girls he had been with besides beautiful lips and hair he
could run his hands through. Dean had all of that with Cas, coupled with the
fact that he didn't have to be careful or apologetic when one of them got a
little bit forceful with the other because they both seemed to like it and all
of that pretty much made Cas the epitome of all of his fantasies both in and
out of bed.
Cas was beautiful though, more so than he had ever imagined looking shy and
biting his lip at the end of the bed after leaving Dean with the most achingly
hard erection of his life just from the feel of his boyfriend's mouth teasing
against his skin. Dean propped himself up on his elbows on the bed and took in
his boyfriend's form with a heavy, stuttering sigh forcing its way out of his
chest. The smaller boy was all sinewy muscle and smooth skin that rippled with
strength as he moved.
Cas didn't have a lot of body hair, much like himself but the dark tuft of hair
that nestled above his long, member was enough to make him question why hadn't
always thought that men were attractive. And he still didn't think that men,
plural, were attractive. Just Cas, maybe that meant he was something like a two
on Sam and Gabe's stupid scale.
"Is...is this okay?" Castiel asked hesitantly, gesturing up and down himself
and biting his lip like he hadn't meant to ask Dean the question in the first
place.
"Of course, sweetheart." Dean replied swallowing hard and crooking a finger for
the other boy to get back on the bed with him as soon as fucking possible.
The smaller boy just shook his head and smiled in that mischievous way that
Dean had learned he did sometimes when Gabe had let his little brother in on
one of the pranks that he was planning on someone. Castiel started kissing his
way back up Dean's other leg, his gestures more confident and a little rougher
when he got to Dean's thighs, sucking a dark mark into the softer flesh that
the larger boy had there.
Dean groaned embarrassingly loud when Cas finally touched him, wrapping a hand
around his cock and stroking him a couple of times before leaning in and
wrapping those amazing, pink lips around the head and flicking his tongue into
the slit with a pleased sounding little hum. He knotted his hands in the sheets
next to his hips, throwing his head back on the pillow beneath him when Castiel
bobbed farther down on his erection the first time. Dean didn't know how long
he would last if the other boy kept up with the way he was alternating between
stroking him and fondling his testicles like a complete expert at giving head
even though Dean knew for a fact that this was a first for his boyfriend, but
for once they had all night and it wasn't like his dad was going to barge into
a fancy hotel looking for him so he forced himself to stop thinking and just
enjoy how his boyfriend's hot, wet mouth felt wrapped around him.
He fought to keep his hips still as he looked down at Cas, moaning at the sight
of his innocent, shy boyfriend sucking his dick and looking even better than
the fantasies he'd had about the other boy. The way Cas's eyelashes contrasted
against the skin of his cheekbones and how his boyfriend hollowed out his
cheeks as he came up was enough to make Dean light headed so he decided that he
had to stop looking because the visual alone was probably enough to make him
come even though the feeling was incredible and overwhelming as well.
Castiel got it, what the whole allure behind giving another person a blow job
was about. He was in control, almost even more so than he had been during the
times he had been holding onto Dean's hair and thrusting into the larger boy's
mouth. It was intoxicating to have so much power over another person, to be
able to make Dean writhe and moan his name because he wanted Castiel so much.
Dean found all of the things that Castiel could do to him so sexy and amazing
that he was just muttering endearments at him with his head thrown back into
the pillows, muscles taunt in his neck and hands fisted into the covers of the
bed.
It was what he was finding to be that slightly sadistic streak in himself that
had him pulling his mouth off of Dean's cock, continuing to stroke the other
boy loosely and slowly as he ordered his boyfriend to look at him.
"Do it, Dean." Castiel growled out, his voice sounding even deeper and more
rough than Dean had ever heard it. "I want you to look at me."
Dean forced his eyes open, earning a smirk from his boyfriend right before Cas
delved down to take all but a couple of inches of his length into his mouth. It
was hot as hell, but that wasn't what finally made him release his grip on the
sheets and bury them in Castiel's dark, unruly hair. No, it was when Cas
swallowed and Dean could feel the muscles of his boyfriend's throat working
against his heated flesh, drawing him in even deeper until Cas was deep-
throating him and looking up under his eyelashes at Dean challengingly.
"Fuck, Cas!" Dean groaned, arching his back off the bed slightly as he
boyfriend pulled back to the tip of his cock only to take him back in without
even blinking, squeezing his testicles and moaning around the hardness filling
his mouth. "Why can you do that? FUCK...ugh Jesus."
The vibrations from Castiel's moans were what were really driving him crazy,
his boyfriend was enjoying this just as much as he was and Dean vowed to not
try to stop the smaller boy ever again if the urge to drag him into a classroom
suddenly struck him. He thrust shallowly to meet Castiel as his mouth moved
down his length and he could feel his balls drawing up as he drew closer and
closer to his release. Dean wasn't sure if Cas would be okay with swallowing so
he moaned out a warning that just caused his boyfriend to grip his hips harder
and pick up the pace of his movements.
"Shit!" Dean ground out as his hips snapped forward and he was coming, feeling
the muscles of Castiel's throat clenching around his throbbing length and
hearing his boyfriend muffled groan echoing his own from the bottom of the bed.
He felt the matress shift when Castiel crawled back up to straddle his hips and
opened his eyes when he heard the low groan of his boyfriend above him. Dean
looked up to see the smaller boy stoking his own erection, biting his lip and
looking slightly embarrassed. It was so fucking hot, seeing Cas get off
touching himself and Dean put his hands on the other boy's hips to roll him
over onto his back.
Castiel kept his legs wrapped around Dean's waist as they rolled over and he
whimpered slightly when the felt the heavy weight of the larger boy's still
half-hard cock slide against his own. The taste of Dean was still in his mouth
and he hesitated for just a second before kissing his boyfriend back when he
leaned down to capture his mouth, rolling his hips lazily against Castiel's. He
wrapped his arms around Dean's back, digging his heels into the other boy's
rear as he thrust their members together slowly and purposefully, seeking that
perfect friction he knew he could get with the other boy.
"Dean-" Castiel whined, moving against Dean desperately because he had been so
close when he felt the larger boy throbbing in his mouth, but he was so focused
on swallowing and breathing that Cas felt he probably would've passed out if he
had tried to touch himself then too. "Can you just.."
"Yea, baby. I know, I've got you." Dean said quickly, breaking free from the
grasp of his arms and legs to reach over the edge of the bed and rummage around
for a moment, returning with a bottle of lube and a strip of condoms that he
tossed down onto the bedside table.
The lube he opened, squeezing a generous amount onto the palm of his hand
before delving back down into another kiss with Castiel that had him gasping
when he felt the tight slickness of Dean's hand wrapping around his cock,
stroking him fast and hard in a way that had him coming far too soon. He moaned
Dean's name as his vision whited out and he heard his boyfriend curse softly as
the thick spurts of come laced out and over both of their chests, making a huge
mess that Cas really could care less about.
He felt Dean mouthing something against his collarbone, but he was too
distracted by the afterglow of his orgasm to care about deciphering what it
might be. Castiel knew that it wouldn't take Dean long to get hard again, as
they had discovered after his last therapy session when they had come back to
Dean's apartment to find a note from John saying he was going out of town for a
job for a couple of days. They had spent the entire evening mostly naked,
lounging around the small space in boxers and stopping to kiss and caress each
other anytime the mood struck them, until Sam had come home and Dean had
staggered to his feet red-raced and rubbing his knees while his younger brother
doubled over with laughter.
Dean's mouth moved to his shoulders, kissing and nibbling at his muscles until
he felt the larger boy pulling at his shoulders to roll him over onto his
stomach. Like when Cas had started telling Dean about his father and the self-
inflicted marks on his back from the thin, stinging leather straps of the
flail, he felt his boyfriend's hands moving reverently and slowly over his
skin. Dean kneaded the muscles of his neck and back, easing out the last bit of
nervous tension that he still was carrying there even after his orgasm. Castiel
sighed into the pillows, melting under the soothing caresses of Dean's lips and
hands on him and sparing a glance over his shoulder to see the other boy
straddling his waist with a serious expression on his face.
Cas looked over to the strip of condoms that Dean had thrown onto the bedside
time and reached out to bring them closer, trying to understand why this thin
piece of latex and rubber had him screaming in his head just a bit, from
excitement and fear and confusion. This little package would be the thing that
damned him for good, the touching and the being aroused by other men could be
explained away and absolved with Hail Marys and confession, but sodomy was a
mortal sin and there was no going back after this.
But if going to Heaven meant spending eternity separated from Dean, he would
rather burn in a lake of fire with the other boy than float on clouds and play
a harp with just his father and Raphael for company. His mother may be waiting
for him up there too, may even be disappointed in the way he chose to live his
life like his father had said she was, but Castiel didn't think so. He thought
she would just want for him to be happy with whoever he chose to love, at least
that's how Gabriel always talked about her and that was the woman he chose to
claim instead of the cold person he had always thought his father, the priest,
must have married.
"Cas? Babe, where are you right now?" Dean murmured behind him, digging deep
into the lateral muscles that ran over his shoulders, causing him to groan
because it felt good in a way that was deliciously similar to how the other boy
touched him to bring him to completion.
"Just lost in my head a bit," he replied softly ripping one of the condoms off
from the strip and reaching back to put it next to the bottle of lube that the
larger boy had settled near his hip. "But I'm okay, I'm back now."
"We can stop, Cas." Dean offered kissing down his spine softly and moving his
hands to splay across the bottom of his ribcage, kneading his thumbs into the
small of his back with a gentle pressure that had Castiel wanting more.
"No, Dean." He said breathing deeply and arching back slightly into the other
boy until he could feel Dean's hardness pressing into the cleft of his ass.
Castiel shuddered slightly, biting his lip so that he wouldn't make the
desperate noise he could feel lurking at the back of his throat. "I...I want
to. Just go slow."
"I'm not going to hurt you, sweetheart." Dean stated firmly sitting up on his
knees, nudging Castiel's legs wider open so that he had room and lifting the
other boy's hips slightly off the bed.
The first thing that Becky had told him to do was make sure that Cas was
propped up and comfortable because nothing was less sexy than getting a weird
muscle cramp or something during sex. Dean reached up and grabbed one of the
pillows near Castiel's head, pausing to give the other boy a kiss that he hoped
reassured the smaller boy that he was going take care of him even though Dean
was just as nervous now as he had been his own first time, which had been
awkward and embarrassing with a girl who was much older than him who afterwards
had given him a disgusted look before quickly getting dressed and leaving him
alone and vulnerable.
So he poured all of his love and promises into the kiss, hoping it was enough
as the smaller boy breathed into his mouth and clenched his fingers in the
sheets beneath his hands when Dean placed the pillow under his hips against the
erection that was already forming despite Cas having come so recently. Dean had
a pretty fast recovery time himself, but he had the feeling that all of the
kissing and touching he liked to shower on his boyfriend was slowly turning
Castiel into a sex crazed maniac. Not that he would have a problem with that,
especially if all of this ended up being as amazing as he had imagined it would
be.
He sat back up, picking up the lube and pouring more onto the fingers of his
right hand before taking a steadying breath and spreading the firm, toned
cheeks of Castiels' ass in order to get access to the other boy's entrance.
That urge to put his mouth on every part of his boyfriend hadn't gone away, but
Dean stifled it for now because it's not like Cas was going anywhere. He loved
him and they had time to explore each other more once they got used to doing
this first. Dean circled his index finger around the tight ring of muscle that
looked way too small to ever possibly accommodate him, applying a gentle
pressure that caused Castiel to gasp as the cool lubricant hit his most
sensitive spot.
Cas had fingered himself before, imagining that it was Elvis or Daniel or Dean
touching him and stretching him as he masturbated. But two fingers was the most
he had ever done and Dean's fingers were thicker than his own so when his
boyfriend pushed into him it felt full and tight and caused his cock to twitch
because that part of him knew where that kind of touching led and it calmed the
small part of him that had doubted it was going to feel as good with Dean who
probably hadn't ever done this with a guy before, if at all.
The first finger pumped into him and he tried to still his hips that were
canting backwards into Dean's hands like they had a mind of their own, moaning
breathily at how different it felt to have someone else doing this to him.
Better because it was Dean and the dull burn that started when he felt the
second finger start to push in didn't even matter because his boyfriend had
brushed against his prostate, causing blinding electric crackles to go off
behind his eyelids when he heard the other boy groan behind him.
"God, Cas." Dean moaned, crooking his fingers again as he slowly pumped them
into the smaller boy's loosening hole, brushing against something that made the
muscles clench around his fingers in a way that had his cock throbbing when he
thought of feeling the same sensation wrapped around him. "That feels good,
right?"
Castiel nodded his head quickly and pushed back against Dean's fingers that had
started scissoring inside of him, still moving way too slowly when compared to
how he normally fucked himself onto his own hand fast and hard in order to just
get off and then get on to whatever else he had to do.
"Dean," he whimpered, feeling the other boy's stretching fingers completely
pull out of him the loss being obvious and unwelcome when all he wanted was to
be filled up by Dean in any way he could get.
Dean fumbled for the condom, ripping it open and rolling it down his length,
hissing at his own touch because he was so hard and sensitive from how long it
had taken to stretch Castiel wide enough that he thought the other boy could
accommodate him without it hurting too badly. He slicked his cock up with more
lube, lining himself up against the other boy's loosened entrance before
pausing and rubbing one of his hands up Castiel's back, brushing his thumb over
the side of his boyfriend's jaw until those gorgeous aqueous eyes looked back
at him.
"Cas, I just...I..."
Fucking really?! He still couldn't say it, this was the kind of shit you went
to therapists for and if Castiel hadn't been looking back at him with the most
adoring, amazed expression on his face then Dean just would've stopped
everything right then because the other boy deserved to told how much he was
loved as often as possible and if Dean couldn't say it now then when would he
be able to?
"I know," Castiel replied, smiling because he did know that Dean loved him and
his boyfriend had gripped his hand tight during Han and Leia's scene together
when they had watched Star Wars over the course of the last week, breaking the
original trilogy up into multiple movies dates that gotten off track when they
inevitably started kissing each other.
It had been Dean's use of it when he had said it earlier that made him all
swoony and smiley and now he could see that it had the same effect on the
larger boy because his boyfriend just groaned softly and started pushing into
him. Castiel could feel the thick heat of Dean's cock through the thin,
synthetic material separating them and when it pushed past the first ring of
muscle with a painful, stinging burn all he could do was hiss softly and bite
his lip as tears sprang to his eyes turning his head so that Dean wouldn't see
them and stop.
Castiel was just so tight. Dean could feel the other boy clenching around him
as he pushed in slowly, muttering soothing nonsense to his boyfriend and
rubbing Cas's hip in an effort to make the tension leave his muscles again like
it had when Dean had been rubbing his back. He went slow, just as much for
himself as Cas because if he went any faster well, then this was going to be
over before Dean had a chance to make it good for Cas. He didn't want his
boyfriend only having the memory of how it hurt and he knew that it had to
because his boyfriend was whimpering softly into the bed sheets, either
ignoring or too distracted by the pain to hear him when he asked him if he was
okay.
Dean didn't want to groan while Cas was hurting so he swallowed back the noise
of how fucking amazing it felt to be inside the other boy, focusing instead on
stilling himself so that he could give his boyfriend time to adjust. He reached
a hand around, wedging it between the pillow and Castiel's pelvis so that he
could stroke him and try to give him some other sensation besides the pain only
to find that Castiel's erection was still there, less hard, but there so
obviously Dean wasn't completely ruining all this with his inexperience.
"Talk to me sweetheart," he whispered, leaning in to kiss the smaller boy's
back as he continued to stroke him encouragingly. "Tell me you're okay."
"Jesus, Dean." Castiel moaned beneath him, squirming slightly at the combined
feeling of his boyfriend filling him and touching him. "I'm fine. Just...you're
going to have to do something. Move or anything."
"You're sure?"
"I'm pretty fucking sure," Castiel gasped, pushing back with his hips in an
effort to get moving so that the stinging would go away.
"Okay, babe." Dean muttered drawing out of the other boy as he sat back up
until just the first inch or so of his cock was still inside his boyfriend
before stroking forward with a groan that he couldn't have kept to himself even
if he wanted to anymore.
He kept his pace slow and measured, feeling the ring of muscles loosen around
his dick slightly as Castiel starting meeting his thrusts with little rolls of
his hips backwards, grinding down into the pillow beneath him anytime Dean
pulled out.
Cas propped himself up more onto his elbows, arching his back with a low groan
when he felt Den brush against his prostate again, sliding what felt like the
entire length of his arousal along the gland as he moved in and out of him with
a steadily increasing pace that had him fighting for air.
"Right there, darling." He groaned, feeling his skin tingle anywhere the other
boy touched him, along his back and over his sides back down to his hips where
Dean held on tight to the jutting bones of his pelvis so that he could hold him
in place as he thrust into him particularly hard.
Dean stuttered out an apology when he heard Castiel growl beneath him after
that first rough snap of his hips. "Fuck, Cas. Baby, you just feel so good.
I'll be careful, I promise."
"Don't" Castiel moaned, pushing back impatiently onto his achingly hard cock.
"Don't be careful, it's good. Just like that, again."
Dean pumped hard into the other boy, breathing heavily and moaning each time he
felt the other boy's tight, heat clench around him. He needed to touch Cas,
feel that this boyfriend's heartbeat was as pounding and erratic as his own,
this wasn't enough, they weren't close enough. He let go of Castiel's hips to
grab onto his boyfriend's shoulders, pulling him back until Castiel was sitting
on his dick, impaled as deeply as possible with his back pressed against Dean's
chest as they moved together, grinding and panting with roving hands and sloppy
kisses.
He held onto Cas with one arm splayed across his boyfriend's broad chest and
the other wrapped firmly around his waist, thrusting up into the other boy as
hard as he could while he bit down onto the juncture of his boyfriend's neck
and shoulder. Dean moved his hand down to wrap around Castiel's hard, leaking
erection, stroking in time with how he moved his hips because he was close. He
was going to fall over the edge and he wanted Castiel to go with him, telling
the smaller boy with murmured demands against the shell of his ear.
"You're going to finish with me, Cas."Dean ordered, sucking the perfect lobe
into his mouth and biting down on it earning a stuttering gasp from Castiel.
Castiel moaned, feeling like he was going to shatter into a million pieces as
Dean pumped against his prostate and stroked him and took him just like he had
wanted, rough and tender. Paradoxical in their love making just like they were
in everything else, the preacher's crazy kid and the town homophobe's son; he
would never understand how they had ended up here-in love and feeling like
their hearts were beating codependent with the other's, if one's stopped they
both would stop.
Questioning it felt like tempting fate though so he turned to kiss Dean
instead, moaning out his release and thrusting his hips down hard onto the
other boy's cock as he came, semen spilling out over the tight fist Dean had
made around his erection. Behind him the larger boy grunted, snapping his hips
forward and throbbing deep inside of him, matching the intensity of Castiel's
kiss by twining his own tongue fluidly around his mouth, sucking on his lower
lip hard before he broke away to burying his face into Cas's neck.
It was better with Cas, so much better than it had ever been with anyone else
and if he hadn't been ruined before, Dean sure as fuck knew that he was ruined
now. Maybe love was what had been missing with all of those girls in the past
because sex was sex was sex, but with Castiel it was more than that and his
heart was beating heavy with emotion in his chest. Emotions that he couldn't
spit out, but still the other boy knew what he was trying to say and that was
just another reason why he never wanted to let Cas go.
He stayed buried in the other boy for a couple of moments before pulling out as
slowly as possible, still concerned about hurting Cas even though the rest of
his mind was a fuzzy, blurry contended mess. The smaller boy dropped heavily
down onto the bed, ignoring the mess they had made of the expensive, hotel
sheets and beckoned for Dean to join him, which he did after darting into the
bathroom for a second to discard the condom and grab a wet washcloth so they
could maybe fall asleep without having to worry too much about waking up
disgusting.
Castiel smiled softly at Dean as the other boy ran a towel over his chest and
lower abdomen, cleaning up the fresh and half-dried streaks of come before
tossing it away and just settling down beside him with a sigh. He watched his
boyfriend hesitate to touch him, looking at him like he was breakable and
precious and priceless before shaking his head at himself and bundling Castiel
up against his chest, knotting their legs together and wrapping an arm around
his shoulders.
"Cas—" Dean began softly feeling like he needed to ask again if they were good,
make sure that this hadn't changed things for the other boy because if anything
it had just made Dean realize how far he had actually fallen for the other boy.
"You don't have to say it, darling." Castiel sighed, snuggling into his chest
and hooking his ankle around the relatively clean comforter that had almost
slid off the end of the bed so that he could pull it over them. "I felt it
too."
Dean squeezed his eyes shut and let out a shaky breath; Cas always knew just
what he needed to hear.
Chapter End Notes
     All right guys, here it is. Hope it doesn't ruin the 150K+ words I've
     written so far. The anxiety I had with this one was high so
     seriously, any feedback at all will help make my nails grow back
     faster.*hearteyes *
***** Most Beautiful Plague *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
To say that Dean freaked out when he woke up in the morning and Cas wasn't
there, was an understatement.
His heart was pounding out of his chest and he just couldn't seem to force any
air into his lungs as he scrabbled at the empty bed sheets where Cas had been,
wrapped up tight in his arms and sleeping almost on top of him when he had
gotten up to turn the lights out in the early hours of the morning. Dean's mind
raced with a million reasons why Cas wasn't there, all of them were plausible
and horrible and involved the other boy having regrets or finding him
unbearable and leaving him there alone just like they all did.
But then he heard the shower running, when he was scrambling into his boxers so
that he could run around half-dressed and shameless on the seventh floor of the
hotel, banging on every door until he found Cas or someone told him to fuck
off. It was pretty much the sweetest sound that he'd ever heard and Dean took a
minute to pause in the doorway of the bathroom, just watching Cas through the
frosted glass of the shower door as the other boy hummed some song contentedly
to himself while the hot spray washed over him.
Cas made a low pleased little sound when Dean stepped in behind the smaller boy
and wrapped his arms around him, still wearing his boxers because he had been
too relieved to see his boyfriend there to stop to take them off before he had
to touch Castiel to reassure him that he wasn't hallucinating.
"Good morning," Castiel said, leaning back into the hold Dean had wrapped
around him.
Dean sighed heavily and just watched how the water slid down the other boy's
smooth chest, his chin perched on the other boy's shoulder when he had pulled
Cas's back flush against him. He kissed the other boy's shoulder softly,
feeling the drops of water stick to his mouth and stubble as he pulled away. He
felt Castiel reach back a hand to put it on his hip and he could almost hear
the confused expression on his boyfriend's face when the other boy's slim
fingers brushed against the rapidly dampening fabric of his boxers.
Cas spun in his arms, settling his hands on Dean's hips and frowning at the wet
material that was clinging to his legs, not questioning him, but just raising
his eyebrow in that way that Dean had come to learn meant that it was obvious
that he wanted to.
"I thought you had left," Dean admitted softly, ashamed that the idea had even
entered his mind in the first place. Cas wouldn't do that to him, he had
promised that he wouldn't run away from him anymore and so far he had kept his
word. "I was going to go look for you."
"And you're wearing them in the shower, why?" Castiel asked, his voice sounding
amused with just a hint of an order lurking underneath that had Dean's heart
speeding up as he swallowed hard and smirked at the other boy.
He shrugged and tried to put on his most noncommittal face when he felt the
other boy's hand's slide under the waistband, pulling the material away from
his skin with a soft sound of suctioning from the wet fabric peeling off of
him. They dropped wetly onto the shower floor and Cas kicked them away with an
agitated frown creasing his forehead when they got tangled around his foot for
a second. Dean just laughed and pulled the other boy closer, biting back a
groan when his hips met the other boy's as they embraced.
Dean felt Cas placing openmouthed kisses against the crook of his neck where
the smaller boy had buried his face and he let his hands settle onto the small
of his boyfriend's back, feeling the muscles contract and tense as Castiel
thrust shallowly against him in a way that he thought the other boy probably
didn't even realize he was doing. But Dean just wanted to hold Castiel, okay.
He didn't just want to hold Cas, but it would've been enough for him because
everything with the other boy was just so perfect and he was so happy that he
didn't need sex to make it better.
Not that he was going to turn down sex, making a needy noise as the back of his
throat when he felt Castiel's fingers twine themselves through his hair,
tugging his face around and down into a deep kiss that had the joy he was
already feeling building and burning into something desirous and desperate.
"Jesus," Dean murmmered against the other boy's lips, drawing back enough so
that he could breathe for a second in the steamy shower as Cas's hands roamed
over his chest and back, returning to his hair every so often to grip the short
strands as the grinding of his boyfriend became more insistent, the jutting
erection of the other boy sliding slickly against his own in the hot, tight
space between them. "I've created a fucking monster."
"Well, I've heard imitation is the most sincere form of flattery," Castiel
replied nipping at Dean's jaw before settling on his neck with a dark chuckle.
It took him about a second to get it; since all of the blood that should have
been fueling his brain was busy other places. "Did you just call me a monster?"
"I might have," Castiel muttered teasingly, biting hard on his neck before
kissing away the sting as he drug his nails down Dean's back slowly, making him
shiver slightly before the larger boy growled and turned to press him firmly
against the wall of the shower.
"Fuck you, sweetheart." Dean said jokingly as the other boy gasped, his blue
eyes going wide for a second before a he smiled and leaned in for another kiss,
their mouths moving more urgently as Dean slotted their members together,
sliding the heated flesh in a maddening imitation of the things that they had
done the night before.
"Kinda what I was going for," the other boy replied in between the tiny
whimpers he was emitting as Dean gripped tightly onto his hips and ground
against him.
The scalding water poured down his back and Dean winced slightly, reluctantly
reaching out a hand to turn the heat down slightly before he placed it firmly
back on Castiel's hip, pinning him against the wall with a roll of his pelvis
as he loomed over the other boy. Cas was panting slightly, condensation beading
off of his chest and Dean bit his lip as he thought back to another time when
he could've taken Cas up against the wall of the showers in the locker room at
school, after everyone else had left. But that was something that was just too
risky.
He reached one of his hands down, trailing it lazily across Castiel's abdomen
and the sharp curve of his pelvis, following the lines of muscles down until he
had wrapped his hand around the other boy's erection that was brushing against
his own in a way that sent tingles running down his spine from how intimate and
wonderful it felt to be able to touch his boyfriend like this without having to
worry about being interrupted. Dean imagined that this is what it would be like
when they were done with school, touching each other slowly and meaningfully so
that the passion could build until it got to be too much, he couldn't wait for
a time when they would be able to touch each other however and whenever they
wanted because they were in a space that was safe and comfortable and theirs.
Dean groaned possessively as Castiel shuddered under his touch, thrusting into
his hand with a needy, shaky sigh the air from the smaller boy's lungs feeling
cool on his over-heated skin as he ran the pad of his thumb over the head of
his boyfriend's member, spreading the pre-come down over the length of flesh in
his grasp with an experienced twist of his wrist. He had learned all of the
little things that Cas liked over the last couple of weeks, how fast he liked
Dean to move his hand and how hard of a grip to use; he knew just how far he
could take the other boy until he had Cas on the edge of coming before he
stopped.
He liked the frustrated sound Castiel made as he took his hand away to cup the
other boy's face, forcing them back to just kissing and pressing against each
other as he leaned his weight into his boyfriend feeling Cas's teeth nip
angrily at his lip as the other boy pushed hard at his chest so that he could
get an arm between them, separating their bodies enough that he could capture
both of their members in his long-fingered hand and stroking them together in a
way that made Dean's knees weak from the sensation of the other boy's hardness
against his own.
The larger boy pulled back enough that he could press his forehead against
Cas's, who was watching him through half-lidded eyes as he stroked them
together expertly, closing his eyes entirely when Dean ran his thumb over the
other boy's jaw reverently as he grasped and tried to stammer out the words
that just kept eluding him.
"Cas, I lo-. Shit," Dean groaned, arching into the other boy's hand when
Castiel turned his face into his hand and sucked his index finger into his
mouth, moaning around the digit even as his tongue moved over the calluses that
Dean hated. "Babe, fuck...you're so fucking sexy."
Castiel hummed around his finger, moving his head so that it slid in and out of
his mouth suggestively and tightening his grip on their members as he picked up
the pace of his strokes because he was so close and this was just as amazing as
everything else they had done together, he couldn't imagine a time when he
wouldn't ever want Dean as close to him as possible. He pulled his mouth off of
the other boy, cursing softly when the larger boy's fingers on his other hand
twined through his own, moving to stroke them together as Dean ducked his head
to kiss and suck at his neck.
"Dean!" Castiel moaned, arching his back away from the cold tile behind him
trying to close the space between him and his boyfriend even though it was
barely enough for their chests to rise and fall so they could take in the
gasping, heavy breaths that they needed. "I need you. Just touch me, darling.
Please, god. I love you fuck I love you so much, Dean. Oh dear lord."
Dean knew exactly what he meant, wrapping his free hand around his back and
pressing the finger that Cas had just been sucking on into him with a gentle
insistent pressure that stung slightly since they hadn't used lube, but he
didn't care because it was enough. Enough to have his orgasm crashing over him
in waves of pleasure that were so enormous that he felt like they would drag
him down forever and that would be perfectly acceptable. He felt like he could
drown in Dean and their love, it was so vast and beautiful and unexplored.
"Fuck, Cas." Dean groaned throatily coming after only a few more desperate
thrusts because seeing the other boy bite his lip and arch back into the hand
he had pressed into him was so fucking hot and Cas coming all over his cock as
they slid together was so fucking hot and hearing his boyfriend say that he
loved him again was so fucking hot and his brain just couldn't form any other
thoughts besides the fact that he would never want anyone else as much as he
wanted Castiel Novak.
He felt like he was going to collapse, like he was an old, well-loved shirt
that had been washed and wrung out to dry on a clothesline his muscles loose
and tingling under his skin as he leaned into Cas, trying to press most of his
weight against the wall on the hand that he had moved from fingering his
boyfriend to the tile near the smaller boy's hip. Dean couldn't remember a time
in his life when he had been more content and he thought that it must have been
before his mom left because after everything had gotten hectic and painful and
uncertain.
When he caught his breath, Dean pulled Castiel back under the spray of the
shower; washing him slowly and reverently with the soap that the hotel provided
until the water started going cold and Cas started to shiver against him in a
way that was not sexy. He dried his boyfriend off with the soft fluffy towels
and just smiled goofily when the other boy tried to bat him off saying that he
was a big boy who could take care of himself.
"Yea you are," Dean said suggestively, earning a tired, smile from Castiel who
rolled his eyes with the towel wrapped around his hips as he sorted out the
pieces of his and Dean's suits on they could get dressed.
"Come on, darling." Castiel said, flinging his pants at him as he tried to
wring out the water from his boxers before giving up and just shoving them into
one of the shopping bags that he and Ash had brought the snacks to the room in
the evening before. "Check out is at eleven."
"What time is it?" Dean asked, pulling on his pants with no boxers and
chuckling to himself at the shocked look on the other boy's face.
"Ten thirty. How often do you do that?"
"Go commando?" Dean replied innocently, shrugging slightly. "More than you
know, babe."
Castiel's fingers stilled where they were buttoning his shirt slowly and Dean
could see the other boy filling away the information for future reference with
a look of serious concentration on his face, nodding to himself a bit as a
blush crept up his neck and cheeks that were still flushed from the hot water
in the shower.
"You're so fucking cute," Dean sighed, pulling the other boy into a short kiss
before they continued around the room gathering their things and making sure to
leave a hefty tip using their combined cash for the housekeeper for the mess
they had made of the bed. After the debacle with Pam's classroom, they had at
least learned to be considerate of the people who had to deal with the
aftermath of their encounters.
===============================================================================
Castiel didn't hear the story until much later that day, after Dean had dropped
him off at home with a lingering apologetic kiss because he had to go to work
and Bobby had already called twice on their way out of the hotel and across
town to his house asking him where he was. He had told the larger boy that he
loved him again, feeling all kinds of warm and fuzzy inside when Dean had
hummed happily and replied, "You too."
He was miles beyond gone and he knew it, Cas had thought that after Daniel he
would never love anyone else again, but what he had had with the other boy
paled in comparison to how he felt about Dean. It felt like a silly crush,
which is what he now knew it to be because the other boy had never really
returned his feelings in the first place and Dean did. He as loved, Dean loved
him and for the first time in a long time he felt like he deserved it.
Gabriel had taken one look at him and known, hugging him tightly and tearing up
a little bit when Castiel nodded in reply when the older man asked him if Dean
had said it first.
"I didn't think he had it in him, baby bro." The older man had admitted before
rushing off to get his phone so that he could call Sam and tell him since the
younger Winchester had gone to the library to work on something for debate, why
he couldn't just relax over the winter break Castiel didn't know.
Cas decided to do just that, pulling out his headphones when he got into his
room and settling down on his bed with his journal that Rachel had given him,
writing out a less explicit version of what had happened with Dean that he
didn't know if he would let his therapist see just yet because the memory was
just so fresh and new that he wanted to keep it to himself for just a little
bit longer.
When the knock came at the door he didn't hear it because he was listening to
the soundtrack for Across the Universe that he had downloaded a couple of weeks
before and now that song, Something,was the only one that mattered. He didn't
understand most of the others anyway, especially the one about Mr. Kite,
whoever the fuck that was.
Anna came into his room, drawing his attention up from what he was writing as
the younger girl moved quickly across the room to plop down beside him on the
bed, curling up against him where he was sitting with his back against the wall
that his bed abutted and pressing her face into his shoulder with a muffled
scream. Castiel pulled his headphones down until they were hanging off of his
neck and wrapped and arm around his younger sister who was shaking against him,
making weird huffing sounds into the material of his faded red shirt that
advertised the old Chicago World's Fair.
He had gotten it his first year at Lake Forrest, when they had taken a field
trip to The Field Museum and it was one that Dean had borrowed a couple of
times when he had stayed over and even though he had washed it, it still
smelled like his boyfriend's body wash mixed with motor oil and cedar. Castiel
pulled back slightly from the redhead, looking down at his sister and vowing to
himself that he would kill Kevin Tran if he had hurt her, Dean would just have
to come and see him in prison. Did Kansas do conjugal visits?
"Anna?" Castiel said concern and anger warring for dominance in his voice as
his sister pulled away wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand before
covering her mouth and rolling her eyes at him in an endeared way. "What's
wrong? Did something happen? With Kevin?"
She nodded, ducking her head so that her long red curls fell over her face and
making the huffing noise again as he shot up out of the bed, calling for
Gabriel because if Anna was about to tell them something horrible that the
other boy had done to her then he wanted his brother to help him figure out a
place to hide the body, one of them had to stay on the outside so they could
keep her away from their father and Gabriel already had conditional custody so
he really just needed someone to help him plan the specifics of how he would do
it.
Gabriel sauntered into the room, freezing when he saw how Anna was shaking even
harder on the bed and crossing over to kneel by the edge of the bed as Castiel
paced the room, running a hand through his hair and clenching his fists to keep
himself from freaking out. Of course something had happened, something always
fucking happened to his family just when it looked like things were going
alright. They must be fucking cursed or something.
"Anna I need you to tell me what's wrong." Gabriel said sounding much calmer
than Castiel felt, this was that anger Rachel always talked about. The
vindictive rage that he was holding onto that usually was reserved for his
father and eldest brother, but now it felt like it had purpose and Cas thought
a baseball bat just might do the trick since Kevin was kinda on the smallish
side.
Anna shook her head, her hair swaying around her face as her hands disappeared
out of her lap and Castiel could picture it, the tears that his brave, stubborn
little sister was wiping away because she always had to protect everyone, even
people who didn't deserve it. Even scum like Kevin Tran.
She hadn't hesitated to agree to testify against their father though and that
was part of why this was so frustrating, Rachel said most abuse victims had a
hard time turning against their abuser. Fuck, even Cas had not wanted to go to
the police after waking up in the hospital again, after Anna had saved him, but
that was because he had still been convinced that he deserved every damn thing
that he had done to himself, that he hadn't been coerced into it by the
perverse tortures his father had used on him.
"Just fucking tell us what happened!" He shouted, throwing his hands out to his
sides and knocking over a stack of CDs that had been perched precariously on
the edge of his desk since the last time Dean had stayed the night.
His sister looked up at him finally, surprise on her face before she threw her
head back, the huffing turning out to be raucous laughter that she had been
trying to stem as she worked out how to tell her brothers the story about how
her boyfriend was a for real life ninja. She had thought that Castiel would
appreciate the story the most, since it had kinda been him and Dean that made
the other boy reveal his self-defense skills and also, she knew that he liked
all those weird, badly dubbed kung-fu movies that Kevin could have totally done
stunts for without breaking a sweat.
But Cas was breathing hard and his face was all red and Anna had seen her
brother have a panic attack before, had woken him up from more nightmares than
she could count in the middle of the night when his screaming and crying had
roused her and she could tell that he was close to breaking. So she tried to
reign in her laughter, stifling it behind her hand again and giving the two
most important men in her life an apologetic look.
"I'm sorry. Gabby, Cassie. It's nothing bad, I promise." Anna started and
Castiel immediately felt his heart rate start to slow down, she wouldn't lie to
him, his sister had never lied to him.
Anna and Gabriel and Dean, that's all he had. Well, and Sam and Meg and Jo and
the rest of his friends. Maybe he should've given Kevin the benefit of the
doubt and not immediately jumped to the conclusion that his young friend had
done something to hurt his sister just because someone had hurt him once upon a
time. The adrenaline faded out of him and he dropped heavily on the bed next to
his sister, putting his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair pausing
long enough to wave to Anna that he was fine and she could keep talking.
"Let me just start by saying that you two are officially relieved of your
responsibility to protect me as long as I'm dating a black belt." Anna said
shortly, rubbing at Castiel's back in a soothing way and shaking her head
slightly when Gabriel cocked a questioning eyebrow at her.
"There has to be more to the story than that," Castiel mumbled trying to sound
amused and lighthearted so that the younger girl would know that he was okay,
he drew in a shaky breath and the smell of Dean on his clothes helped the numb,
emptiness that he always got after freaking out, only this time he hadn't and
he decided to find the silver lining of the situation by chalking up his
growing control as a win.
"There is." Anna replied smiling at him impishly and nudging at his side until
he looked up at her, before collapsing back into the bed with a laugh, laying
her legs over his lap and patting the bed until Gabriel climbed up beside her,
sitting cross legged in an imitation of the when the older Novak used to braid
her hair for her for school.
Their dad had never even attempted to treat her like she wasn't just another
one of his boys meaning she was the most atrocious tomboy growing up, always
getting picked on by the mean little girls who did have moms at her school
until Gabe had broken down and started buying magazines like Seventeen and Teen
Vogue in an effort to help her learn how to be more girly. She had no illusions
about which of her family members had really raised her and writing off her
father and Raphael after seeing what they had done to Cas had been the easiest
decision of her life.
"Okay, Cas remember when I left to go find soda because that beer was super
gross?"
"You let her drink?" Gabriel asked, shooting the younger boy a stern look and
just sighing in a resigned kind of way when Castiel shrugged in reply.
"She didn't even like it, Gabe." Castiel said in his defense, earning a quick
nod of confirmation from Anna who he should've known would somehow manage to
rat the both of them out. "See, I'm teaching her the evils of alcohol so you
don't have to, you're welcome."
"Anyway!" Anna interrupted, jiggling her legs so that she could get her two
brother's attention back because she could tell that Gabriel was ready to say
something snappish that he thought would make him sound authoritative. "After
Kev and I left to go find something to drink that didn't taste like moldy gym
socks, we got a little turned around in the hotel. Did you know that place had
an indoor pool? I didn't know and a gym, Kevin wanted to recreate that Ok Go
music video with the treadmills and stuff but I wasn't wearing the right shoes,
anyway we're going to totally do that at school and put it on Youtube."
"The point, Anna." Castiel said blandly, but she could hear the smile in his
voice and she relaxed even more into the bed with the knowledge that he was
really getting better and maybe normalcy was something they could really have
or at least as close as to normal as they could get.
"The point is, when we finally found the vending machines in that maze of a
hotel all of those football players that hate you and Dean were there with
their skeevy girlfriends because apparently they had snuck in rum and it didn't
pair very well with the punch from the dance so they wanted Cokes. I think they
had a room too because half of those girls were missing shoes they already were
kinda tipsy." Anna could feel Gabriel playing with the end of her hair, tying
two ends together into a little bow that he dropped when he noticed that she
had looked at him.
"When they saw me and Kev I guess they probably wanted to mess with you two,
but since it was just us they started in on how we got up to dance with Gilda
and Ash when you guys danced together. They just generally being jerks and we
were gonna leave, go back to the room and ignore them because it was pathetic,
Cas. God, it was so freaking sad and stupid and I know that there are people
like that everywhere, but really? Get over yourselves, so my brother likes to
make out with another boy who freaking cares?"
"You're like a walking inspirational poster," Gabriel said teasingly, tugging
on her red tresses lightly before picking up another chunk and twisting it
together with practiced motions.
"Well, it's stupid and if they had just dropped it then it would've ended with
us walking away right there and having a good night, but they started following
us back to the room and we didn't want them bothering everyone else so we just
went back to the dance which was pretty much just Coach Uriel trying to talk
the Sheriff into dancing with him which was weird! And the tall one, Alistair.
He just kept going on and on about Dean being a fag and how none of the
football team was safe with him around anymore and I think Kev just snapped
because he turned around and told him that he sounded like a jealous ex and
maybe Dean wasn't the only bicurious boy sporting shoulder pads."
Castiel felt his shoulders tense up at Anna's suggestion, it wasn't completely
far-fetched. It was usually Alistair starting something with them, Azazel just
followed his lead and most of the time the lanky footballer focused his
aggression on Dean, just referring to Cas as 'that fag or homo or queer',
depending on how creative he felt like getting with his insults. Rachel had
said it was called projection, it was what Daniel had done when he had called
Cas a fucking faggot before letting his teammates throw him down the stairs and
it was usually the last resort of someone who was scared of something about
themselves, seeing it in other people and hating them even more for it.
"Alistair swung first so that's probably why Kevin didn't get in as much
trouble as Uriel wanted him to," Anna continued, seemingly unaware of
realization that Castiel was having. "And Kev was just like, Bam! Pow! Whoosh!
He did this amazing spinning kicky thing and just whipped Alistair's legs out
from under him before he even got close to touching him. Azazel tried to step
up and he flipped him, you know that kid is so much bigger than him, Cas and
Kevin just flipped him on to his back without even trying. It was so amazing."
"Jesus," Gabriel said smiling in a goofy way at Anna before dropping the small
braid he had made in her hair on to the bed and clapping his hands briskly,
getting up and moving towards the bedroom door. "I'm making that boy some
cookies, pepper spray ain't got nothing on Kevin Tran's fists of fury!"
"What happened after that?" Castiel asked rolling his eyes as their brother
left the room, muttering something about needing to pick up chocolate chips on
his way to get Sam from the library.
"Well, y'know the Sheriff was there and her deputy stepped in when they started
getting up, making some pretty lame sounding threats towards Kev before she
smelled the alcohol on their breaths. And of course they're both underage so
handcuffs got involved and Gilda and Jo and everyone showed up just in time to
see Uriel trying to bribe her because if they went to jail and Principal Naomi
found out then they were probably not going to be allowed to wrestle or
whatever other homoerotic sport it is that happens in the spring."
"Baseball," Castiel supplied, thinking of Adam and how happy the sophomore
would be that he didn't have to deal with catching Azazel's wild pitches that
the other boy had said he thought the senior did on purpose to try to hit
players on the other team.
"Well, whatever. It was awesome and the perfect end to the perfect night,
seeing them shoved into the cop car was the best and I swear to god, I saw Mr.
Sanz smiling at the look on Uriel's face. I don't think I've ever see him
smile, Cas."
"He's a lot nicer than people think," Castiel said, jostling his sister as he
twisted beneath her legs so that he could reach his phone and call Dean, giving
him a break from work and telling him about the drama that they missed.
"Yea, I'm just happy I take French." Anna replied, sitting up and pulling his
pillow into her lap with a blush tingeing her cheeks. "Kevin kissed me
goodnight."
"Awwww," Castiel said ruffling Anna's hair around her head, ignoring the tiny
braids that Gabriel had peppered in as she talked. "He better have been a
gentleman or I'm going to kick his ass. Martial arts expert or not, you're
still my Anna-Banana."
"It was sweet, Cassie." Anna cooed, settling her chin into the hand that she
had propped up on her lap. "His mom was like right there waiting for him in the
car when he walked me to Gilda's car so it's not like he was going to try to
shove his tongue down my throat or anything, but it was nice. Tingly."
"That's how it's supposed to be."
"I know," She sighed looking off starry-eyed with a smile quirking her mouth
before she shook herself a bit and focused back on him with a roughish glint in
her eyes. "How was your night? Gilda told me she thought it was going to be
pretty eventful. After complaining about needing an eye transplant for about an
hour she said that you practically kicked them out so that you could ravage
Dean."
"That is not what happened."
"Alright, whatever so maybe I'm exaggerating, but are you going to tell me or
not?"
"Not." Castiel said firmly, he was definitely not going to talk about sex with
Anna, like ever. If he ever became an uncle he planned on just acting
blissfully ignorant about how his future niece or nephew came into being and
focus on spoiling the shit out of them instead.
"Boo," Anna pouted, sticking her tongue out at him and unfolding herself from
the bed in a business like way. "Well if you aren't going to share then I'm
going to go call Jo so that we can go to the mall. We're supposed to be
shopping for Christmas present for our boys. Have you figured out what to get
Dean yet?"
He had, but that option had pretty much gone out the window last night, not
that he regretted it at all, but it just meant that he had no idea what to get
the other boy now. Cas had been trying to surreptitiously figure out something
to get Dean, but no one made cassettes anymore and his boyfriend had told him
that under no circumstances was he ever going to replace Baby's defective tape
deck with something that wouldn't have almost kept them apart when Castiel had
first made the suggestion a couple of weeks earlier.
Cas had asked Sam, but the younger boy had just shrugged and told him that he
had gotten Dean a book about Rob Halford from Judas Priest and it had taken
Gabriel explaining the reasoning behind the gift before he had understood why
the younger Winchester was rolling with laughter on their living room couch. Jo
had said she was getting him another t-shirt because apparently that was her
standard gift for Dean and he now knew why their friend got all huffy anytime
she saw a grease stain from working in Bobby's garage on one of his boyfriend's
shirts at school. Ash and Garth had both told him that they usually got Dean
condoms and alcohol, high fiving each other when they had realized that those
gifts were still applicable given Dean's knew relationship status.
Meg's suggestion had been the sex, with Luc complaining in the background that
she did not need to turn Castiel into one of those partners who only had sex
with their significant other on birthdays and holidays. He had sensed some
underlying tension there, but after his morning with Dean feeling just as alive
and on fire with the other boy in the shower as he had the night before well,
he didn't think he was going to be able to keep his hands off of his boyfriend
for more than a couple of hours let alone weeks or months at a time.
Castiel groaned and covered his eyes dramatically, kicking his feet in
frustration where they were hanging off the edge of his bed and hating whoever
it was that had come up with the idea that a bunch of stores crammed into a
crowded, under ventilated building with not enough exits was the best way to
shop. He looked meaningfully at his younger sister who was still waiting on his
answer and she just sighed, bending down and tossing him his Converse from off
of the floor before stating that she was going to go get her coat and purse and
to meet her downstairs in fifteen minutes.
===============================================================================
Dean didn't think that it would be that easy to buy something like that, but a
couple of clicks and entering in the information in for his crappy, prepaid
debit card thing that he had gotten so that he could buy Cas's gift online and
he was done, smirking to himself because he was pretty sure it was the most
thoughtful gift anyone could have gotten anyone ever. Cas was going to love it,
he knew. Because Cas was the only one who knew how much that kind of thing
meant to him and now, even if they didn't make it past graduation like that
hateful girl in his Spanish class thought then there would always be this part
of Cas that he had all to himself, something to remind him of the other boy if
Cas broke up with him to go off to college somewhere.
He went to get the rest of the stuff he needed for his boyfriend's gift while
Cas was at his therapy session that Thursday after the dance, just over a week
left before Christmas and dinner with everyone at Ellen's like they usually
did. Jo had said he could stay the night over there that night, which hadn't
really come as a surprise because that's what he normally did on Christmas
because it was just too depressing being in Bobby's empty, drafty house when
the older man went over to take care of his dad bearing pie and a thermos full
of coffee even though Dean kept coffee at the apartment.
He figured his uncle had a few issues with trusting that John kept their house
stocked with groceries since he usually came home after Thanksgiving and
Christmas to find the fridge and pantry full of food that he knew his dad
hadn't bought. They didn't ever talk about it and Dean had learned long ago to
try to stop thanking Bobby for it, saying that it was unnecessary since he
could take care of him and Sam just fine, but around Christmas stuff always got
tight and he knew that the older man was well aware of that. The holidays
always meant that his dad wasn't working, spending more money than usual in the
bars and needing rides home almost every night from Dean or Bobby in the weeks
leading up to his mom and dad's wedding anniversary.
It hadn't been a big affair and Dean had only ever seen the one picture that
his dad had tried to get rid of a couple of years after his mom left when Sam
had found it shoved in between the pages of some big, dusty book Bobby had
brought over to their apartment and left when he had been making sure John
didn't drown in his own vomit in his sleep. The picture had been of his mom
clearly showing that she was pregnant with Dean, John, an older man that looked
too much like Sam to not be their grandfather and a woman that was probably his
grandmother even though both of his maternal grandparents had died shortly
after he was born.
His dad's mom had stopped speaking to John after his third failed stint in
rehab, but she still sent Sam and Dean cards with money for their birthdays and
holidays, calling every now and then to see how they were doing from her
ramshackle house in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That was where his granddad had
left her, going out for cigarettes one night and never coming back in the most
tired, cliché of walking out on your wife that could ever exist and she had
just never left, raising John there where he had met Bobby and the rest was a
big messy blur of history that the adults in his life never talked about around
him or Sam.
Dean carefully put his other purchases in the trunk of the Impala, covering
them with a blanket that he had started keeping back there so that he could sit
at the picnic tables while Cas did his morning jogs in the park, brushing the
snow off of the wet wood and trying to keep warm with just his coffee because
most of the Golden Girls were not willing to brave the weather and the slippery
ground to do their routine power walks in the morning. Millie still came and
Dean was happy because she was pretty much his favorite sassy old lady ever, he
imagined that she was what Jo would probably be like in fifty years with garish
track suits and mouth like a sailor as she gossiped with Dean about Cas and her
grandson that had just gotten married to his partner in California and all of
the trouble they were having with trying to adopt.
She had a picture where the two men were flipping off a bunch protestors who
were trolling in support of Proposition 8 over the summer in front of the San
Francisco courthouse where they had been married, smiling into their kiss and
looking like the only thing in the world they could give a fuck about was each
other. Millie had cackled madly at Dean's stunned expression and told him that
her grandson, Aaron, reminded her lot of Castiel and Dean would probably really
like the other man's muscle bound partner, Judah, who she said was a big
fantasy football guy. She had promised to have Dean and Castiel over the next
time the two men visited Lawrence, which didn't happen often but he was still
excited by the prospect of meeting a couple that had stuck together through
difficult times.
Dean knew that eventually the shit would hit the fan with his dad and he just
hoped that Cas was willing to stick with him through it, part of him wished
that it would happen sooner rather than later just so that they could get it
over with and move on to the real part of their lives. He felt weird thinking
about a future with Cas where his dad was this unknown blur, would he want
anything to do with him once he found out that both of his sons, not just Sam
had feelings for another man? If the way his dad was refusing to talk about his
younger brother and ignoring his presence during the few tense times they had
been in the apartment together was any indication of how things might go, well
then Dean had already started preparing himself for letting go of his dad too,
just like he had let go of his mom after finally realizing that she wasn't
coming back for him and Sam.
He didn't like the somber place that his thoughts were taking him, but when he
walked into the diner to see Castiel waiting for him in their usual booth,
writing in his journal and smiling at Barb when she refilled his coffee it was
like the sun coming out even though the sky had been cloudy and overcast for
days delivering the snow in the fluffy droves that the weather man had
promised. Cas was going to love his present, because Cas loved him and Dean
thought that if anyone deserved to have a place in the sky, it was his
beautiful boyfriend because who else could compete with the stars besides Cas?
Chapter End Notes
     Angst is coming? Can you feel it? It's a lot like winter, you can
     sense it like a Stark and it just looms in the distance. I'm starting
     to look towards an ending for this part of the story, maybe somewhere
     like 30 chapters is what I'm shooting for. There will be a second
     part, hell there will probably be three parts to this monster because
     its my baby and I have to watch it grow up and go to college and
     disappoint me before I finally get grandkids out of the whole rotten
     deal.
     But anyway, rant.
     Sorry that this is late and I know that you've probably been cursing
     my name, regretting the day you ever stumbled on to this and I'm
     sorry! But I've been working on something else big and that's no
     excuse, but when its done ITS DONE and I'm sure you'll like it when I
     finally finish it. I will be on time next week I promise...I love you
     all. :)
***** What's This? *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Rachel promised that she would answer the phone this time if he needed her and
Castiel kept reminding himself of that all through the surprisingly normal
Christmas festivities at Jo's house. He had asked his therapist for help with
his present for Dean and the thick manila envelope in his messenger bag that he
had brought his gifts for everyone in felt like a looming anvil about to drop
on his head and crush him.
But it was fine, really.
How could it not be fine when Ellen and Mrs. Milligan spent dinner slightly
tipsy from eggnog and giggling over pictures of that guy who played Thor that
Becky kept pulling up on her phone? Ash and Krissy had stopped by long enough
to eat more of the turkey that Gabriel and Bobby had deep friend in the
driveway, looking too much like children enjoying a science experiment for Sam
to not snap a couple of surreptitious pictures on his new phone and that was
perfectly perfect too. The younger Winchester was enjoying Instagram way too
much, but Castiel really only used his phone to call or text people anyway so
he had never understood the point of apps in the first place.
Dean had stayed close by his side all day, from the very minute that Castiel
had walked in the doorway of the Harvelle house bearing the large presents that
his family had gotten everyone since they hadn't even remembered to buy a
Christmas tree this year before all that was left was sad, Charlie Brown-esque
evergreens and store bought fake ones that Anna had just scowled distastefully
at. Sam and Gabe had hung up some lights on the outside of the house, but
really that was about the extent of the decorating that had occurred at the
Novak household this year which is to say that it was still more than Castiel
could ever remember his house in Pontiac ever being decked out for the
holidays.
Adam and Jo had pulled a disappearing act sometime after dinner, once everyone
was too stuffed and hung over on tryptophan to notice that the two had vanished
until about an hour later when Ellen had hollered at Jo to help her put away
the leftovers. Castiel texted Jo, asking where she was and the only reply he
had gotten was a weird little winky emoticon so he figured that maybe Meg's
advice about gifts hadn't just been given to him.
Kevin had made a brief appearance, stopping by long enough to give Anna her
gift and a kiss on the cheek under the watchful eye of both of her brothers as
well as the Winchesters who were just as protective of the younger girl as Cas
and Gabe were. Castiel had stopped the younger man on his way back out to where
his mom was waiting in their mini-van, the heater blowing valiantly in an
effort to deter the fog caused by her breathing, to thank Kevin for what he had
done after the dance and the younger man had just shrugged like it was nothing
before clapping him on the shoulder and wishing him a Merry Christmas.
Gilda and her parents were busy working at the city's only youth homeless
shelter for the holidays, volunteering with PFLAG because apparently most
teenagers who ended up homeless were LGBT. It had been just another thing that
Castiel had found himself thanking whoever it was out there that was watching
out for him that his situation hadn't actually gotten to that point. Yea, it
had been pretty fucking horrible, but he still had people on his side who
didn't want him to end up on the street.
Sam and Dean did too, which was calming since over the last week the younger
Winchester had been bringing whole boxes full of things over to the Novak
household, unloading books and knick knacks in to various areas of the house so
that they just blended in seamlessly with the things that had already been
there. Castiel had seen the sad look on Dean's face every time he noticed that
another one of his younger brother's things had migrated over to their house,
but so far his boyfriend hadn't said anything about it.
They had started working on their story for Chuck's class, sitting around in
flannel pajama pants and each other's shirts anytime that Dean wasn't working
with Bobby at the garage and drafting up a rough outline of what they wanted to
write about. Castiel had never been much of a writer; even the things he wrote
in his journal for Rachel seemed trite in comparison to the eloquent
descriptions that Dean had started coming up with to describe their characters.
The larger boy had waved off Cas's compliments about his writing, blushing
adorably and saying that he was just imitating the author's that he liked to
read.
Castiel had thought about getting Dean a book for Christmas, some first edition
Vonnegut something or other that the other boy would insist was too much, too
expensive just like he did when Castiel had bought dinner for his boyfriend at
the diner like he always did on the Thursdays they met after his therapy
sessions. He hadn't meant for it to seem like he was trying to turn Dean into a
charity case, but Sam had explained that that's probably what his older brother
had taken it as after they had gotten back to Dean's apartment and had a stupid
pointless fight about nothing in particular. He couldn't even remember what
started it only that it had ended with Dean shutting himself in the bathroom
until Cas had coaxed him out with promises of superhero movies and cookies.
They had made up in the way they usually did, with the slide of sweat-slick
skin on skin and gasping moans of each other's names. Castiel was less than
surprised by how much he enjoyed the feel of Dean's solid weight on top of him,
sinking into him with an addicting burn that burst into pleasure when his
boyfriend kissed him and held him and called him beautiful when they made love.
He knew that he had nothing else to compare it to, but still feeling Dean
shuddering and throbbing against him, knowing that he was the one who made the
other boy's green eyes hazy with desire and wide with amazement when he toppled
into his orgasm well it made him feel like they had been made to fit together,
like mismatched puzzle pieces that still formed a beautiful, meaningful
picture. Castiel could admit that Dean's poetic sentimentality was rubbing off
on him just a bit.
Their story was about a man who's best friend was an angel, Dean's idea of
course and so far Castiel's only contribution had been the idea that the angel
could hide his wings with a trench coat. His boyfriend had replied to that idea
with something along the lines of "Holy Jesus, fuck yes." Nodding and
scribbling at one of the pages in the same abused spiral that he and Dean used
to pass notes in Chuck's classroom.
Castiel was content to let Dean write the story, just watching him from where
he was usually perched sitting on the floor of Dean's room with his back
pressed against Sam's bed, reading a book or listening to music. He enjoyed
watching his boyfriend being genuinely engrossed in doing something he was
talented at, he figured that it was probably the same way that Dean was at
Bobby's garage but so far he had only seen Dean after he finished work, looking
masculine and greasy and tired in a way that made Castiel want to rip his
clothes off and throw the other boy down onto the nearest flat surface.
But that had only happened once in the time since they had started having sex
and it had been awkward with Dean hitting his head on the edge of the
nightstand next to his tiny bed and Castiel getting all tangled up in his
button-down shirt when he had tried to pull it over his head without
unbuttoning it. He figured that with enough practice the finer points of having
spontaneous sex would get easier and Castiel was more than willing to practice
as much as possible before they had to go back to school after the first of the
year.
But he hadn't gotten a book for Dean's present, well maybe it was similar to a
book. The thick ream of papers in the manila envelope that Rachel had given him
containing the police reports and statements from everyone that the authorities
had talked to about the events surrounding his suicide attempt was intimidating
just to look at. That was part of the reason he was just going to give it all
to Dean, let the other boy go through it in his own time because he knew that
it was a lot, it was so much that the thought of actually telling his boyfriend
about it out loud made him nauseous and dizzy.
It was nothing close to a panic attack, but they were warning signs that it
might happen if he tried to continue his story about how the marks on his back
had happened. Dean had been true to his word since Thanksgiving, not pushing
for the full story even though Castiel could tell that his boyfriend wanted to,
he could see it in the dejected expression that Dean got on his face when he
watched him get dressed and feel it in the way that Dean kissed and caressed
his scars like he would erase them if he could, take away the pain that had
brought them into existence in the first place and bear it all so that Castiel
didn't have to.
Cas wasn't sure what exactly had given him the idea for Dean's Christmas
present only that nothing at the mall seemed good enough for the other boy,
nothing else he had found expressed just how much he wanted Dean to know that
this was real. This was something that he didn't want to let go of and if one
thing was going to come between them then it was going to be his past and his
father and his fucked up fucking head. He had bared everything about himself
for Dean except for this one little thing, this thing that come February and
the trial was just going to be a bad nightmare that he had lived through, a
skeleton to be taken out of the closest and buried so that the ghosts of his
past would finally stop haunting him.
So it was a gamble at best to give the other boy the entire story of how he had
become so damaged because frankly, it freaked some people out. Castiel wasn't
blind, he had seen how the doctors and nurses at the hospital had looked at him
afterwards, keeping him in the psych ward for observation for a week to make
sure that he wasn't going to try to kill himself again while they pumped him
full of antibiotics in order to fight off an infection from the cuts on his
back and chest that his father and Raphael had let fester as part of his
punishment for loving someone they thought God wouldn't approve of.
Castiel could still remember how it had almost come as a relief to swallow down
the pain pills that his father had been withholding from him, medication that
had been prescribed so that he could deal with the stabbing pangs of breathing
caused by his cracked ribs from the incident at Lake Forrest. Pain that was
exacerbated by being forced to pray and genuflect until he had wanted to pass
out from the exhaustion and the pounding in his head just to get away for a
little bit from his father and Raphael's voices constantly throwing scripture
and sermon at him in an effort to make him "normal" again. Death had seemed
less scary then, more like a safe haven that would cradle him and rock him off
to sleep like someone did in only his most vague and hazy memories from
childhood.
Dean was either going to continue to be his new safe haven, one that made him
happy to be alive and thankful for the hell his life had been before because it
made him truly appreciate what he had now or he was going to freak out, leave
him to pick up the pieces of himself yet again when another person shattered
his trust so that he could try to build himself into someone who wasn't so
easily broken. Castiel knew he was stronger now and if Dean left it would hurt,
hurt more than probably anything else in his entire life ever had, but like
tempered steel it would only make him tougher every time he had to put himself
through the searing heat of loss again.
Long after dinner had wound down and Garth got tricked into putting away most
of the food with Becky helping intermittingly before she got distracted by
Ellen waving her back over to where the older woman had drunkenly commandeered
his friend's phone to show her something else risqué she had found on the
internet, Castiel found himself in the guest bedroom with Dean, second door on
the left. Part of his mind was yelling out a triumphant 'Fuck you' to Cassie
because the sounds that were coming out of Dean were so much better than
anything he had heard coming out of the bedroom on that night he had walked in
on his boyfriend with the other girl.
The rest of his mind was trying to focus on mapping out exactly how hard he had
to bite and suck at his boyfriend's neck in order to leave a hickey the size of
Alaska, it was a delicate process. But Dean had quite literally been asking for
it, after the fourth time that he had cornered Castiel with some mistletoe and
kissed him in a way that bordered on pornographic causing the rest of the
people who happened to be unlucky enough to be around to wretch and beg for
them to just get a room already, which they had so there.
With Dean pined underneath him it was easy to forget about the fact that come
morning, his boyfriend was going to know everything about him and then it would
be the larger boy's decision of whether or not Castiel was worth sticking
around for, sullied and fallen as he was. It was easy to focus instead on how
his boyfriend groaned and tightened his grip on his hair when Castiel muttered
that he loved him into the hot, damp skin of the other boy's neck. And how the
worldly, experienced, heartbreaking Dean Winchester was rutting against the
thigh that Cas had slipped between his legs, pressing his insistent erection
against Castiel's hip with stuttering, needy motions.
The smaller boy decided to hold onto this, this right here when Dean was
flushed and aroused, his lips kiss-swollen and his neck reddened from stubble-
burn, pupils blown wide in his green eyes when Castiel pulled back to start
fumbling with the fastenings on Dean's jeans. This was what he had become
addicted to, the feeling of being wanted by another person; the knowledge that
there was another person who felt the same way about him devoid of pity or
disgust. He was going to hold on to the memory of that feeling even if Dean
stopped loving him and left because it would be proof that someone out there
thought that he was worth something.
"Babe, no." Dean murmured, sounding pained and out of breath as he stilled
Castiel's frantic hands.
Castiel frowned at him, licking his lips and pouting that Dean had stopped him
when obviously this was what they both wanted, again. Not that there was a lot
of time when at least one of them didn't want the other to be naked, but they
had agreed that for the sake of productiveness that when one of them said
enough well then it was just going to have to wait; more often than not it was
Dean stopping their lust fueled encounters because he had to go to work or his
Dad was calling him from a bar somewhere for a ride home. Castiel didn't know
where the other boy got the will power to stop because he never wanted to, but
he had learned that Dean wasn't the type of person to start something that he
didn't plan on finishing later.
He sat back on his heels, wincing when his jeans pulled snugly across his own
erection and adjusting the bulge so that he could be more comfortable until he
got his breath back and his knees stopped shaking. Castiel ran a hand through
his hair, watching Dean's chest rise and fall underneath his Metallica t-shirt;
smirking when he shifted off the other boy and earned a stifled groan as Dean
caught him around the waist and pulled him up next to him on the bed, running a
finger along the curve of his jaw and down his neck until he was shivering from
the awe-struck look that his boyfriend was giving him.
"I want to give you your Christmas present," Dean said softly, sounding
uncertain and small in a way that Castiel wasn't used to hearing.
"I kinda thought that's what you were doing," Castiel replied mischievously,
pressing closer to the other boy so that he could settle his face in the crook
of Dean's neck.
"No, we have to take a field trip." Dean mumbled above him, tightening his arms
where they had circled around Castiel's waist for a second before climbing
quickly to his feet, pulling the smaller boy with him out of the bedroom and
towards the front of the house.
"Where are you two going?" Gabriel called from where he was leaning up against
Sam, dwarfed by the long arm that the younger man had slung around shoulders
and watching It's A Wonderful Life with Jo who had turned up at some point
while Dean and Castiel were otherwise occupied, sprawled gingerly in the
armchair nearby and Anna who was texting someone, probably Kevin.
"Presents," Cas said with a shrug, taking his jacket that Dean was holding out
to him impatiently by the front door.
"It's dark outside," Sam pointed out, sounding amused by how his older brother
was shuffling back and forth on his feet like an excited fifth grader. "And
cold."
"I realize that, Sammy." Dean snarked, making an exasperated noise when Castiel
went into the kitchen to get his messenger bag that he had already divested of
all of its contents except for Dean's gift. "Cas, c'mon."
Castiel grumbled under his breath about patience being a virtue, smiling
inwardly when he remembered Dean's use of the same phrase in a much more
graphic situation. He waved goodbye to his older brother, who he knew he
probably wouldn't see again until the morning when Gabe and Anna came back to
the Harvelle house to open presents since Ellen had not taken no for an answer
when she had told the Novaks that they were invited to breakfast in the
morning. Cas knew that he and his siblings were going to have to get used to
people caring about them for no reason other than they did, it wasn't something
any of them had much experience with from their much more stoic family in
Pontiac. It was just another reason why all of the new people in his life had
quickly turned Lawrence into home.
===============================================================================
Christmas was always a hard time for Bobby, not because he didn't like holidays
even though he had more bad memories than good to associate with the winter
months, but because it was pretty much the only two days a year, Christmas Eve
and Christmas, that John Winchester was sober.
He knew that the other man did it all for him, fought away the shakes and the
sweats that John got when the alcohol started to work its way out of his system
in order to be the person that Bobby used to know, even if it was only for a
little while. The guilt he felt for keeping this part of John all to himself
was usually what drove Bobby to drink himself stupid for the week after
Christmas, being no use to anybody and relying on Dean way more than he should
to get stuff done around the shop. He knew it was selfish and unfair and pretty
much the worst thing he had ever done to the two boys that he considered his
own, but Bobby had never been good at saying no to John, at walking away even
when it was obvious that it would be better for the both of them if he did.
On Thanksgiving he always went shopping by himself, killing the time between
leaving his house and picking up John from the seediest bars in Lawrence,
drunker than a skunk and going on and on about how Bobby ruined his life. But
on Christmas Eve, he and John made the drive over to the store in John's old
GMC truck, talking but not about all of the little things that they used to do
when they were kids, reminiscing about camping trips that became a lot more
meaningful when they became teenagers and it became a study in each other's
bodies just as much as it had always been about avoiding Bobby's drunken,
abusive dad.
When they were kids and John's laughs had still come as easy as breathing,
that's when Bobby had fallen in love with his best friend. It had taken John a
little longer to admit that he had more than platonic feelings for the weird,
shy Singer boy than had grown to become the most important person in his life
because he was the only one who hadn't cared about the gossip surrounding what
exactly might have caused Henry Winchester to leave his wife and the then four
year old John in Sioux Falls, disappearing without a trace one spring night and
never coming back.
They were each other's closest confidants and protectors, sticking up for each
other against school yard bullies, earning more black eyes and busted lips than
either of their mom's were comfortable with. That had turned into John
providing refuge for Bobby when things got really bad at home, when he couldn't
watch his mom cower and cringe away from every move his father made even though
the older man's words bruised just as badly as his fists did. Their first kiss
had been bloody and teary and more about Bobby needing to feel like somebody,
anybody cared about him enough to not think that he was worthless than actually
acting on the feelings for John that he had kept pent up over the years.
Their second kiss had been just as bloody, but that's because he had punched
John for calling him a faggot when Bobby had told him to admit that he wanted
whatever this thing was between them just as badly as he did. That led to years
of hiding and self-loathing on John's part until finally their luck ran out and
Bobby's dad had come at them with a shotgun, eyes blazing and spewing the worst
hate-speech imaginable. The gun going off had been an accident, but John had
still run anyway.
Bobby stayed away from him for two years, receiving the odd letter in the mail
postmarked from Lawrence, Kansas, but it was the call that brought him running.
The call where John had been crying and apologizing and telling him he loved
him but that he had just been so lonely and drunk and had royally fucking
fucked up. He had met Mary then, wishing that she had never been dragged into
their mess and hating John just a little bit for falling for the first skirt to
bat her eyes at him.
Later he would admit that Mary was a lot more than that, that she genuinely had
feelings for John and maybe it hadn't been love, but if he had left after the
wedding it probably could have been someday. But he had been stubborn and angry
and unwilling to let go of John even though he was married now with a son
because the other man had been his first. He might have inherited his father's
penchant for self-destructive behavior just a little bit when he bought the old
scrap yard on the outskirts of town and started up the garage, hiring John as
his first employee because hell, he had a family to support now and Dean was
going to be the closest thing he ever had to a kid so he wanted to make sure
his friend's son was taken care of.
And it gave him a place where he and John could pick up where they left off,
ignoring the judgmental looks that Rufus gave them when they tumbled out of
Bobby's house and into the garage, hastily tucking in clothing and trying to
act like the other employee hadn't just caught John cheating on his wife with
another man. The drinking started then with John, but Bobby ignored it because
he was just happy to have the other man back in his life no matter how much he
may have felt like a home-wrecker for smiling in Mary's face when she came by
with baby Dean to see John during his lunch breaks.
When she got pregnant with Sam, Dean having just learned how to walk, taking
his first steps in the living room of his house with a look of fierce
determination on his face that was so similar to how John looked sometimes that
it nearly broke Bobby's heart, the betrayal was almost too much for him. He
could admit now that it was stupid of him to think that John wouldn't sleep
with Mary, she was his wife after all and if he didn't then she would get
suspicious, tell the whole town about the homosexuals in their midst and John
would run again; farther and faster than the first time and maybe the next time
he wouldn't start to miss him.
That wasn't a chance that Bobby could take, so he feigned happiness; gratefully
accepting the designation of uncle from Mary and John when the gangly, long-
limbed Sam joined the Winchester family, choking up when the baby griped his
finger and smiled that thousand-watt smile that Bobby hadn't seen on the
teenage Sam's face in a while until Gabriel came along. He wasn't lying when he
told Rufus he was worried about history repeating itself.
John had become an eerie, twisted shell of his former self, something that
Bobby could only blame himself for since after Sam was born he started to pull
away, deciding that it was better for the entire Winchester clan if he just
faded out of their lives as much as possible. He did it partially for Mary who
just trusted him so damn much that he couldn't keep lying to her, but mostly he
did it for the boys because they deserved to have a father that they looked up
to and respected, someone who was a better man than his own father ever had
been.
The other man hadn't understood, blaming Bobby's distance on him not loving him
anymore, which wasn't true; if anything Bobby loved John too much wanting to
consume him and possess him in ways that John could never commit to as long as
he was with Mary and it scared the ever-loving shit out of him. So he put
himself in the role of the impassive boss, spending as little time with John
alone as possible until finally the other man stopped trying to corner him and
kiss him and force something that couldn't, shouldn't happen between them
anymore.
The drinking got worse with John taking out his frustrations on Mary and the
boys and that had never been Bobby's intention so he opened up his home to Dean
and Sam, sheltering them from their mother and father's fighting that he was
the cause of to begin with. The other man stopped coming to work, probably
because he couldn't stand to be around Bobby anymore without calling him some
stupid, uninventive homophobic slur that he suspected John was directing more
at himself, falling back onto the self-hatred that had served him so well as a
kid when he blamed himself for his father leaving until Bobby had convinced him
that no one was at fault for that except Henry.
A lot of people thought that Mary left because John had just gotten so
unbearable that of course she couldn't stand it anymore, only leaving Sam and
Dean behind because she knew that they had Bobby and Ellen and a good portion
of the community to help them since Mary had been so well-loved in Lawrence
before she married John. But Bobby knew the truth, even though he was pretty
sure that John didn't.
She stopped to talk to him on her way out of town, to blame him is more like
it, for turning John into this person who couldn't be happy about anything
anymore and for making him hate his own son because he saw something in Dean
that he had seen in himself when he and Bobby used to hold hands and skip rocks
in Sioux Falls, not realizing that it wasn't something that little boys did
with each other until John's mother had gently admonished them for it. He
realized then that she had known, had probably always known about him and John,
but had been willing to overlook it for the sake of appearances so that her
kids could have a semi-normal family, something he knew Mary had lacked growing
up just like he and John had.
Bobby had promised her then that he would do better, that he would take care of
Sam and Dean because he owed them some semblance of stability and not asking
why she didn't take them with her because he knew, he had seen how hard it was
for John's mom to raise just him by herself and he didn't blame Mary for
thinking that they would be better off without the bitterness that had wedged
itself between their mother and father, constantly forcing them to pick a side.
He had thought about asking John to come live with him then, about patching up
what was left of the relationship that they had once had but the other man had
driven himself into such a drunken stupor after Mary left that John was lucky
Bobby hadn't killed him for everything he said to him that first night he
picked him up from the drunk tank, thanking the then Deputy Jody Mills for not
pressing charges against his friend for being so goddamned stupid.
After years of resentment, fueled by loneliness and anger and love that still
clung stubbornly to every fiber of his being, Bobby was just thankful for the
times that John wasn't drunk.
Even if it was only for a couple of days, even though they didn't talk about
the past that had brought them to this point in their lives; to the grey hairs
and the bloodshot eyes and the voices that had gotten gravely from alcohol and
screaming at each other every time he and John got in a fight that sometimes
ended with John lurching across the seat of whoever's car they were in and
pressing their mouths together in a desperate, bruising kiss that he wouldn't
remember in the morning.
Bobby always remembered those kisses how they tasted like whiskey or cheap
bourbon and smelled like John's sweat and familiarity and home, just like he
remembered the ones that had started all of this and the ones that happened on
accident and all of the ones in between when they had been happy and hopeful,
making plans for a life together that would never happen because there was
always something standing in their way. Christmas was hard because it reminded
him of how things could have been, if they both had had the guts to stop
running and hiding for once in their lives.
He learned not to question how long it would be until a drunken, angry John
called him a fag again, because it was going to happen and it was going to hurt
just like it always did. Instead he tried to be grateful that John wasn't as
bad as his father, but that didn't keep him from forgetting what he had said to
Rufus on Thanksgiving; when he had called his old friend in for backup after
Sam had come to him with a hand shaped red-mark on his face from John and Bobby
had been seeing a million different shades of red that John had the nerve to
hit his son for liking another man.
He knew that history sometimes repeated itself; empires rose and fell, cities
burned while assholes fiddled, but he sure as hell hoped that it didn't happen
this time.
===============================================================================
Dean was dying of nervousness inside as he drove Cas over to Bobby's scrap
yard, leading his boyfriend into the maze of twisted metal and rusted out
vehicles until he got to the spot that had the crappy, not even off-white
anymore 1982 Buick convertible whose heater still worked if you put a battery
into the car. He had been planning this all week, picking out a spot that was
far enough away from the lights of Bobby's house that they would be able to see
the stars without any problems.
He had propped up the cheap, but still decent telescope that he had brought on
the dash, angling it through the part of the car where the windshield used to
be before the accident that had twisted the car's rear had put the Buick out of
commission for good. There was a blanket folded up in the passenger seat that
Dean had covered with a tarp after clearing them of snow the day before and all
of the certificates had arrived in the mail on Tuesday, but the only thing he
had framed was the star chart because it was what Cas would need to find the
damn thing on his own if he wanted to.
Castiel frowned confusedly at the setup, his hands shoved into the pocket of
his pea coat as he shuffled his feet in the mostly untouched snow that
surrounded the vehicles in this part of the scrap yard. His messenger bag was
looped over one shaking shoulder and Dean rushed to take it from his boyfriend,
opening up the passenger side door of the broken down vehicle and moving the
tarp so that Cas could sit down without getting soaked through his clothes from
snow.
He ran around the other side of the car and ducked down under the steering
console, sparking the wires together that would start the vehicle and the
heater since the key had long ago been lost somewhere never to be seen again.
Dean climbed in and settled the messenger bag on the floorboard at his and
Castiel's feet before turning towards his boyfriend and draping the blanket
over their laps.
"You're being very thorough, Dean." Castiel remarked drily and Dean just smiled
when he heard his own nervousness reflected in his boyfriend's voice. Cas
always got the most sarcastic when he was anxious about something and it took
everything he had not to leave his boyfriend in suspense for a couple of more
minutes.
"Well, I don't want you freezing or anything," Dean replied firmly, pulling the
other boy flush against his side with an arm around his shoulders, just like
they did when they were waiting for the Impala to warm up. The heater of the
Buick was blowing valiantly, but without a roof a lot of the warm air was just
steaming out into the frigid night around them.
"I must be doing something right if you're giving me my present early," Castiel
muttered, pressing his face into Dean's neck with a contended sigh.
"You're perfect, sweetheart," Dean said, meaning it with every single fiber of
his being because he still didn't know what he had done to deserve someone so
wonderful and kind as the boy sitting next to him. "But, I did need for it to
be dark so that I could give you your gift, it was either do it early or you
were going to be stuck waiting until tomorrow night."
"You made a wise decision, Winchester." Castiel said lowly, kissing his neck on
the tender spot that Dean could still feel throbbing duly in time with his
pulse where Castiel had been so intent on marking him earlier. "I can be very
impatient."
"Trust me, I know." Dean groaned, pulling back from the other boy so that he
could try to focus on something other than how good it would feel to have
Castiel's mouth somewhere else right now. He smirked at the unconscious growl
his boyfriend let out before his attention was diverted from Dean's neck to the
night sky as the larger boy gestured to the twinkling constellations above
them. "There's your present, babe."
He watched as Cas gazed at the sky above him, his mouth turning down into a
frown and his head tilting in confusion before he looked back at Dean. "I don't
get it."
Dean shook his head and chuckled to himself, because that's kinda what he had
hoped his boyfriend would say. He reached behind them into the backseat of the
Buick, tossing the tarp farther back over the crumpled trunk so that he could
reach the framed star chart which he settled into his boyfriend's lap with a
triumphant smirk. Castiel's star was right near the Andromeda constellation,
something he had done on purpose since it was a reminder of that first night
that he had walked the other boy home after movie night, when they talked about
the vibrating that Dean now felt under his skin anytime anyone even mentioned
his boyfriend. He pointed out the dot of light that was circled in red on the
paper and then raised his hand up to where he knew the star was because he had
been looking at it all week, marveling at how it had a faint blueish tinge to
it that was the exact same shade as Castiel's eyes.
"Right there," Dean said hearing his boyfriend gasp in understanding beside
him, seeing him raise a hand up to cover his mouth beside him. "That's your
star, Cas."
"Show me," Castiel said softly and Dean double checked the telescope to make
sure that the star was centered in the circle of magnification before putting a
guiding hand on the other boy's back and pressing gently until Cas leaned
forward to look through the eyepiece.
The other boy was silent as he looked through the telescope and Dean could feel
the muscles in Castiel's back tensing through his coat, drawing inward until
both of the other boy's hands were wrapped around the plastic telescope right
above the eyepiece, knuckles white and shoulders hunched in a way that made his
heart sink. Maybe this wasn't as good an idea as he had thought that it would
be.
Dean had told Cas how much astronomy meant to him, that it was something that
just him and Sam and their mom had shared because John was usually too busy
staring at the bottom of a bottle to bother looking at the sky. His boyfriend
knew that it wasn't something he told a lot of people about because it hurt to
think of a time when his mom still cared about them, but that had never stopped
Dean from looking out his window at night waiting for the shooting star that he
could wish on to make his mom come back or the one that would make his dad
happy.
Maybe this was too much; it was like a forever thing. That star was always
going to be Castiel's, there was never going to be a time now that he wouldn't
look up and think of Dean and this moment and their time together which had
kinda been the point because he wanted Cas to always want to look at the stars
with him. But Cas wasn't making happy noises or kissing him like he thought he
would, in fact, Dean was pretty sure that the other boy was crying and wasn't
that just the fucking worst thing that could be happening right now? Did that
mean that Cas had already planned on not spending forever with him? That this
was too grand of a gesture for a fleeting high school romance because that's
all that his boyfriend thought this was?
"Talk to me, Cas." Dean choked out, rubbing his boyfriend's back in soothing
circles because if he didn't do something with his hands then he was going to
tear his own hair out waiting on a response.
"It's beautiful," Castiel sniffled out, pulling back and wiping at the tears
that had streaked silently down his face as he looked through the telescope.
"It's the best gift I've ever gotten. I love it, Dean."
Dean let out the breath that he hadn't realized he had been holding and leaned
in to kiss the other boy, just a soft brush of his lips against Cas's chapped
pink ones that held the promise of a future that would burn as bright as the
stars if that's what his boyfriend wanted. He was smiling when he pulled away,
until he saw that Castiel was still crying, huffing softly beside him and
looking up at the sky with the most miserable, distraught expression that he
had ever seen.
"Babe, what's wrong?" Dean asked grasping onto the fingers of Castiel's hand
that he had dropped despondently into his lap, griping the other boy tight so
that he wouldn't run away from him.
"Nothing, it's nothing Dean." Castiel said, wiping furiously at his eyes and
forcing a shaky smile onto his face. "Do you want your gift? I brought it with
me."
"Sure, Cas." Dean replied softly, not really understanding why his boyfriend
was so upset if he liked the present so much. "I mean, it can wait until
morning if you want. It's not a big deal or anything, I just wanted you to see
yours first. I thought it would mean more if it was just you and me alone when
I gave it to you."
"Dean, its perfect. I swear, its fantastic." Castiel replied, pulling him into
a teary, trembling kiss breathing hot into Dean's mouth and choking back a sob
before he ducked down to rummage something out of his messenger bag.
He watched as his boyfriend pulled out a battered looking manila envelope that
had Castie's name written on the reference tab, stuffed full to bursting of
papers and held closed with a wide, overstretched rubber band. Castiel bit his
lip, smoothing out the curled edges of the folder with shaking hands before he
shoved the whole thing into Dean's lap and dove back towards the telescope,
pressing his face firmly against the eyepiece and offering no other
explanations to the larger boy about what the hell was going on.
"So this is it then?" Dean asked, trying to not sound disappointed because he
wasn't really. The fact that Cas had gotten him anything was more than he
could've hoped for because he considered it a miracle anytime he got to wake up
with the other boy wrapped in his arms, but he sure as fuck was confused.
Castiel nodded against the telescope, being careful not to jostle it from the
position that Dean had put it in. "It's all there. A lot of it is the same
stuff over and over; they may have been assholes, but they did their jobs.
Never let it be said that the Pontiac police department isn't scrupulous."
He frowned down at the folder at the mention of police, whipping off the rubber
band and leaving it hanging loosely off of his wrist as he started leafing
through the pages and pages of police reports and witness statements, documents
that looked professional and intimidating with terrifying words like 'abuse'
and 'hate-crime' and 'coercion'. Dean was a couple of pages in, too engrossed
to notice the iron grip that Castiel had on his thigh until it started to hurt
from the other boy's fingernails pressing into his skin through the denim of
his jeans, when he saw the words that made his heart stop.
Suicide attempt.
Dean tried to breathe, but couldn't. The cold air was like knives tearing at
his chest and throat as he fought to reconcile what he knew about Cas, his
beautiful, happy, loving boyfriend with the person described in the pages he
was holding; someone who was so desperate and unhappy and hopeless that he had
swallowed a bottle of Vicodin in order to punish himself for something that his
family had tried to convince him was sinful. The other boy had told him that
the marks on his back had happened when he was sad and lonely, but that didn't
even begin to describe the horrors that Dean was reading on page after page of
statements written out in Castiel's messy, scribbled handwriting.
The marks on his back were from something called a scourge, Castiel had done
those himself, using the weapon to mortify his flesh and pray and atone under
his father's watchful stare while the Novak patriarch urged him to keep going
until God forgave him. The scar, the cross, on his chest was from his older
brother, Raphael, and that had been the one and only time the two other men had
touched Cas. Apparently the eldest Novak son had been so overcome with the need
to save his younger brother that he had thought having the Lord's mark on him
forever would remind Castiel of what he was losing by choosing to be attracted
to other men.
It wasn't a choice and the fact that Cas had almost died because two people who
were supposed to care about him and protect him had convinced him of that made
Dean's hands shake with rage, crinkling the papers in his hands as he fought to
keep himself from ripping them to shreds. This explained so much, why Cas was
so closed off when he had first come to Lawrence, the panic attacks, the
anxiety medication, the therapy sessions. All of it made so much more sense now
and Dean just needed to know that it wasn't something that his boyfriend would
ever consider doing again.
"You...tried to...kill yourself." Dean stated, forcing the words out because he
knew that Cas would want to know that he knew the whole story. That had to have
been why his boyfriend had given him all of this in the first place, because he
trusted that Dean could handle knowing the truth not because he was trying to
ruin the holidays, but because Christmas meant family and safety and home and
Cas had found all of those with him.
Beside him Castiel nodded, tipping his head back and keeping his gaze locked
onto the sky even though all Dean wanted to do was reassure him that he would
never be put in a position where he felt that hopeless and powerless ever
again. But first he had to ask, just to chase away the snakes roiling in his
stomach because he was never going to be able to sleep again if the thought
still even flittered through his boyfriend's head.
"You don't still want to..." Dean started softly, gusting out a relieved breath
when Castiel shook his head quickly beside him, the determined set of the other
boy's jaw letting him know that it was true and he didn't need to know anything
else. "Good. Because you don't get to do that, Cas. You don't get to just check
out and leave anymore."
"I know," Castiel said softly beside him, glancing over with eyes that still
held unshed tears and easing his grip on Dean's thigh until he could feel the
blood throbbing in the spots where his boyfriend's fingers had been digging in
painfully. "I'm sorry."
"NO." Dean barked forcefully, letting the papers and folder fall to the
floorboards of the derelict vehicle so that he could cup his boyfriend's face
in his hands because they didn't matter, none of it mattered to him because it
was in the past and all that was important now was Cas and making his boyfriend
understand that he didn't have anything to apologize for.
"None of it was your fault, do you hear me sweetheart? Not a single fucking
thing. They did it. Your dad and brother are the ones who deserve every rotten
thing that happens to them and all you deserve is to be happy. You've been
through so much and you're so strong and beautiful, I don't know why you picked
me Cas but all you do is make me better. You're amazing and you mean the world
to me, so if you ever feel like that again then you have to promise me that you
won't try to hurt yourself. Do anything else, but don't deprive this world of
someone who is going to change it for the better."
"You can't know that, Dean." Castiel muttered, rolling his eyes at him but
leaning into Dean's touch with a smile ghosting at the corners of his mouth.
"I can fucking know that," Dean replied firmly, pressing a kiss to his
boyfriend's forehead and sending a wordless thanks to the stars that fate had
intervened to save Castiel before it was too late. Anna was going to get the
biggest, bestest birthday presents for the rest of her life from Dean if it was
the last thing he did. He dropped his voice as ran his thumbs over Cas's
cheekbones, clearing away the last of the tears as the other boy twisted his
hands into Dean's jacket. "Promise me, Cas."
"I make a lot of promises to you, Dean." The other boy said softly, sighing
heavily and letting a shiver run through him as the cold finally settled into
his bones now that the adrenaline laced fear over Dean's reaction had subsided.
"Just one more, babe." Dean said even though he knew it was a lie, someday he
would ask Cas for more promises ones that weren't driven by the fear of losing
the other boy but instead by the desire to keep them together for the rest of
their lives, for now though this was the last one he needed to hear to get him
through the night.
"I promise, darling." Castiel said, looking back up towards his star, to the
piece of the universe that he would always have to remind him of how much Dean
cared about him and he silently promised himself if things ever got bad again,
this star would pull him through it, all the way to the other side of the fire
and back to the person who loved him despite his faults and his past. "I
promise."
Chapter End Notes
     I know, okay. I know. The Bobby/John pairing isn't popular, but I
     needed it in order to keep you all from hating Mary and hating John
     completely and hating Bobby because shit happens and people fuck up
     because they think they are doing the right thing. No one in this
     story is perfect 100% of the time, except for maybe Kevin just
     because he his. Advanced Placement and all of that, let me know what
     you think. Even if its just you being freaked out by Bobby/John, let
     me know because I like to hear from you guys.
     Also please forgive me for by bad, Nightmare Before Christmas
     inspired title, I cackled madly to myself over it because all I could
     picture was Castiel singing a version of it when he had his first
     human Christmas. My mind goes to weird places sometimes.
***** What's Expected of You *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Dean never got his hopes up for the holidays, he was just content to get the
same old gifts from all of his friends; the t-shirts from Jo and joking gifts
from Ash and Garth when his two friends teased him for his rampant alcoholism
that was much less rampant now that he was with Cas and for his promiscuity,
also a non-issue now that he was with Cas, but he figured that it was the
thought that counted. Sam always got him books and that still held true when he
unwrapped his present from his younger brother to find a book about Judas
Priest.
Bobby usually got him something practical, some part that he needed for the
Impala or just straight up cash if his dad's drinking had been particularly out
of hand lately. Which it had so that's what he was expecting when he and Cas
finally stumbled back to the Harvelle house, late for breakfast with disheveled
hair and matching stubble because they had only peeled themselves out of the
bed in Bobby's guest bedroom to answer the phone calls from Jo and Gabriel
since they just wouldn't stop no matter how comfortable and content they were
wrapped up together.
After learning how close he had come to losing Cas, Dean couldn't get the other
boy into the house fast enough; stripping off his boyfriend's clothes with a
frantic desperation that bordered on panic because he just needed to reassure
himself that Cas was there and safe and not going to leave him anytime soon.
Castiel had forced him to slow down, holding his hands firmly at his sides so
that they could make it up the stairs to the bed with more clothes on than Dean
had wanted.
It was almost as if his boyfriend could tell how much that folder of papers had
frightened him, because Cas kept muttering soothing things in his ear and
stroking his hair and shushing the broken, dry-eyed sobs that were wracking
through him when the other boy tried to pull too far away from him. Dean hadn't
known why he was freaking out so badly, Cas promised him that he wouldn't do it
again, but still his emotions were flying between fury at his boyfriend's
father and brother who had hurt him so badly and fear the other boy would try
to do it again.
People lied all of the time and obviously it was something Castiel was still
struggling with or he wouldn't need the medication and the therapist. Dean just
needed to make sure now more than ever that he didn't do anything to drive Cas
towards his breaking point, because he was a fuck up and there was no way he
deserved to be with someone as strong and as brave as the other boy. He needed
to be better, he needed to be the best because that's what Cas needed.
Dean kept their kisses close, moving his mouth off of Castiel's long enough to
just get their shirts over their heads and all he wanted to say was that he
loved him because he did, he so fucking did but Cas was saying it for him and
all Dean could do was nod and move his mouth down the other boy's jaw to kiss
reverently and breathe in the clean, minty cold scent of the other boy because
he just wanted to be wrapped up in it for the rest of his life. They were going
to be so happy, he was going to make it happen if it was the only good thing he
ever did.
They made love slowly in the darkened guest bedroom and Dean was thankful that
Bobby always hung out with his dad on Christmas because he kept telling Cas
that he was beautiful and didn't bother trying to be quiet because he wanted
his boyfriend to know exactly how much he enjoyed it when Castiel touched him
or moved against him so that the other boy would know that he mattered and
needed to stick around if for no other reason than Dean needed him to. He
needed Cas like he needed oxygen or food, he would die if something happened to
the other boy.
The smaller boy took control of the situation because Dean couldn't seemed to
get past the horrible aching hole that opened up in his chest anytime his
thoughts strayed back towards losing Cas. He moved over the larger boy,
mouthing along his muscles and across the flat planes of his hipbones murmuring
that he wasn't going anywhere and telling him to breathe and that they didn't
need to let it ruin their night. All Dean could do was arch his back and force
out the bad thoughts so that they wouldn't taint anymore of their memories
together. It was the past and it didn't matter.
They didn't fall asleep until the early morning hours because Dean couldn't
stop touching Cas, tracing the lines of his body and mapping out his moles and
scars so that he would never forget anything about the other boy and all of the
reserved grace that had been overlooked or unappreciated by the people that had
wronged his boyfriend. And Cas was really just as much at fault for them being
late to breakfast because it's not like he stopped him or anything, at least
that's what Dean told Ellen when he tamped the snow off his boots and wandered
into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
He hadn't been expecting to see Bobby sitting there, looking just as grizzled
and tired and red-eyed as his dad did sometimes after a hard and heavy night of
drinking, sporting a black eye and a busted lip. Dean clenched his jaw when
Bobby waved off his questions about what had happened and just told him to top
off his coffee because he had had a long stinkin' night. John had never hit
Bobby and as far as Dean knew he had never hit his mom or Sam either. He had
always been content to be his dad's punching bag if it meant that everyone else
was spared and most of the time it was just a slap or a push or a grip on his
arm or wrist that was just the wrong side of painful. Nothing as bad as how
Bobby looked and Dean knew his dad was the only person who could've done it.
Dean grabbed his coffee and went to find Sam and Gabe sitting in the living
room, shaking wrapped boxes of Christmas presents like a couple of excited ten-
year olds and having a surprisingly serious discussion about what had happened
to Bobby.
"He doesn't usually come back for presents," Sam was saying to Gabriel when
Dean walked up, hurriedly setting down the gift he had been shaking and
crossing his arms over his chest. "Usually he stays with dad until Dean and I
get home and most of the time dad's passed out by the time we get there. I
think they got into a fight or something."
"Do they fight a lot?" Gabe asked, shaking a small box particularly hard and
making a started face when it clinked at him alarmingly.
"No," Dean sighed, sipping at his coffee and rubbing a hand over his face. He
arched his neck to see Cas sitting at the breakfast table with Bobby, smiling
at something the older man was saying to him so maybe it wasn't as bad as it
looked. "I mean they argue, but mom and dad fought a lot more and I know he's
gotten into bar fights and stuff, but I don't think John's ever hit Bobby."
"I just have a bad feeling about this," Sam said, brushing his hair behind his
ear and clearing his throat when Bobby and Castiel were ushered into the room
by Ellen and Jo.
Dean nodded in agreement, but forced a smile on his face when Cas plopped down
gingerly beside him, nudging at Gabriel with his foot so the older man would
scoot over on the floor so Anna could sit beside him, having appeared suddenly
from down the hallway.
"Where were you?" Cas asked his younger sister.
"Well you took off and I know Tweedle Dee and Dum like to have the house to
themselves so I did everyone a favor and commandeered the guest bedroom," Anna
said with a shrug, doing a double take at Bobby's black eye and shooting a
worried look at Jo who was watching her mom fuss over the older man.
"Let's get this show on th' road," Bobby said gruffly, batting Ellen's hovering
hands away from his face and jutting his chin at the Christmas tree and the
presents that had gone unmolested by Sam and Gabriel underneath. "C'mon I need
some goddanged Christmas cheer."
By the time that everyone had a sizable pile of presents in front of them,
everyone except for Bobby because he had never liked getting gifts and this was
the first time that Dean could remember the older man actually being around
when they opened presents, Dean was really feeling his lack of sleep getting to
him and if the way Cas was leaning heavily onto his shoulder was any
indication, his boyfriend was worn out too. Cas was still smiling goofily at
Gabe and Sam who had gotten him a record player with some records and fiddling
with the scarf that Ellen had knit him and Dean just wished that someone would
take a freaking picture because he wanted to remember the moment forever.
But everyone was too busy playing with their gifts; Anna and Jo were spraying
perfume onto each other's wrists and making little girly approving sounds, Sam
was blushing at something that he had said wasn't appropriate to pull out of a
gift bag that Gabriel had gotten him and Dean didn't even want to think about
what that might be, Ellen was whispering with Bobby about something and looking
worried even though the earrings that Jo had gotten her were sparkling and
dangling from where she had already put them in.
Bobby shook his head one last time before clapping his hands together briskly
and shooing Ellen off of the arm of the chair he was sitting on. "Alrigh', I
got something else for you boys, but it's out in my car so put yer damn coats
on or something and come on."
"Someone is grumpy," Gabriel muttered, earning a quick shove from Sam as he
lumbered to his feet from where he had been sitting cross legged on the floor
next to the other man. The older man sputtered dramatically as he righted
himself before shaking Castiel's knee playfully. "Guess I know where my moose
got his horns."
"Shut up, Gabe." Dean grumbled following his brother and Bobby towards the
front of the house, pausing long enough to snatch his jacket off of the coat
rack and hear Castiel tell his older brother that moose had antlers not horns.
He couldn't help but smile at how awesome his life was lately, with his amazing
boyfriend and once he figured out what was going on with his dad and Bobby
everything would be perfect just like it was always supposed to be. Dean
watched his surrogate uncle rummage around in the trunk of his old rust-spotted
Chevelle, moving boxes and bags to the side as Sam frowned and shivered beside
him with his arms crossed over his chest. The older man ended up pulling out a
guitar case and a smallish black box from underneath a majority of the things
in his trunk, hefting them up to put them on top of the trunk as he slammed it
shut.
"Sam," Bobby began, gesturing apologetically at his trunk and scratching at his
beard in an agitated way. He sighed heavily and shook his head before offering
the lanky, younger boy the box and rapping on his car with his knuckles as he
watched Sam open it.
It was a bracelet, a charm bracelet like the kind that girls wore and collected
and obsessed over when they were younger, but never really had an occasion to
use once they grew out of their slumber party and gossiping about who the
cutest boy in class was phase. Dean tried very hard not to laugh at the look on
his brother's face when he pulled it out of the box, but even Bobby was
chuckling and it was more than moderately priceless to see Sam turn bright red
and pouty faced before he put it on and stuck his tongue out at the other two
men.
"It was yer mom's," Bobby said between laughing, wiping at the corners of his
eyes and wincing just a little when he brushed against the tender swollen flesh
around his blackened left eye. "She uh...she left it with me and well, she
would've wanted you to have it Sam. Her dad gave it to her to protect her and
since yer named after him and all I thought it was fittin'.
"You think I need protecting, Uncle Bobby?" Sam asked, clearing his throat when
it came out rough with emotion and weak sounding.
"That's the other thing," Bobby began, his smile disappearing to be replaced
with an expression that was much more thunderous and disapproving. "All of the
rest of the stuff in my trunk, it's yers Sammy."
"What do you mean it's his?" Dean asked, pointing at the Chevelle like it had
just personally insulted him. "Why is his stuff in your car and not in our
bedroom?"
"I mean he can't go home," Bobby said, his shoulders sagging in defeat. "I
didn't want to have to tell you two this until later today, but dammit I can't
have you going home to him, Sam. Not with the way he was talking last night,
first time I've seen him drunk on Christmas since yer mom left and it was just
as bad this time as it was then. If I hadn't found him before Jody, John
would've ended up in jail last night. He was just looking for a fight."
"And you gave it to him," Sam said resignedly, running a hand through his hair
the bracelet's charms clinking cheerily on his wrist and nodding at Bobby like
he had been expecting this. "I get it, Bobby. You don't have to feel bad about
it or anything; I just wish that you hadn't gotten hurt by him trying to keep
me safe. I can take care of myself."
"Oh I got my fair share of hits in too," Bobby groused, trying to downplay how
serious the situation actually was. "But yer dad never was much of a fighter
anyway; he was always the more poetic of the two of us growin' up."
"What was he saying Bobby?" Dean asked not wanting to drop the topic that his
uncle and brother already seemed willing to accept at face value, like it was
fair for his dad to disown Sammy just because of Gabriel. Admittedly Dean had
seen this coming as far back as his brother coming out to him, but that still
didn't make it right.
"I'd rather not ruin the holidays anymore than I already have to with all of
this shit," Bobby snapped, effectively ending the conversation by using the
tone that Dean had learned a long time ago brooked no argument from the other
man. "Dean, this one's for you. It belonged to yer dad, but I've been holdin'
onto it for a while in case it ever looked like he would want it back."
"How long is a while?" Dean asked stepping up to the trunk and popping the tabs
on the guitar case to reveal a black acoustic guitar with pearly white
accenting along the fret board and at the edges of the curlicue openings on
either side of the body.
"'Bout twenty years or so," Bobby remarked behind him, gazing off over the
snowy yard towards the horizon that was interrupted by the closest neighbor's
house about a mile away.
"Well, I don't fucking want it," Dean said petulantly even as his fingers
ghosted over the polished wood and he thought of all of the songs he could
learn to play for Cas that would tell the other boy he loved him until the
words finally stopped being so hard to say.
"Liar," Sam said, clapping Dean on the shoulder and heading back into the house
with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
"It's not coming from yer dad, Dean." Bobby stated firmly, brushing some dust
off the body of the guitar like he had been doing it for years and the gesture
was so familiar as to be unconscious by now. "He doesn't even know I have it.
Yer grandma gave it to me when he moved to Lawrence and now I'm giving it to
you. Something t' help ya remember he wasn't always such a bad guy."
"He's chasing Sammy out of the house," Dean said firmly, shutting the case
quickly so that he wouldn't be tempted to keep touching it like something so
beautiful could actually belong to him. "I don't think you can get much more
evil supervillain than that, Bobby."
"He has his reasons for being the way he is," the older man said softly,
sounding regretful in ways that Dean didn't understand because its not like
Bobby had done anything but be there for John; sticking up for him every time
someone called him an ignorant drunk or a bad father even when those someones
were people like Ellen and Sheriff Mills.
Dean scoffed at the older man and rolled his eyes, willing himself to not look
at the guitar and to not think about all of his little brother's worldly
possessions being in the trunk of the Chevelle and about how this meant that
now he would have to go back home to John, alone. As much as he didn't want to
do it, Dean knew that he would have to go back. John was his father after all
and Dean had never abandoned him before even when he hit him or called him
stupid or told him that his mom had left because of that thing that happened
with him and Andy Gallagher at the pool when he was a kid.
She hadn't and he knew that now, but when he was nine and confused and sad
about his mom not even saying goodbye before she left, it had felt so much like
the truth that he had decided that having superficial relationships that proved
he was a ladies' man were better than anything he could ever possibly have that
was meaningful with someone else, even another man. But that was before Cas,
his life was divided into those two categories; Before Cas and After Cas,
having the other boy was going to help him through taking care of his dad by
himself now.
"You don't have to go back over there either, Dean." Bobby offered, seemingly
able to read his mind. "Jus' because he doesn't know about you doesn't mean
that its safe for you there either. Come stay with me fer a bit."
"I can't," Dean said shaking his head hard and fast so that he wouldn't clutch
at his uncle's faded green army jacket and beg him to not make him face his dad
alone. "If I don't take care of him, no one will. We're all he has, Bobby. And
it may mean nothing to him to lose Sam, but I'm not losing another parent just
because he's a bigoted asshole."
"You can't fix him," the older man barked. "Not until he's ready to be fixed.
You know that and I know that, it's going to take him hitting rock bottom
before he realizes that he's chasin' away everyone that cares about him. Yer
just delayin' the inevitable, Dean. It's not worth wasting yer life away too."
"The day that you stop wasting yours," Dean grumbled, giving in and snatching
up the guitar before heading back towards the house and his boyfriend and the
people that were also his family just as much as Bobby and John and his absent
mom were. "I'll stop fucking wasting mine."
===============================================================================
The evening had started out simple enough with Cas wanting to go and see the
fireworks with all of their friends at Watson Park and Dean finally giving in
because he was tired and stressing over having had to tiptoe around John and
his drinking for the last week leading up to New Year's Eve. Cas knew how
stressed out Dean was about his dad, especially now that Sam was living full
time at the Novak household where the older boy couldn't keep an eye on his
brother like he was used to doing.
Dean had been coming over to his house every night for dinner and staying late
into the night until John called from whatever bar he was at and his boyfriend
went to pick up his dad, promising Cas that he would be careful and come back
if his dad ended up passing out when he got John home. It had happened a couple
of times but more often than not Cas was awake too, worrying and texting Dean
to make sure that nothing had happened to the other boy because he didn't trust
John in the slightest to not hurt his son like he had hurt Bobby at Christmas.
The nights that Dean came back, he checked him over for new bruises or red
marks that may be shaped like the older Winchester's hands, but so far he had
found none and it seemed like whatever rage John was carrying around had faded
back into nothingness after him having taken it out on his oldest friend. Dean
told him that his dad looked much worse than Bobby did and that made Cas feel
just a little bit better because to him John was nothing but another bully who
didn't appreciate his children just like his own dad was and bullies deserved
to get knocked down every once and a while too.
But Dean wouldn't let him come over to the apartment anymore and Castiel felt a
little like he was abandoning his boyfriend to face a sleeping dragon alone. So
as soon as John left town again for work, which Dean assured him would probably
start happening again on a regular basis now that the holidays were ending, Cas
had resolved to make his boyfriend feel comfortable in his own home again in
whatever way he could. Until then the Impala was just going to have to be the
best substitute.
It was around midnight or close enough, so that's how Castiel rationalized
ducking out on the fireworks shortly before they started and dragging Dean down
into the backseat of the large old car on top of him to kiss their way through
the New Year's countdown in private away from the disapproving stares they had
been getting from some of the parents who were at the town's annual display
with their kids. Cas didn't care if he made them uncomfortable and he knew that
Dean didn't really either, but he had a rule about scarring children for life
with the kind of groping he intended to inflict upon his boyfriend and that's
why the backset of a car was preferable to pushing Dean down on a picnic table
and climbing into his lap.
"I don't know what's gotten into you," Dean mumbled against his lips, nipping
at them and laving his tongue over the tender, chapped skin that had been
giving Cas hell every winter for as long as he could remember. "But I like it."
Castiel smiled against Dean's mouth and parted his lips to allow the other
boy's tongue in, teasing it suggestively causing the larger boy to moan on top
of him and hurriedly push up the vintage band t-shirt that Jo had gotten Cas
for Christmas, she had smirked when he had opened it saying that between him
and Dean they had pretty much every musical genre covered in their wardrobe.
Dean's hands were cold on his heated skin, causing him to shiver and convulse
into the other boy's soft touches even though they always made him writhe no
matter what temperature their bodies were.
He ran his fingers through Dean's short hair, scratching at his scalp and
tugging at the strands in an effort to urge the other boy on because he had
been needing to feel his boyfriend inside of him all week, but they hadn't had
sex since Christmas Eve, just kissed and held each other because he knew that
it wasn't what Dean had needed when he had shown up pale and drawn looking
after getting John home and into bed before returning to sleep next to Castiel.
Dean had given him one dutiful, unenthusiastic blow job after showing up at
close to 4am smelling like secondhand smoke and sweated out alcohol which had
just made Cas feel guilty for even asking for it from the other boy so he had
just taken to getting himself off in the shower or while he was waiting on Dean
so that he didn't make his boyfriend feel like he was depriving Cas of anything
by not being interested in sex when he was stressing about his dad. But it
wasn't the same anymore, using his fingers and his hands in the ways that he
knew he liked when he thought of he and Dean making love like they had all the
time in the world in order to orgasm and not force Dean to do something he
wasn't really interested in doing later.
But Dean was interested now, if the way he was thrusting slowly against Cas's
own denim clan erection and groaning softly at the back of his throat was any
indication of how much his boyfriend had been missing their physical
interaction too then Castiel was more than willing to give into the old
stereotype of teenagers having sex in cars. He whimpered into the larger boy's
mouth, angling his hips to feel Dean pressing against him even as cold,
callused fingers moved up to brush over his nipples and the muscles in his
chest.
Dean had a particular fascination with his chest and Cas wasn't exactly sure
what had caused it, but he was happy that ROTC had made the muscles smooth and
pronounced in the way that his boyfriend seemed to like. Cas was still scared
that eventually Dean would miss the soft curves and filled out forms of women,
bodies that he could never hope to compete with because genetically it wasn't
possible, but his boyfriend always told him he was being silly before getting a
sly smirk on his face and going down on him or stroking his cock like all he
wanted was Cas and gender could go fuck itself.
He wrapped his legs around Dean's hips, pushing his pelvis suggestively into
his boyfriend's as he tugged on the light brown strands of hair in his hands in
order to break the other boy's mouth away from his own with a soft, suctioning
pop. Dean's green eyes were glazed over and happy looking and Cas could only
smile at the other boy's red swollen lips that would always belong to him and
no one else.
"I want you, Dean." Cas said forcefully, leaning up to suck the other boy's
earlobe into his mouth and breath hot into the shell of his ear. "Now, I can't
wait anymore."
"Oh fuck babe," Dean groaned, wrapping an arm under and around Castiel's
shoulder in order to keep him in place and his mouth moving against the spot
behind his ear that he liked. "Cas, I want you to. So fucking bad, but not
here. Not in the car."
"Christ, Dean." Castiel muttered trying to keep the anger out of his voice
because really? Dean was going to stop him now? "I'll fucking pay to get her
detailed, just live a little."
"It's not that," Dean whispered, moving to kiss his face and slowly pushing his
legs down and off of his hips so that he could sit up. "Trust me, sweetheart.
It's not that I'm worried about getting the car messed up or anything."
"Then what is it, Dean?" Castiel growled out, feeling the chill creep back in
as he pulled his shirt back down and followed his boyfriend up to a sitting
position so that he could glare at him.
"You're just better than that, Cas." Dean said softly, cupping his face and
smoothing his thumb over his lips with a shuddering sigh. "You don't deserve to
be another quick lay in the back of someone's car. Even if it's my car and even
if it's far from quick."
"You've had sex in here before," Castiel guessed, trying to not sound hurt that
this car was a part of Dean that had belonged to other people long before he
had come along and wedged himself into the other boy's life. "With girls."
Dean nodded slowly and climbed gingerly over the seat in front of them,
cranking the ignition and motioning for Cas to join him even as the first
fireworks began to explode through the foggy windshield with muffled popping
sounds. Castiel did so reluctantly, craning his neck so that he could see the
bright multicolored explosions that had no hope of competing with his star in
his and Dean's personal corner of the universe. He wrapped his hand around the
larger boy's, twining their fingers together even though he was still a little
hurt at not being sexy enough that Dean wanted him no matter where they were.
"Cas," Dean said softly, biting his lip when the smaller boy looked over like
he was stopping himself from saying something, but then shaking his head and
pulling out a pocket knife from his leather jacket.
He watched as the larger boy ducked down and tugged aside the floor mat
underneath his feet, revealing a pair of initials carved shakily into the metal
floorboards. A 'D.W.' and another even shakier 'S.W.' close beside it. Dean
held out the knife to him expectantly and it took just a second too long for
Castiel to understand what he was wanting from him because his boyfriend's face
fell and he saw the hurt blossoming in Dean's eyes as he started to fold the
knife back up.
"No," Castiel said quickly, reaching out for the knife and taking it from his
hand. He looked down at the initials and licked his lips before glancing back
at Dean who was watching his actions warily. "There aren't any other initials."
"There aren't," Dean agreed softly. "It's just for family."
It was as good as being dubbed a Winchester by a priest or something and
Castiel knew that it was probably as close as he was ever going to get as long
as they were in Kansas, so he ducked down and tried his best to put his
initials next to Dean's even though he was doing it upside down from how the
other two had been done. He resisted the urge to put a little plus sign between
their scratched marks because that was a conversation for another time when he
still wasn't scared of losing Dean to college or another girl.
But that was okay, because as soon as he was done he was climbing into Dean's
lap. Pressing his mouth against the other boy's even though the steering wheel
was digging painfully into his lower back and breathing in the spicy, cedar
scent that always lingered in his bed long after Dean had left to go pick up
John from wherever the hell he was calling from. And Dean was kissing him back,
hands buried in his hair as the pocket knife clattered to the floor at their
feet and Cas could feel that his boyfriend was still hard, still wanted him
despite their serious conversation.
"Take me home," Castiel breathed into Dean's mouth, pressing his forehead
against the other boy's before moving back to the passenger seat, sitting as
close to his boyfriend as possible without impeding his driving as they peeled
out of the parking lot of the park, leaving behind both of their brothers along
with all of their friends in their race to get to a bed as soon as possible.
It was only when he had Dean in his bed, pressed beneath him and clutching at
his clothing like he wanted to rip it off of his body that Castiel felt like he
could think again. Think about something other than how much he wanted
everything with Dean that they hadn't figured out yet, like living together and
growing old and maybe being the most badass uncles that Anna and Kevin's kids
ever had because surely Sam and Gabe wouldn't be able to teach them how to work
on cars or fire guns like he and Dean could. He could think about where to
touch Dean instead, because as much as he liked thinking about the future as
opposed to the past, the present was so much more interesting when it involved
Dean's hands or mouth on him.
They lost their shoes at some point, but then again they always did and it
never really mattered because those just made getting jeans off harder and
those were the real things that he wanted to get Dean out of as soon as
possible. Jeans and shirts were the enemy and Castiel had never understood
nudism more than when he would finally get Dean's clothes off because Greeks
could only mimic the kind of perfectly chiseled proportions that he had found
in the other boy.
Cas kissed his way down the other boy's chest and stomach, pausing to worship
the V of muscle that led down to his jutting erection that was already swollen
red and leaking precome where it was pressed against his own chest that had
been disrobed sometime between him getting Dean's shirt off and him thanking
God that his boyfriend had decided to forgo boxers for the evening. He stroked
the other boy's cock, spreading the slickness along the length as he glanced up
at Dean mischievously underneath his eyelashes.
"Don't tease, Cas." Dean groaned, curving his fingers along the back of his
head and sifting them through the locks with a gentle insistent pressure.
"Just...fuck, please. Cas, please."
"Well since you're being polite," Castiel muttered, lowering his mouth to run
his tongue along the length of Dean's cock tasting the salty precome that he
had spread along the hot hard length and reveling in the sounds his boyfriend
was making above him.
"Oh shit, babe." Dean murmured, thrusting his hips up slightly in Castiel's
touch and arching his back against the sheets beneath him. "You're so fucking
good at that...Oh Jesus Christ."
Castiel wanted to joke about Dean being extra blasphemous during sex, but his
mouth of a little bit full as he bobbed his head and relaxed his throat to take
in the other boy's heated flesh. Dean thrust shallowly into his mouth and Cas
pulled off long enough to suck one of his own fingers into his mouth,
slickening it so that he could press it into himself and start the process of
stretching himself open for Dean because impatient was the word of the day with
him needing to feel the other boy inside of him.
He moaned around Dean's cock as he thrust his hips back onto his hand, letting
the other boy push his head into the rhythm that liked as he used his free hand
to cup Dean's balls and press firmly against his perineum. More and more of
Castiel's fantasies had involved him bending Dean over a table and fucking him
senseless, but he didn't know how the other boy would react to that. It was one
thing to go from having sex with girls to having sex with guys, but it was a
whole separate thing to let another guy fuck you; he wasn't entirely sure Dean
wouldn't see it as giving up his masculinity a little bit, but Cas had been
easing up to it. Touching lower and lower every time he and Dean had sex in an
effort to gauge how much the other boy was comfortable with.
Cas let his finger slip lower, glancing up at Dean who still had his head
thrown back into the pillows tendons in his neck stretched taunt and tempting
as he bit his lip to stifle his moan when Cas took in his entire length,
swallowing around the other boy before pulling back to tease the sensitive spot
at the base of his head with his tongue. He pressed the index finger of his
hand against Dean's entrance, rimming around it tentatively so that he could
write it off as an accident if Dean freaked out.
"Fuck, Cas." Dean breathed, shying away from the touch and glancing down as him
with a confused line creasing his brow. "What are you doing?"
He moved his hand away quickly, pulling off of Dean's cock even as he added a
second finger to himself with a soft moan, twisting his wrist with each thrust
so that he could slowly scissor himself open. "Nothing."
"No," Dean said, shaking his head and licking his lips nervously. "You were
doing something, I know you were. It felt...different."
"I won't do it again, Dean." Castiel breathed, mouthing along the head of
Dean's cock again in order to distract the other boy. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, sweetheart." Dean explained quickly, watching him with an
amused smirk on his face. "I didn't say I didn't like it. Fuck, do you have any
idea how fucking sexy you look right now?"
"Not that you can see anything," the smaller boy countered, biting his lip when
he brushed against his prostate.
"Yea but I know what you're doing," Dean said in a resigned way, jerking his
head and dropping his voice in that way that made his cock twitch with
expectation. "Get up here."
Castiel removed his fingers gingerly before climbing up the larger boy's body,
fumbling into his nightstand to pull out a condom and lube that he slapped down
excitedly onto the bed next to Dean's shoulder before delving into a kiss that
left nothing to the imagination. Dean groaned into his mouth, settling his
hands on his hips and moving Cas so that he could slide his cock into the cleft
of the smaller boy's ass.
Dean reached a hand around to stroke him slowly, rolling his hips up to meet
Castiel's that were moving unconsciously as they kissed. He pressed the condom
into his boyfriend's hands that were grasping his shoulders, talking Cas
through the process of putting it on him because Dean liked to make the other
boy an active participant in their love making, he didn't want Cas to feel like
he was just a hole for him to fuck because it was so much more than that.
It was part of the reason why he didn't want to have sex with Cas in the
Impala, because car sex while hot as hell and it got the job done, was also not
very comfortable and awkward when they might get interrupted. Dean liked to
take his time with the other boy, make sure they both enjoyed themselves and
didn't get a charliehorse or something from being bent like a pretzel in the
back of a car. He wasn't opposed to having sex pretty much anywhere else, but
the car was something he used for hookups and one night stands and he didn't
want to associate those times with Cas in any way.
"You're ready?" Dean asked once the other boy had rolled the condom down his
length and lubed him up with hard fast strokes that almost made him come right
then.
Cas responded by levering himself up over Dean and guiding his cock to his
loosened hole, sinking down on to him with nothing more than his weight and a
groan before he leaned down to kiss Dean using his teeth and his tongue in that
way that just drove him crazy. He could feel the other boy clenching around
him, adjusting to the new position that they hadn't tried yet before relaxing
and taking him in until Dean's balls were nestled firmly against Castiel's ass.
"Oh god," Castiel whispered, pushing his hands against Dean's chest as he
rolled his hips up to slide up his length slightly before sinking back down
onto him with a strangled groan. "Fuck, darling. It's just...shit."
"Just sit up straight," Dean coached, watching his boyfriend bite his lip and
follow his instructions with a soft moan.
He held the other boy in place, rubbing circles into his hips and just
marveling at the way his boyfriend looked riding him, rocking his hips with
little adorable pants that Dean wanted to turn into the loud, deep groans that
came out of the other boy right before he came. He pulled out slowly, watching
Cas frown at the loss before he thrust back up hard and without warning earning
a loud guttural moan out of his boyfriend that caused the dominant part of Dean
to want to see the other boy come undone above him. Dean wanted to see Castiel
panting and moaning and covered in sweat before he came saying his name and
cursing like his life depended on having Dean's cock buried inside of him.
Cas looked gorgeous above him with the muscles in his legs and abdomen flexing
to accommodate the pace that Dean set as he thrust into the other boy, chanting
Castiel's name over and over in between groans until he was sure that he was
going to come if he felt the other boy clench around him one more time. He knew
that he was hitting Cas's prostate because the other boy had stopped making
sense and was just babbling and telling him not to stop, to never stop and
stroking himself in time to Dean's thrusts with abandon.
"Fuck Dean," Castiel panted, sweat pouring down his torso as Dean braced his
feet on the bed, slipping on the sheets slightly in an effort to get even more
leverage into the other boy. "I love you so much. Christ, don't ever leave me.
Oh fuck oh shit."
"Never," Dean groaned. "Never, babe. I'll never leave you."
He forgot about his dad and how horrible and lonely it had been without Sam
there to provide dry commentary about John's alcoholism whenever they stumbled
through the door. Forgetting about the distinct possibility that Cas could
leave him when he went off to school and forgetting that he had seriously been
considering packing up and following the other boy wherever he went because Sam
had Gabe and didn't need him anymore, not like Dean needed Cas.
Dean just focused instead on the tight, hot cavern of the other boy clenching
around him and how Cas sounded when he came, groaning out his name and saying
he loved him again before collapsing down on top of him to kiss softly at his
neck as the larger boy thrust in to him a couple of more times before coming
inside the other boy, spilling his release into the latex barrier that still
separated them and muttering endearments into Castiel's messy hair that was
pressed into his mouth.
"You're so beautiful, Cas." Dean whispered, wishing he could say more, but
knowing that he was working on it.
On those nights when John hadn't drank enough to pass out, but was still
belligerent enough that Dean would push his dresser in front of his bedroom
door like he hadn't done since Sam was still in elementary school he sat up on
his bed, picking out guitar chords and trying to learn how to play using second
hand books and very confusing websites. His calluses had formed calluses, but
Dean knew that it was going to be worth it. Love Me Tender was just turning out
to be a lot harder to learn how to play than he had thought it would be.
Chapter End Notes
     I know I'm late *sigh* I'm sorry and I really truly am this time, but
     when I have friends visit I just kinda space on fanfiction a little
     bit even though all we talk about is SuperWhoLock and fanfiction.
     They are in this weird limbo where they haven't caught up to where
     I'm at in the shows and its so f'n frustrating. Ugh! But we're
     nearing the end of this part of this verse guys. I'm still debating
     between happy cuddly ending or cliffhanger...thoughts?
     My bf is voting cliffhanger btw so right now we're tied 1 to 1. Weigh
     in, rock the vote, etc.
***** Old College Try *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"What do you mean you're nottaking the SAT?" the guidance counselor asked
Castiel trying to keep the incredulity and stress out of her voice as she
looked at the senior sitting in front of her.
"Well," Cas replied fidgeting under her intense stare, feeling guilty and sick
because he hadn't even looked twice at the college admissions applications she
had given him since he had shoved them into his desk under a bunch of random
CDs and sharpies. "I didn't really plan on going to college so I thought it was
just kind of...pointless?"
"College is pointless?" Tessa asked, pinching the bridge of her nose and
willing away the headache that had been nagging her almost non-stop since
school had started back a week and a half ago and she had started to try to get
the stuff for the stragglers who hadn't turned in their five-year plans to her
together. "Mr. Novak, you do realize that with nothing but a high school
diploma you can pretty much work at McDonald's for the rest of your life
right?"
"Yes, but Dean—"
"Jesus Christ, I should've know." She mumbled sorting through the stack of file
folders on her desk until she could find Dean Winchester's which was also
maddeningly devoid of any letters of recommendation or test scores just like
Castiel's. "So do you two have like a pact or something to give me an ulcer
before graduation or is the fact that he's avoiding me like the plague just a
figment of my imagination?"
"I didn't know he was avoiding you," Castiel admitted, crossing his arms over
his chest and tapping his feet impatiently on the floor. "Listen, we just
haven't talked about college and every time I try to bring it up he changes the
subject."
He and Dean had actually gotten into a massively huge argument after his last
therapy session with Rachel, where he had been sorting out the final details of
the trial and trying to broach the subject of what he should do if his father
tried to talk to him after the whole thing was said and done. Castiel may have
been on edge from just that, but he couldn't listen to Dean make anymore self-
hating comments that sounded like they had just fallen out of John's mouth
about how stupid he was and how he wasn't going to amount to anything more than
a mechanic no matter what he did.
So they hadn't said more than tense 'I love yous' and 'You toos' before
dropping dry-lipped kisses on each other's cheeks in the hallways and parting
ways to go to their separate classes over the last couple of days. It was a
complete turnaround from their first week back at school when they had been
ecstatic to find out that Alastair and Azazel had gotten in school suspension
for another month after the holiday break because of what had happened at the
winter ball; there was a rumor going around that Uriel had cried when Principal
Naomi told him that they couldn't play baseball this year either.
They had taken full advantage of their small victory, kissing and touching and
acting like any other couple in the hallways and their classes together to the
extent that people stopped staring and just accepted it when Castiel plopped
down heavily in Dean's lap in the cafeteria until the other boy pushed him off
so that he could eat without both of them getting covered in pie. But then last
Thursday and the fight at the diner that resulted in Barb making their order
to-go pretty fucking toot sweet and Castiel eating his Styrofoam boxed burger
and fries in Meg's apartment because the thought of being around anything else
that John had tainted with his hatred was just not something he could stomach.
Dean hadn't even driven him home, just nodded quickly when Meg offered to take
him before storming off to his apartment without even saying goodbye. The
weekend had been torture with the park seeming empty and dead without Dean
there to smirk cheekily at him when he ran past the picnic table that his
boyfriend usually sat at with Millie who hadn't shown up either, leaving him
alone on his morning jogs for the first time since he and Dean had started
dating. And now it had been almost six days of them barely speaking to each
other; Cas couldn't sleep, he could barely eat, and Dean looked no better.
But they were just both so stubborn and Jo had been threatening him and Dean
with watching Titanic until their ears bled at movie night tonight if they
didn't get their shit together, but Castiel didn't think that he had anything
to apologize for. All he had said was that Dean shouldn't let John define who
he was and it probably came out a lot harsher and bitter than his memory was
telling him because he had been really worked up from talking to Rachel about
his own father.
Maybe it wasn't his place to say anything. Yes, Dean and Sam were practically
his family, but John was their flesh and blood father and even though words
could cut deep all of your instincts told you to forgive them. Another thing he
had been pissed off about when he was talking to Rachel. He could admit that he
had probably been projecting just a little bit during his and Dean's fight, but
that didn't make anything that he said to his boyfriend any less true.
Dean was smart, just as smart as him and even could do practical stuff like
build bookcases and fix cars when all Castiel could do was shoot a moving
target at 500 yards with like deadly, scary accuracy. In what universe was that
a useful skill to have? Maybe if he was an assassin or something, but he
wasn't.
"Mr. Novak," Tessa continued, unaware of his musings as she flipped through
several pages of the calendar that was perched on top of her keyboard. "You do
realize that your life does not revolve around whether Dean Winchester decides
to go to college or not?"
"Yes..." Castiel replied slowly, even though he felt like that was probably the
dumbest question anyone had ever asked him. "But if you could just talk to
him—"
"I have been trying to corner Mr. Winchester for months, back when college
football scouts were still sending me emails about him and he didn't duck into
classrooms anytime he saw me coming." Tessa stated blandly. "I know that you
two are going steady or an item or whatever it is that kids call it these days,
but you're a very gifted student Castiel. You have enough credits that you
could graduate tomorrow if you wanted to and all you would have to do is say
the word. Lake Forrest put you miles ahead of every other student here except
for maybe Miles Lindberg that kid should be working for NASA."
"Dean thinks he's stupid," Castiel blurted, clenching his fists on top of his
legs because he hadn't meant to say that. Tessa was a guidance counselor, but
not a therapist or anything. Dean's problems with his dad and stuff were really
none of her business, but he needed an ally in the lost cause that was Dean
Winchester and going to college. "His dad tells him he's stupid and it's not
enough for him to hear it from me or our friends that he isn't. Dean needs to
hear it from an adult or something."
"Dean Winchester has been an average student the entire time he's been here,"
Tessa commented, arching an eyebrow at him. "The only class he seems to try in
is AP English with Mr. Shurley and until this year I was constantly sending the
truancy officer after him and the rest of the football team just so they would
still be eligible to play. But you're sitting here telling me he's apparently
some secret genius with daddy issues? I'm sorry I'm not buying it, Mr. Novak."
"If you and Chuck could ju—"
"Mr. Shurley." Tessa corrected, glancing back at her computer screen and
frowning just a bit.
"Mr. Shurley," he offered, gesturing to the list of SAT test days that she had
printed off for him. "If you and Mr. Shurley could just talk to him, stage an
intervention or something, then I'll take the SATs, but only if you can get
Dean to take them with me."
The guidance counselor regarded him with a shrewd look, pursing her lips and
tapping her fingers on the desk near her mouse pad. "You realize that you're
asking the impossible, right?"
"If I can get him in here and you can talk him into it, I'll even get him to
apply to a couple of colleges." Castiel said, hoping that it would give the
woman enough incentive to go out of her way for a student who didn't seem to
want her help.
"Fine," She said sighing and waving him away with an impatient gesture that he
took as meaning he could leave.
Now Cas just had to figure out some way to make up with Dean so he would be
willing to do this.
===============================================================================
He didn't think that Cas had any idea how hard it had been for him, how tired
he was and how it killed him just a little bit inside every time he had to
drive to school by himself because Sam was riding in with the Novaks now or
when he thought of how his little brother's side of the room looked so empty
without his books or his Einstein poster on the wall. Sometimes he would just
sit up at night and stare at the blank wall that had a faint outline on the
paint from where Bobby had taken it down when he got Sam's stuff.
Of course Cas didn't know any of that because he hadn't told him, but goddamnit
his boyfriend should just be able to tell how much it sucked just being him and
his dad in the apartment. Only now it was just him because John had gone out of
town for an undetermined amount of time on a big construction job, leaving
behind a note that just told him not to burn the house down. Like he was a five
year old who couldn't even microwave hot pockets without starting a fire.
When he had come home to the note on Sunday after going over to Bobby's and
detailing cars like his life depended on eradicating dust and grime from every
crevice in every car in Lawrence just so that he wouldn't have to think about
Cas and how pityingly the other boy had looked at him when they had fought in
the diner, all he had wanted to do was call his boyfriend immediately and tell
him to come over they could watch a movie or do homework or do anything that
just wasn't them fighting anymore. Cas was hot when he was angry and all, but
damnit it wasn't even worth the arguing if they couldn't get past what they
were mad about long enough to make up like they always did.
They weren't talking and he couldn't sleep and sitting in class or study hall
together meant that there was this weirdly massive amount of space between
their bodies that he couldn't ever remember having been there even before they
had admitted that they liked each other. And lunchtime had turned into this
perverse contest because not much could make Dean lose his appetite and he had
been childishly rubbing it into Cas's face just a bit every time he saw his
boyfriend just picking at his food even though part of his mind was fretting
and worrying about the other boy's health.
So even though he was mad still at Cas for calling his dad an asshole despite
the fact that Dean called John an asshole literally at least once a day in his
head, when they played dodgeball in gym class he still made a point to take his
frustration out on the guys aiming for his boyfriend and to shoulder Cas out of
the way anytime he thought he was about to get hit. Eventually, the other boy
let himself get out and Dean was pretty sure that he did it just to spite him
because Cas just kept staring at him from the sidelines and biting his lip in
that way that the other boy knew he fucking liked until one of the red rubber
balls hit him in the side of the head and he got out too.
"Would you just stop?" Dean asked sitting down heavily beside him, giving the
other boy a dirty look that was hard to maintain in the face of the wide-eyed,
innocent expression that Cas had on his face.
"Stop what, Dean?"
"Stop staring at me like we haven't been fighting for a week," He snapped,
crossing his arms over his chest and rolling his eyes when he heard Coach
Wisdom still talking about how Kevin started that fight at the dance and he
didn't understand why the whole baseball team had to suffer because of some
freshman.
"We haven't been fighting for a week," Cas replied softly, leaning into his
shoulder and putting his chin on it with a sigh. "We have been fighting for
five days, twenty hours, and thirty six minutes."
"Round up, Cas." Dean said side-eyeing the other boy and trying not to smirk at
how fucking cute he was all sweaty and ruffled and remorseful looking. "It's
been a week."
"So I guess it's too late to say I'm sorry?"
"Is that what you're saying?" Dean asked, feeling the warmth that he always
associated with the other boy blossom in his chest because it had been a rough
fucking week not talking to him and being mad about stuff that Cas had said
that was completely fucking true.
"Yes." Castiel said with a sigh and a small humorless chuckle. "I was taking
out therapy stuff on you and it's not my place to say anything about your dad.
I don't really have a shining paradigm of parenthood to compare it too, so I
guess he's doing the best he can, right?"
"Sure," Dean replied with a shrug even though he knew that John was doing a
shitty, selfish job he didn't want to talk about that when he and Cas were
finally making up with each other. "I'm sorry I didn't take you home that
night, I wanted too. But I just didn't want to fight anymore."
"Meg said couples fight," the other boy muttered. "She said her and Luc fight
about stupid shit all of the time, sometimes you have to just walk away before
you say something that you can't fix with a blow job."
Dean scoffed, licking his lips and praying that Uriel would blow his stupid
whistle and end class soon so that he could kiss his boyfriend and make up good
and proper somehow.
"So..." Castiel leaned in, whispering in his ear hotly and fuck why was anyone
allowed to be that attractive and fuckable when they were sweaty and wearing
ugly, baggy gym clothes? "Can I not fix this with a blow job?"
Dean choked a bit, on his own spit or his tongue he wasn't sure but he was
coughing and Cas was smoothing a hand over his back and nodding at Uriel that
he would take Dean to get some water. He was pretty sure his coach felt just a
little bit guilty about letting Alastair and Azazel get that close to jumping
him and Cas, just enough that he didn't question the fact that the two boys
speed walked into the locker room instead of to the water fountains that were
about twenty yards down from the metal door.
"I said no more sex in school," Dean protested weakly, as his boyfriend pulled
him tight up against the nearest set of lockers; running his hands over Dean's
shoulders and wrapping them around his neck with a toothy grin. "Someone is
going to catch us, Cas."
"Jesus, Dean. You act like you have the world's loudest orgasms or something,"
Castiel muttered, leaning up to kiss with messily tangled tongues and teeth
that grazed over Dean's lips. "Just be quiet and I will make sure that no one
even suspects that my mouth is on your dick."
"When did you start talking so dirty?" Dean breathed, pulling the other boy
back towards the stalls and shutting them in the one farthest from the lock
room door. "I seem to remember you being shy and soft spoken once upon a time."
"Well you see," Castiel teased, ghosting his mouth over Dean's throat as he
talked causing the grip that the larger boy had placed on his hips to tighten
spasmodically. "I started dating this football player..."
"I'll kill him," Dean murmured watching through half lidded eyes as Cas pushed
the elastic waistbands of his gym shorts and his boxers down in one smooth
motion until the material was nestled under his testicles.
He should probably stop him, but it had been bad with John before he had gone
out of town and he and Cas had been fighting so even when he knew that sleeping
next to the other boy would make everything so much better, he stubbornly
stayed in his tiny twin sized bed and refused to jerk off to thoughts of his
boyfriend because he was not even going to give fantasy Cas the satisfaction of
being the only thing he could think about.
Dean had forced himself to be pessimistic as hell in order to kill his boners
before he fell into the few hours of fitful sleep he had gotten each night
since their fight last Thursday; telling himself that this was better because
if they broke up after graduation it would be easier on him if Cas hated him by
then anyway. Because if Cas hated him then he would blame Dean for being too
dumb to get into a college like his boyfriend was bound to and not blame
himself for falling in love with such an idiot to begin with. As long as his
dad needed him, then there was no way that Dean could follow Cas off to
college; he had been stupid to even hope that he ever could.
Slim fingers wrapped around his cock, stroking him expertly as Cas bit at his
neck softly before dropping to kneel in front of him. Dean let his hands settle
on the back of the other boy's head, sifting through the messy dark hair and
smoothing down to Castiel's neck and across the broad shoulders that rippled
with muscles under his touch. He jumped slightly when the locker room door
slammed open, echoing across the empty space as the rest of the raucous teenage
boys in the senior class spilled into the room, chattering loudly and clanging
around in lockers. He could hear Garth and Ash, talking about movie night and
planning a coup if Jo really did try to play Titanic.
Castiel looked up at him and put a finger to his lips, shushing him before he
turned his attention back to Dean's hard member, leaning forward to suck on the
head of his cock and tongue the slit that was leaking precome. Dean bit hard at
his bottom lip, running it between his teeth before he licked his lips and
pressed them firmly together, fighting back the groans that were trying to
force their way out of his throat. His boyfriend hummed softly around his dick,
bobbing down on him before pulling off and just stroking him, lips already
glistening with saliva and slightly red and fuck Dean could already feel his
balls pulling up tight and his spine tingling.
He nudged the flushed head of his member against the other boy's mouth which
opened eagerly to swallow it back down; Dean whimpered softly thrusting into
the wet heat with a sudden snap of his hips that made Castiel put a hand on his
hip to make him slow down. The feeling of his boyfriend's throat working around
his dick, swallowing and tightening around him was just so good and so perfect
Dean wanted it to never end.
"Feels so good, babe." Dean muttered, hearing the shushing sound of water
hitting the tiled floor as his classmates showered and changed and started
milling out of the locker room as they gathered up their stuff and left for the
day.
It earned him a graze of teeth along the sensitive part of his dick that was
right under the head, the spot that Cas could just tease with his tongue until
he came apart completely. Dean hissed at the sharp feeling, clamping his mouth
shut so that he wouldn't be tempted to say anything else that might earn him
more of the same treatment from the other boy. Even with his mouth stretched
taunt and full around his cock, Cas still managed to have complete control over
the situation; hollowing out his cheeks and pushing down Dean's clothing even
further so that he could cup his ass in one of his hands.
Dean grunted softly, clenching a handful of Castiel's hair in his hand and
tugging on it slightly to try to warn him that he was about to come. His orgasm
was bearing down on him like a freight train and it was taking every ounce of
self control that Dean had to not throw his head back and moan out his
boyfriend's name like he wanted to. He knew that even without hardly making any
noise his voice was still probably going to be as hoarse and fucked out
sounding as Cas's was just from him trying to keep all of his groans of
appreciation to himself.
Cas stroked him through it, keeping his mouth firmly suctioned around the head
of his dick and swallowing as Dean's come filled his mouth. He could hear the
other boy breathing heavily through his nose and it sounded a million times
louder with his pulse pounding in his ears; Dean was amazed that no one had
knocked on the door to the stall or commented on their disappearance. His
boyfriend opened his mouth and licked the last few drops of come from the head
of his dick with a satisfied smile quirking the corners of his mouth at the
shudder that Dean gave in response to that action before climbing to his feet,
pulling Dean's shorts up with him and kissing him deeply on the mouth with a
soft sigh.
He could feel how hard Cas was and reached to cup the other boy's erection,
squeezing him through the thin mesh material of the basketball shorts he was
wearing and causing his boyfriend's eyelids to flutter as he sagged into Dean.
"No, it's fine." Cas breathed, biting his swollen lip with a wince and pulling
back to lean on the other wall of the stall across from Dean; ignoring the
insistent erection tenting the front of his shorts.
"I want to, sweetheart." Dean protested softly, reaching for him again only to
frown in confusion when the other boy shook his head and grabbed his hand
instead; lacing their fingers together in the space between them. "Why not,
Cas?"
"Because there's kind of something else I was hoping you would do for me
instead?" Castiel said questioningly, looking like a kid who had just been
caught elbow deep in the cookie jar by their mom.
Dean ran his free hand over his face and groaned softly, what fucking now?
===============================================================================
"So tell me again, what happened on New Year's Eve?" Tessa asked the other man,
knowing that the answer was just going to make her want to punch him in the
shoulder as hard as she could for being so boneheaded and blind.
"Well," Chuck said clearing his throat and taking a sip of his coffee, just
coffee for once. He twined his fingers together and steepled them under his
chin, preparing himself because he knew that the guidance counselor was one of
Naomi's best friends and she had probably already heard the principal's side of
things so he needed to try to do as much damage control as possible. "Naomi and
I went to a party."
"Together?" She clarified, raising an eyebrow at him.
"As friends," He said, earning a disbelieving scoff from the other woman that
made his heart sink. God, he was stu-pid. "What?"
"Single men and single women do not just go to parties together as friends,"
Tessa said slowly.
"No, yes they do." Chuck stuttered pushing up the sleeves of his sweater and
rubbing away the sudden chills that he was getting as they waited on Dean to
show up after gym class like Castiel had promised the other boy would. "They
do, all of the time."
"Name one time."
"Monica and Chandler," the English teacher offered, fishing because Friends was
one of the few television shows that he watched and it was literally about
'friends', it was the fucking title.
"Monica and Chandler end up together, Chuck."
"They do?" He asked, maybe he should pay more attention instead of just having
the television on in the background of his apartment while he wrote or read so
that it wasn't so depressingly quiet all of the time.
Tessa just nodded at him and glanced over at the clock on his wall which was
already showing that Dean and Castiel should've gotten out of gym class over
fifteen minutes ago.
"Fuck," Chuck cursed softly, wishing that he hadn't left his flask at home and
that he hadn't dumped out all of the hidden bottles of liquor in his classroom
because he really needed a drink to help him through all of this shit.
"Yep," the guidance counselor agreed, waving at him to keep going and crossing
her legs with an impatient sigh. "Go on, what else happened? It was a date,
right? Please tell me that you can at least admit that much."
"Well I wanted it to be a date," Chuck confessed, running a hand over his face
and scratching at his beard. "But I mean, I've always wanted it to be a date,
Tess. It never is though, it's always chaperoning school dances or her calling
me over to her house to help her with yard work or something. Naomi only calls
me when she needs something from me and I'm fine being that placeholder man in
her life who can help her move furniture or open jars until she meets someone
who is good enough for her."
"Did you ever stop to think that maybe she thinks you're good enough for her?"
The English teacher shook his head and looked down at his coffee mug, feeling
the bitter acrid taste of burnt coffee lurking at the back of his throat and
just reminding him of how royally he had fucked up on New Year's Eve.
"We went to this bar that her friend Lenore owns, that does like karaoke and
open mic nights and stuff and it was fun. Naomi was wearing this like really
inappropriate for how cold it was black dress and she had really nice shoes. I
remember the shoes."
"I bet you do," Tessa muttered, earning a scathing look from the other man
before she waved that he could continue the story.
"She just makes me so nervous, Tess. So I was drinking because we were at a
bar, it's what you do and the midnight countdown was coming up and Naomi had
just finished singing and it was really beautiful, she was really beautiful. I
couldn't stop staring at her and just wishing that I could do something that
would show her how much I like her."
"You like her," the other woman teased with a knowing smile on her face.
"Are you done?" Chuck asked, using his teacher voice in a way that he hadn't
been able to do in years since Rebecca had left him. "Yes. I like her, I
thought it was fairly obvious to everyone by now. I've liked her for...well
always, but she kept this distance between us. Professional fucking distance
and now, I don't know what she wants anymore."
"Well she did kiss you," Tessa offered.
"Yea and I threw up all over her shoes immediately afterwards," Chuck snapped,
slapping a hand down on his desk and twisting around in his chair until he was
looking at the reading assignments he had put on the board for his classes.
"And she hasn't talked to me since, just emails me the administrative stuff
that she used to walk down to my class. She won't return my calls and every
time I go into the office to try to talk to her she's just 'stepped out'."
"I think it's going to take more than an email to make this better," the woman
said behind him. "It's going to take a gesture or something to show her that
not only do you like her, but that you're mentally ready to try to start a
relationship with someone."
Chuck tipped his head back and shut his eyes, remembering how on New Year's Day
when he had woken up in his own bed in his empty apartment with nothing but his
books to keep him company and he had remembered everything from the night
before in vivid, embarrassing Technicolor detail, that he had tried to call
Naomi to apologize to her. And that was the first time in the whole time that
he had known her that she let it go to voicemail.
With school starting in a couple of days he did the only thing he could think
of doing that might start to make his life not such a horrible fucking mess; he
remembered how seeing the amber brown liquids of his brandys and his scotchs
and his whiskeys swirl down the drain in his kitchen had felt like the kind of
cathartic moment only characters in novels had. Chuck hadn't touched any
alcohol in almost two and a half weeks and it had not been easy facing the
person that he had become in the years between Rebecca leaving and him hurling
all over the woman of his dreams Marc Jacob heels.
He had a lot of shit to sort out and a lot of demons to face before he could
ever hope to be enough for Naomi, regardless of whether or not she might have
once thought that he already was. Chuck just needed to fix their friendship
first before he tried to do anything else, but he had no idea where to even
start. So that's why he was asking Tessas for advice, not that she had been
much help so far besides making him relive how screwed his whole situation was
with the principal.
"What do I do?" He groaned at the ceiling.
"You could probably start by offering to buy her some new shoes or maybe some
flowers. Remember how happy Pam was when those boys bought her flowers for
sticking up for them? She totally forgot about whoever it was that had sex in
her classroom, Virgil said it made her week."
Chuck let out a self-hating chuckle and tried to remember if Naomi had ever
mentioned to him what kind of flowers she liked, she probably had and he had
probably just missed it. Just like he had apparently missed every other sign
that she liked him for the last who knows how long, how was this even his life?
The thing that he hated the most was that he couldn't even remember how the
kiss with Naomi that he had literally spent years imagining felt or tasted
because all of New Year's Eve was just one huge blindingly bright, bile
flavored blur.
"Okay here's the deal," Dean said, storming into his classroom and leveling a
pointed finger the guidance counselor who was staring at his entrance in open-
mouthed surprise. "I'll take the da—darn SAT, but not because you want me to or
because I think that I need to. I'll do it because he..."
The footballer pointed at Castiel who had staggered in behind the larger boy,
the laces on his Converse flopping awkwardly as he tugged a cardigan on over
the t-shirt and jeans he had been wearing all day at school. Chuck had to
remind themselves that they had just been in gym class because he knew that
neither one of them were dumb enough to be having sex somewhere in the school,
not as long as Alastair and Azazel were still fuming about Kevin Tran ju-
jitsuing them on the two boy's behalf in front of a large portion of the
student body.
"He is smart as hell and he is NOT going to miss out on getting into a good
college because of me holding him back."
"You're not holding me back," Castiel supplied weakly from behind his boyfriend
and Chuck felt a smile tugging at his mouth when Dean shot the other boy a
withering look.
"You are going to college, Cas." Dean said angrily. "I can't believe that you
were going to not go because of me. He could probably get into fuc—freaking
Harvard or something, right Chuck?"
"You are both very smart," Chuck supplied, glancing at Tessa who was giving him
an encouraging look across his desk. "Dean you're assignments are always
completed above and beyond what I ask for and you're the best writer in the
class."
He saw confusion on his student's face at the compliment, like he wasn't used
to hearing that he was good at things from the adults in his life. From what
Chuck could remember about John Winchester from the few times he had seen him
in bars during his regular binges and bouts of self-loathing, Dean probably
hadn't gotten any support from his father in his entire life.
"You've done a lot better with attendance this year too," Tessa offered,
reaching for a stack of papers that she had set on the corner of his desk when
she had first walked into his classroom. "And Mr. Sanz wrote you a letter of
recommendation for whatever you may need it for."
"I didn't ask Virgil for a recommendation," Dean said warily, glancing back at
Castiel who smiled guiltily.
"I asked him," the other boy said with an apologetic shrug. "You've pretty much
been his teacher's aid all year without getting anything in return. He said it
was the least he could do for you. I bet Coach Wisdom would write you one too,
if you just asked."
"And you know you don't have to ask me, Dean." Chuck offered, clearing his
throat and trying to keep the victory out of his voice as the footballer
wavered in front of him.
"I said I'd take the test," Dean conceded slowly, tearing his eyes off of his
boyfriend long enough to look at Tessa who nodded quickly in his direction
before pulling out a paper with a date and directions on it.
"I've started the sign up process for the both of you for a test on the first
weekend in Feburary," the guidance counselor said quickly. "You'll just need to
go online and finish the whole thing."
"Fine," he snapped, taking the paper out of her hand and running his eyes over
it with a scared expression on his face. "And I'll apply to the community
college."
"And University of Kansas," Castiel said warningly behind him, causing the
larger boy to sigh and nod in defeat.
"Can I go watch you shoot guns now?" Dean asked softly, looking back at the
other boy who just stepped up and wrapped an arm around his waist and started
leading him towards the door with a whispered declaration of love that Chuck
was pretty sure they weren't meant to overhear.
Tessa waited until the two boys had left his classroom before turning back
towards Chuck with an astonished look on her face. "That was way easier than I
thought it would be. I should've asked for Castiel's help with him a long time
ago."
"Well, they're in love." Chuck replied with a shrug, scratching a reminder to
write Dean a recommendation letter for college onto a post-it note and sticking
it to the top of his typewriter. "We were all young once upon a time."
"Yea, they will either be the best or worst thing to ever happen to each
other." The counselor said, climbing to her feet and straightening her skirt.
"What are you going to do about Naomi?"
The English teacher stared despondently at the keys on his typewriter for a
second before running a tired hand over his face and starting to stack up the
papers and assignments that he needed to take home to grade. "I'll let you know
if I figure something out."
===============================================================================
It wasn't worth it, nothing that she could possibly hope to gain was worth
losing everything about herself to this job that no one could even lie and say
that they liked. Yes, it had gotten her away from her parents and most
importantly her uncle and into a place in her life where she didn't have to
keep calling her sister and asking her to wire her money, but she didn't even
have a name anymore.
Or at least she had stopped giving out her real one so long ago that if her
sister didn't call on a regular basis she was pretty sure she would eventually
forget what it once had been. And all of the customers were sleaze bags, which
shouldn't really have surprised her as much as it did, but hey maybe Billie
Piper had made her romanticize the profession just a little bit. But this was
Kansas, not London and she hadn't met any guys with accents who were ready to
rescue her from the shitty situation she had gotten herself into.
So she had to figure out a way to rescue herself, before Eve set her up with
another regular who got off on hitting her and tying her up and degrading her.
But the nice guys who paid to be with her were few and very far between, they
preferred Abbie who was firey and feisty looking with her red hair and her
sultry lips or Ambyr with her meekness and her scars that she always managed to
hide in the dim lighting with makeup and jewelry that wrapped around the ones
on her neck.
They were all running from something and that's how they had ended up here, in
Eden. What a stupid fucking name for something that seemed more like hell most
nights. But Wednesdays were always slow for her, mostly because it was the
night that all of the LGBT crowd came out and so Eve always sent her home with
a disgusted dismissive wave, focusing on how the boys looked and giving her a
reprieve since Abbie was much more open to that kind of thing with another
woman than she was.
It gave her a chance to start figuring out what she would do to get away from
her innocent looking, yet exceedingly cruel boss who she had stupidly signed
away the next year of her life to. Two years ago when she was fresh off the bus
from her sister's house after realizing that she was as much of a burden in
Michigan as her newborn niece, it had seemed like an adventure. Rita help her,
she had never been more fucking wrong.
Chapter End Notes
     Under no circumstances should you go and look up the song that this
     chapter is named after. Don't do it, not unless you like The Mountain
     Goats and want to have even more cliff-hangery type feels than I've
     already given you. That short little part is probably the last hints
     you'll see for the next part (tentatively titled 'Nomad by Fate',
     btw) so I really just have one major plot point left to wrap up in
     this part before that's it.
     Thirty chapters, no more, maybe less. We'll see.
     Anyway, business aside. LOVE YOU GUYS! (I just made a really weird
     smirky face when I wrote that, picture it and smile because it was
     pretty priceless.)
***** Apartment Story *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
There were a lot of reasons to ignore Dean when he said he didn't want anything
for his birthday and everyone in the group had their own.
For Jo it was because she was had known the other boy for so long that half the
time his protests didn't even register as words anymore, just an annoying
buzzing sound that she knew would eventually turn into him tell her she was
right and sighing in defeat. She lived for that sigh of defeat. For Ash it was
because he had promised Cas that he would help Dean study for the SAT without
making it seem like they were studying for the SAT; they didn't have a lot of
time to prepare so he had been disguising math problems in the form of fantasy
football speculation and trying not to act smug that the other boy was actually
getting it.
Garth and Becky did it because they were just too nice to forget a milestone
like an eighteenth birthday, so they actually got Dean gifts; a Kansas
documentary and an anthology of short stories respectively. Krissy and Adam
were new, newer than Becky at least who had always hung around on the fringes
of their circle of friends even before she and Garth started dating, so they
were at a loss for what to get Dean and that worked just fine for him because
his boyfriend kept telling everyone that he didn't want anything anyway. But
they still kept shoving stuff at him during the days leading up to his birthday
which Cas knew just made him feel guilty for never being able to get real gifts
for most of them besides car tune ups or oil changes.
Cas knew how his boyfriend felt about gifts, Christmas being the only exception
to the rule and even then he knew Dean would be happy with just getting a home-
cooked meal and a night away from his dad for the holidays. So that what he
told Sam and Gabe to cover, the cooking. And he made a point to have Bobby find
some excuse for Dean to be at work that day, some radiator crisis that the
older man just couldn't possibly handle by himself and he tried very hard not
to feel guilty when the other boy apologized for having to cancel their SAT
study date that they had been planning for a week.
Because his gift was big, big in the kind of way that didn't really cost
anything, but took a lot of time to put together and Meg had agreed to help him
move some furniture around even though when he had initially asked she started
laughing and he didn't really get it until Luc drily explained over the quizzes
he was grading for the teacher he was assisting this semester. Cas had just
shaken his head at the other girl and went back to planning out what he needed
to get in order to make Dean's birthday perfect.
They had been spending more time in the apartment, now that John was gone out
of town again and he felt more comfortable going over there without having to
hear muttered comments about how Gabriel had ruined their family or how Sam was
ungrateful for all of the things that the Winchester patriarch had done for
him. It was like listening to an angrier, drunken version of his own father and
it had made him feel better a little bit about his own looming confrontation
with the Reverend Novak and his eldest brother in the next couple of weeks.
His father was manipulative and full of twisted ideas about religion that just
helped him justify how he had treated him, but Castiel had gotten away and so
had Gabe and Anna; he couldn't imagine having to live with hearing about how
horrible and wrong his lifestyle was every day. Cas was happy that Sam was safe
and that his own brother wasn't trying to stick up for the younger Winchester
anymore against a man that was not only twice his age, but more than twice his
size, he just wished that Dean would see reason and get out of a bad situation
too while he still had a chance.
Frankly he was surprised that the other boy had agreed to the whole college
thing, but most of it had to do with Castiel refusing to submit any college
applications unless Dean did too. He knew it was petty and underhanded and
pretty much blackmail, but it had worked and even if they only applied to
University of Kansas it was still better than nothing. Hell, community college
was better than letting Dean waste away his intelligence and Castiel could
admit that he was hoping his birthday present would be an eye opener for the
other boy once he saw how things could be if he finally left John to his own
devices like everyone, including Bobby had asked him to do more than once since
Sam had moved out.
Even if it wasn't enough to make his boyfriend want to leave the apartment, it
would still serve to make Dean's room look a little bit less miserable which it
had the last couple of times he had gone over to find that Sam's side of the
room was still bare and empty and untouched. He didn't know if it was because
Dean was unwilling to change anything about the room or if it was because he
didn't have the time since he was so busy with work and school and taking care
of John, but either way it had to change because his back was really starting
to hurt from sleeping in the other boy's ridiculously small bed.
So that's why on Dean's birthday, Castiel got Sam's key to the apartment and
got Meg to pick him up along with the mostly cooked pot roast that Gabriel had
decided to make for Dean and the pie that Cas had made himself after Sam
mangled all of the apples while trying to peel them. The two brothers had taken
away the younger Winchester's paring knife and banished him to the living room
with Anna, lest he destroy any more of Dean's present with his good intentions.
The younger boy had helped Cas pick out posters and bed sheets though, lending
his surprisingly decent decorating taste to the whole endeavor and adding in
his skills as a pack mule on the day that they carted all of the bags with new
linens and curtains to wait in limbo in Meg's apartment until the day it all
went up on the Sunday that Dean was trapped at work. Sam told him that Dean had
never let him buy him a birthday gift before and was ecstatic to be allowed to
help at all even though he was total shit at keeping a secret from his older
brother and had almost slipped the last time that Dean had been over for dinner
at the Novak house. Gabe had told Sam that his talking privileges were revoked
and dragged the younger boy out of room much to Dean's confusion and disgust.
The day of, Castiel woke up to Dean's phone going off, playing its tinny
ringtone from the nightstand just like he and Bobby had planned it; calling his
boyfriend in to work on his day off with some problem that would keep him there
all day and unaware of Meg and Castiel stripping his room down and giving it a
much needed overhaul. It seemed a bit redundant to let Dean take him all the
way home just to turn around and go back to the apartment, but he needed to get
the food together and grab a change clothes and keep up the charade of it just
being another normal day because that's what Dean expected him to do.
But by noon he was back at the apartment, with Meg in tow helping him take the
food up to the apartment and then going back to her place for the posters and
the paint and the pillowcases that he had picked out while trying not to
imagine how his and Dean's apartment together might look someday when they made
stupid little decorating decisions together.
"You were right, Cas." Meg said, after putting the pot roast back into the oven
and joining him where he was standing right inside Dean's bedroom door, his
hands on his hips as he stared down at the one can of paint that he had bought
to do what Sam had called an accent wall to offset the stark whiteness of the
rest of the room. "This shit's depressing."
He shrugged at that, depressing hadn't been the word he used to describe how
Dean's room looked now that it was all his, half empty and still sporting Sam's
old matching bare twin sized bed and the empty bookshelf that the younger boy
had built that Cas still didn't understand why Dean wasn't using since his
boyfriend's own small bookshelf was overflowing. Castiel had used the word
dreary and probably gloomy, but he was pretty certain he hadn't said
depressing. Okay, Dean had been moping a lot since Christmas and Sam moving
out, but he hadn't said anything about being sad or anything over it so
depressing seemed a little harsh to describe the nearly empty bedroom.
"Tell me what to do boss," Meg sighed rubbing her hands together and looking
around the room with her brow furrowed. "What are we moving? What's getting
painted? How are we doing this?"
"Well, I talked to Sam," Castiel began pointing towards the wall that had the
beds pressed against it. "He told me that would probably be the best wall to
paint and we need to do that first so that it can dry before Dean gets home. So
I guess...moving furniture?"
"I knew you only wanted me for one thing, Novak." Meg said ruefully, pulling
her hair until into a messy pony tail and starting towards the empty side of
the room first. "Be careful, Luc is gonna get jealous. Not a big sharer, that
man o' mine."
They worked in silence for a little while, until it became oppressive and
Castiel hunted down Sam's laptop that he had given back to Dean a couple of
weeks ago when he figured out that Gabriel's was better anyway so that he could
turn on some music. He let Meg pick the music since she kept flapping her hands
at him and she was being so helpful and Castiel had never been one to turn down
hearing something that he didn't usually listen to. But it turned out that Meg
had a penchant for angsty, female singer/songwriters; lots of Tori Amos and
Joni Mitchell and enough Alanis Morissette that he could choke on it. He tuned
it out and hummed different love songs to himself instead.
He didn't notice the glinting until Meg absolutely refused to help him paint,
stating that it was going to make her break a nail which was ridiculous since
she had been helping him move bookcases and beds and the dresser out into the
hallway and they both had banged their fingers in the doorway more than once.
But when he did notice it, Castiel turned into a squealing mess and really he
had never thought his voice could sound that girly; he was just really happy
that Jo hadn't been around to hear it because he never would have lived it
down.
And then Meg started crying and jumping up and down and he ended up with an
armful of his friend before she finally let go of him long enough that he could
look at her hand and the massive ring that was on her finger that he was
surprised that he hadn't noticed before now. God, Luc must make really good
money to be able to afford a ring that big and he felt all tingly inside when
the girl started describing how her boyfriend had proposed to her on New Year's
Eve when they had still been in Colorado visiting his family.
He could almost picture the same thing happening to him, with Dean proposing in
the snow and both of their faces so cold that it hurt to kiss because their
icicle noses got in the way, but they were so happy that they didn't care.
Castiel shook it off though, the daydream that was way too crazy to be thinking
about and nodded in all the right places through Meg's story, hugging her and
promising that nothing would make him miss their wedding even if it happened in
the most remote place on earth.
And then he started painting, the dark royal blue that complimented the minty
green of the bed linens and duvet that had subtle matching stripes that were
the same shade as the paint that Sam had helped him pick. Meg pulled out the
frames that he had gotten for Dean's posters and set to work with the
decorating type things that needed a feminine touch, keeping an eye on the food
so that it would be ready and not overcooked by the time that Bobby finally let
Dean go when they had planned that the older man would.
The text came from Dean at around five, saying that he was almost done with the
locked up engine block that Bobby had come up with as an excuse to keep his
nephew away from the apartment for the day and asking if he could come over to
the Novak house after he showered and changed clothes. That's when Cas started
freaking out because what if the paint wasn't dry yet? And what if the pot
roast was too dry or his pie tasted horrible? What if Dean got mad at him for
changing around his room? What if he had liked things the way they were before
he came along and screwed up his whole life?
"Breathe," Meg told him prying his phone out of his hands and tossing it down
on the two twin beds that they had pushed together to make a full that would
mean he didn't have to sleep on top of Dean anymore, though it really wasn't
that horrible to wake up that way, it just made his neck hurt like hell. "Get
the fuck out of your head, right now Cas."
"I'm not in my head," He said trying to rolling his eyes, but getting his face
caught in Meg's grasp so that he had to look at her. "I'm just...what if he
doesn't like it? I'm being pretty presumptuous here, maybe he wanted to keep
everything the way it was before."
"It was crap before," the other girl spat, shaking his face in her hands one
last time before moving towards the bookshelves and straightening Dean's
Vonneguts that were still stacked between the other boy's plain, rustic looking
bookends. "Do you really think he was happy before you came along, Cas? I had
only met him a couple of times, but Dean Winchester was an emotionally
constipated bundle of overly sexualized self-hatred and you made him into so
much less of an asshole that now I can stand to be around him. You're a fucking
miracle worker."
"I just meant the room, Meg." Castiel replied, looking around at Dean's band
posters, now framed and spaced more evenly throughout the room, at the new lamp
that he had bought the other boy that had a clapper so neither one of them
would have to get out of bed to turn the light off because once the bed was all
toasty and warm they always bickered and cajoled each other to try to see who's
turn it was to do it.
He felt like it was just a preview of what they could have together if Dean
gave them the chance, but he was also so ridiculously in love with the other
boy that he was willing to wait until his boyfriend came to his senses about
the whole John thing. Dean had been so patient waiting on the story about his
dad and Raphael that it felt unfair to try to force him to do something that he
didn't want to do as far as the Winchester patriarch was concerned, but he
wanted the other boy to know that he wanted a crappy first apartment that
belonged to only them and he wanted to fight about stupid stuff like paint
colors and dishes and bills. As long as he did all of those things with Dean,
it's what he wanted.
"Sure you did, Cas." Meg said looking at him meaningfully and starting around
the room to gather up the scattered bits of packaging that had ended up all
over the place while Castiel had struggled to make the bed and Meg had hung
pictures. "Stop freaking out, he's going to love it. He loves you, right? Now
go wash the paint off your face and I'm going to finish picking up then make
myself scare."
"I appreciate all of your help today, Meg." Castiel thanked the other girl,
running his hand over the new comforter on the bed before following his friend
into the living room to check on the food one last time. "I know you two
haven't always seen eye to eye, but if it weren't for you Dean and I probably
wouldn't be together.
"Yea right," Meg scoffed, turning down the heat on the oven and opening various
kitchen cabinets before she found plates and started pulling down dishes to set
the small dining room table. "If it weren't for me you two would've been dating
within a week of you moving here. You two are literally the most oblivious
people I've ever met, thank god it finally all worked out. Now seriously, you
have paint all over your face."
"What would I do without you?" He asked leaning in to give her a hug that she
returned with more enthusiasm than her eye-rolling and sighing let on.
"Never shower apparently, now go! I'll probably be gone by the time you get
done so just remind Dean that other people live in this apartment complex and
we don't want to hear all of your wild sexcapades. Keep it down you crazy
kids."
Castiel rolled his eyes and shot off a text to Dean asking him how long he
thought he would be, getting much less time as a reply than he had expected and
deciding to forgo triple checking the apartment in favor of a shower that would
help him get off the paint that had not only gotten on his face but also in his
hair and all over his forearms when he had been slapping on a second coat of
paint as quickly as possible. He didn't even take the time to dry his hair all
the way because he was so scared of burning the food, that he threw back on his
paint splattered clothes and rushed out into the kitchen in just enough time to
see his boyfriend running a tired, grease stained hand over his face as he came
in through the door.
"Cas?" Dean asked, pausing confusedly in the front hallway and taking in his
wild appearance with a tired, beamused smirk. "What are you doing here, babe? I
was just going to change and come over to your house, how did you even get in?"
"Surprise," Castiel replied weakly, waving his fingers at the other boy in mock
celebration before closing the space between them to give his boyfriend a
nervous kiss.
Dean hummed happily into their kiss before freezing and taking a wary step back
towards the doorway, reaching out towards the door handle with a growing frown
on his face. "Are people about to jump out from somewhere to yell me? Because I
told you I didn't want a party, Cas."
"Nonono," Castiel said, catching Dean around the waist and dragging him farther
into the apartment, towards the dining room so that he could see that their
friends weren't lurking inside to ambush the other boy with an unwanted
surprise party. "It's just you and me. I promise no people popping out of
closets or party clowns anywhere in this general vicinity."
"So this is..." Dean began, looking over Castiel's shoulder towards the set
dining room table and raising a questioning eyebrow at him.
"You've had a long day, honey." Cas replied adopting the most prim and proper
fifties housewife voice that he could manage given that most of the time his
voice sounded like he had been gargling rocks. "How about you go take a shower
and I'll have dinner on the table by the time you get out?"
The other boy gave him a weird smile when he leaned up to place another soft,
chaste kiss on his cheek before letting go of Dean and moving towards the oven,
peering in through the dim interior at the pot roast and trying to figure out
when exactly he should put the pie in to warm up so it would be just the right
temperature to go with the ice cream that he had made Meg stop so that he could
dart into the grocery store to get. Dean ran a hand over the back of his neck
and started towards his bedroom, probably intending to get clothes that weren't
dirty or torn or covered in grease and Castiel's scream for him to stop may
have been a bit much, but he wasn't ready for the other boy to see the main
part of his present yet.
"NO!" Castiel said, rushing down the hallway and plastering himself in front of
the closed door so that Dean couldn't go in. "You can't go in there."
"Oh-kay?" Dean asked, sighing and shaking his head a little bit. "I uh...I can
put this stuff back on I guess. You're being really weird."
"I know," he said breathlessly, twisting the handle behind his back and letting
the bedroom door crack open just a bit. "You go shower, I'll get you clothes
and then we can eat. Okay?"
"You could always shower with me," Dean offered lowly, leaning up against the
doorframe and pressing into Castiel with a seductive smile quirking his mouth.
"It is my birthday after all."
"So now you're playing the birthday card?" Castiel asked, biting his lip and
reminding himself that he needed to take care of the food and that he had
already showered and as much as he wanted to run his hands all over Dean,
especially when he had a smear of dirt or grease or something right over his
cheekbone making him look rugged and manly and edible, he still had other
birthday things to take care of first. "No, you shower. I'll clothes, then
food."
"Party pooper," Dean muttered, glancing down at Castiel's mouth one last time
before moving back down towards the bathroom and shutting himself inside.
===============================================================================
Dean had learned early on in life that birthdays weren't anything special, at
least not for him. They were just another day that his mom and dad got into a
fight or, after his mom left, dealing with the aftermaths of John's drinking
binges. He spent his birthdays doing laundry or grocery shopping or working or
cleaning up Sam's scraped knees from falling off of his bike. Dean had learned
to stop expecting people to treat the anniversary of his birth like it was
something that mattered or had changed the world at all.
He didn't like parties because in the past that had always meant that he was
drunk and he hooked up with some girl who acted like they cared that it was his
birthday, but didn't really. And he didn't like presents because it was just a
reminder that his own gifts for his friends were usually predictable and
lackluster and involved car maintenance, but that didn't stop them from giving
him presents at school on Friday or change the fact that his friends were
amazingly thoughtful and knew him better than he realized most of the time.
For his eighteenth birthday, he had just wanted to spend the day with Cas; even
if all they did all day was study for the SATs which they should have been
doing for much longer than the two weeks they had between him agreeing to take
the test and its actual occurrence. So when Bobby called him in to help with
the world's most fucked up engine ever, forcing him to cancel his plans with
his boyfriend and go into work all day Dean had cursed the older man up, down,
and sideways all the way over to the shop in the Impala, getting it out of his
system before he had to spend what was supposed to be his special day elbow
deep in someone else's problems, just like he always did.
It had been nice to come home to find Cas there waiting for him and if he
hadn't been so tired he probably would have pushed the other boy up against the
wall and started ravaging him right then, but he was exhausted and also
would've been fine curling up in his bed and sleeping with the other boy for
the next million years or so. Cas was acting weird though and he had cooked for
him, which wasn't something that had ever happened before and then he wouldn't
let him into his bedroom. Something was going on and Dean still wasn't wholly
convinced that a surprise party wouldn't be waiting for him when he got out of
the shower.
But all that was there was Cas waiting outside the door with a pile of clothes
in his hands and blush tingeing his cheeks when Dean opened the bathroom door
with just a towel around his waist. He loved that the other boy still got all
flustered around him, Castiel had this amazing, alluring innocence that could
just change into authoritative, commanding sexuality at the drop of the hat.
Dean was still finding new ways that the other boy turned him on, things that
he never would have thought to ask for from a girl and with Cas he didn't have
to ask; his boyfriend just knew.
"I didn't lock the door," Dean offered, smirking at the other boy when he went
to wrap his arms around him where Cas was standing at the kitchen counter,
dishing up pot roast and vegetables out of a big ceramic roasting pan onto to
plates. "You still could've joined me, sweetheart."
Castiel leaned back into his chest with a sigh, shutting his eyes when Dean
started kissing his neck before the smaller boy elbowed him lightly in the
stomach and picked up their plates to carry them to the table.
"You, sit. Eat." Castiel ordered, arching his eyebrow at Dean almost as if he
was daring him to question his authority.
"Now this feels like a real birthday," Dean muttered teasingly, totally joking
in every way because he liked it when Cas pulled rank on him or pinned him
against a wall or acted weird. In fact he fucking loved it, but maybe he
should've stopped there when his boyfriend's face fell after Dean finished his
thought. "You, get me a beer. You, take care of Sam. I'm going out."
"I didn't mean it like that," Castiel said quickly, clearing his throat and
taking the seat across from Dean with his eyes downcast. "I'm just...I didn't
mean to sound like your dad. Sorry."
"I was kidding, babe." Dean said, nudging the other boy's foot with his own
under the table. "This is great, really. More than I've ever had before, now
all we need is some pie."
"Dean, really?" Castiel said, smiling shyly at him as they ate. "What do you
take me for?"
"Um...awesome, maybe?"
"Try definitely," the other boy pointed out, making a face when Dean smiled at
him around a mouth full of pot roast and carrots and potatoes. "And that's not
all."
"Cas..." Dean began warningly, because they had already talked about this;
gifts. About how he didn't want one from his boyfriend because then it would
feel uneven since he hadn't gotten Cas anything for his own birthday and Dean
had never been good with feeling like he owed people anything.
"I don't want to hear it, Dean." Castiel said, kicking at his leg lightly to
shut him up. "It's not a big deal and its more for myself than it is for you
anyway so you'll take it and you'll like it and we aren't going to talk about
it."
"Before or after pie?" Dean asked defeatedly, running a hand over his face in
an effort to cover up the smile he could feel his face unwillingly forming
into.
"Whatever you want, darling. It's your birthday."
Dean scoffed at that, turning back to his plate and the pot roast which was
pretty damn delicious, even though he was pretty sure that Cas hadn't been the
one to make it. It smacked of Gabriel's cooking which he had become pretty
accustomed to since Sam had moved out, family dinner's were a big thing at the
Novak house and the older man had pulled him to the side and told Dean he had a
standing invitation to come over anytime he wanted to. He hadn't even rang the
doorbell again since the winter ball and most of the time Cas met him at the
door anyway, dragging him inside with kisses before Dean could even reach for
the doorknob. Every time the other boy did that it felt like coming home,
whether it was his apartment or Cas's house or even Bobby's guest bedroom that
feeling of rightness that he had with the other boy hadn't faded in the
slightest.
"I really like this whole, playing house thing by the way," Dean said,
gesturing with his fork around the apartment. "It's nice."
"Yea," Castiel said, blushing and biting his lip. "It is."
They ate in silence for a while, leaving the apartment quiet enough to be able
to hear music that was filtering out of the partially opened door of his
bedroom. Dean got seconds, Cas pulled the world's sexiest looking pie out of
the oven to cool, and it all kind of degraded into Dean pushing the other boy
up against the kitchen counter so that he could kiss him because this was
easily the best birthday of his life, even without the pie.
He skimmed his hands up underneath the t-shirt that Cas was wearing, settling
his hands on firmly on the other boy's waist and deciding for probably the
first time in his life that pie could wait in lieu of birthday sex that he
would actually remember for once. Castiel smelled like his body wash and apples
and cinnamon and all of Dean's favorite things; he felt like his life was
slowly turning into a sappy musical and it didn't even bother him like it
probably once would have.
"Present?" Castiel muttered against his lips, draping his arms around Dean's
neck so that he could play with the short strands of hair at the back of his
head.
"God, yes." Dean groaned, letting the other boy push him down the hallway
backwards, stumbling over nothing as they kissed their way towards his bedroom.
He was already impatiently trying to push Cas's shirt over his head when his
knees hit the mattress of his bed, much sooner than he was used to colliding
with it when he stumbled into the room groggy and blurry-eyed after picking
John up from a bar. Dean cursed softly, putting his hands behind him on the
mattress to push them off of Sam's old bed so they could get across the room to
his, but they met soft fabric instead of the scratchy material of the bare
mattress that he was expecting. His frown was just as much from confusion as it
was from unhappiness over Cas pulling away from their kiss.
"What the hell?" Dean mumbled, running his palms over the unfamiliar blanket
that was covering the bed that was way too big to actually be his in a room
that was entirely too clean and grown up looking to be in his tiny, depressing,
empty apartment.
"Happy birthday?" Castiel said hesitantly, standing at the edge of the bed
watching as Dean flipped over onto his stomach and scrambled into a sitting
position in the middle of the bed that was twice the size it used to be to look
at the way his room had been redecorated.
Dean tried to reconcile how his room looked now versus how it had looked when
the space had belonged to both him and Sam; he had been so intent on kissing
Cas, lost in the perfect sensation of how his body fit against the other boy's
that all of the changes probably would have escaped his notice until the middle
of sex if Cas hadn't pushed him back onto the bed. He could tell that not a lot
had actually been changed, it was all still the same furniture and his bed was
in the same place, just it was bigger somehow now, but the way that everything
had been moved around made everything look so different and adult and
sophisticated in a way that he never would have been able to put together
without Jo or someone helping him.
Cas had done all of this? For him? And knowing Bobby, the older man had
probably been in on it because his uncle had been hella clumsy all day when
they were trying to fix that engine, causing more problems every time Dean
thought that he had figured the whole thing out and could he could take off to
spend the rest of the day with his boyfriend like he had wanted to. He hadn't
done anything to the room himself because Dean felt like everything else in the
apartment was so miserable now that Sam was gone, so his room should be too.
But this was...
"Amazing," Dean said, reaching out and running his fingers over the dark blue
painted wall that used to be white, smirking when he thought of how the color
matched Cas's eyes when the light hit them just right. "Babe, this is perfect.
Did you do all of this yourself?"
"Meg helped me a bit," the other boy replied after clearing his throat,
crossing his arms anxiously over his chest. "We can change anything around that
you want though, nothing is permanent."
"Why is my bed so big?" Dean asked, shaking his head a bit and bouncing around
until he was sitting in front of Cas so that he could pry the other boy's hand
down so he could hold it loosely. "And hey! You bought me a guitar stand."
"We pushed the beds together and that's from Sam, actually." Castiel said,
smiling and watching Dean as he looked excitedly around the room. "He stole
Bonnie and went to get it for you while Gabe and I were cooking. You didn't
think he would forget your birthday, did you?"
Dean shrugged a bit, looking down and running his thumb over the back of the
other boy's hands. He tried to not let it show on his face that that's exactly
what he had been thinking since he barely saw his little brother anymore and
Sam didn't need him now that he was living with Gabriel, safe away from their
dad who wouldn't even talk about his youngest son anymore. He hoped it wasn't
obvious to his boyfriend how much it hurt his feelings to not even have gotten
a text from his brother today when that's all he really wanted or needed from
Sam.
"Dean," Castiel said softly, using his other hand to cup his face and bring his
head up so that Dean had to look at the other boy. "It's better that he's not
here anymore. I know you miss him, but Sam's safer away from your dad."
"I wouldn't have let anything happen," Dean protested weakly, glancing up at
the other boy's unconvinced face and rolling his eyes before pulling Castiel
down onto the bed with him. "Can we not talk about that? I don't want to be
bummed out on my birthday."
"Well, what do you want to do then?" Castiel said snuggling his face into the
larger boy's neck with a contended sigh, twining his legs through Dean's as he
went even though there was no real reason for them to have to be that close now
the bed was twice as big.
Dean hummed in thought, rolling over onto his back and pulling the other boy
with him so that Castiel was straddling his hips and chuckling softly into his
neck. "We could study? SAT prep questions?"
"Oh, is that what you're doing?" Castiel asked, pulling back so he could look
incredulously at Dean. "You want me to quiz you on Algebra? Word associations?"
"Anatomy is on the test right?" Dean replied innocently, running his hands
along the other boy's back noticing the flecks of paint splatter on Cas's shirt
for the first time.
"No," Castiel replied, furrowing his brow and shaking his head a little bit,
smirking down at Dean before beginning to place soft kisses down his jaw.
"Don't think so, darling."
"Really? I'm pretty sure it's on there. We should quiz each other."
"A practical exam," the other boy muttered ruefully, nibbling on Dean's earlobe
and causing the larger boy to fist his shirt in his hands. "And that's not even
the best part of your present."
"Lingerie?" Dean asked jokingly, earning a raised eyebrow and an intrigued
smirk from his boyfriend. "Save something for Valentine's Day, babe."
"No, dork." Castiel said, sitting up in Dean's lap and pulling his shirt over
his head. "But consider that duly noted."
"Really?"
The smaller boy just shrugged, smiling impishly at Dean before clapping his
hands together loudly twice causing the lamp that was casting the only light in
the room from where it had been perched on Dean's nightstand to go out with a
muted click.
"A fucking clapper!?" Dean exclaimed, rolling his boyfriend back onto his back
and silencing Castiel's silly, self-satisfied giggles with kisses. "Best
birthday ever."
Chapter End Notes
     I'm getting bummed that this is almost over, like super sad. I'm
     lingering and drawing this out and being sentimentally, silly;
     forgive me. One word guys: Trial. Then that's it for Born to Run. :(
     The second part will be called Nomad by Fate (official on that one),
     so look for it after the end of this part. I'm going to try to get a
     couple of chapters ahead before posting anything though, so my other
     fics will keep updating in the meantime. *sigh* Love you guys, fml. :
     (
***** I Was An Island *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Dean walked out of the SAT feeling like a fucking superstar. Sure his hands
were shaking and he wasn't entirely sure that he would be able to hold down the
enormous breakfast that Gabriel had forced onto him and Cas before they headed
over to the college where the test was being administered, but besides that he
felt like he was on top of the world. Well, he was also still a little pissed
that the uppity dude administering the test wouldn't let him sit next to Cas,
said it was protocol or the rules or some stupid shit that everyone had to sit
alphabetically and that Dean wasn't going to get the rules bent just for him.
Even that couldn't mess up the euphoric high that he was feeling as he and
Castiel walked out to high car, hand in hand and enjoying the unseasonably warm
Feburary weekend that had turned the gathered snow into slush that revealed the
green offshoots of the grass that had been hidden underneath for the last
couple of months. Because apart from a couple of really confusing Algebra
problems and one badly written word association question, Dean was fairly
confident that he had completely owed the SAT.
For the first time in a long time he was feeling optimistic about things that
he had always thought were out of his reach, things like college and a stable
relationship and actually growing up to have a job that people didn't look down
on him for doing. He was good at fixing cars, better than even Bobby sometimes
and he liked it, for a hobby, but did he want to do it for the rest of his
life? He would never regret the things he had learned from his uncle, about
doing an honest day's work for an honest wage , about the value of a dollar and
how some people didn't really know how much it was worth because they had never
really had to work for it. But no, working on cars was not the end game
anymore; for once he thought he might be able to do something more than his dad
had told him he could.
"So let's celebrate," Castiel said excitedly beside him, feeding off of Dean's
energy as the larger boy took advantage of his boyfriend's good mood to press
him up against the side of the Impala that had warmed in the afternoon sun. "No
more studying, just regular school and then we're done. Then we can get past
high school and move on with our lives."
"Are you sure this isn't you trying to make me forget that you're leaving for a
week?" Dean asked, leaning in close to bury his face in Castiel's neck because
a week was a really long time and Chicago might as well be on the moon and Cas
was still pretending that he didn't have to face his dad in less than a week to
give testimony that might put his father and oldest brother in jail for what
they did to him.
Cas had been avoiding talking about it with Dean and more than once he had
caught the other boy talking to his therapist on the phone over the last couple
of weeks, getting the woman's help to talk himself down from the edge of a
panic attack and kissing Dean like the world was ending as soon as he ended his
calls. Their love making had taken on an air of desperation ever since his
birthday, with Castiel clinging to him when he had to stumble out of bed to go
pick up John from somewhere during the brief week that he was in town before
taking off again leaving behind a note that said he wouldn't be back for a
month.
It worried Dean just a little bit that his dad was taking jobs farther and
farther away, but then again he had other things to worry about before today
too. Like the SAT and those college application essays that he had told his
boyfriend he would write while Cas was in Chicago and Cas, himself, who seemed
reckless and restless, spending more and more time jogging and journaling even
when he was with Dean in his redecorated bedroom stretched out on the bed like
it was theirs along with the rest of the apartment and it was so domestic that
it made Dean's heart feel heavy and happy and full.
"Maybe I just need a distraction, myself." Castiel replied lowly, wrapping his
arms around Dean's neck and chuckling when the larger boy started humming Elvis
songs into his ear. "Let's go out somewhere, its Saturday night. I feel like I
have all this energy that I need to work off."
"I could help you with that," Dean said teasingly, kissing at the other boy's
neck and groaning in annoyance when a part of the group of students that they
had been testing with walked by talking fairly loudly about how gross gay
couples were and why did they have to rub their disgusting behavior in
everyone's faces.
"Ignore them," Cas muttered, giving the passing trio the finger behind Dean's
head and sticking his tongue out at the shocked expression he got in return.
"It doesn't matter what they think."
"I know, babe." Dean sighed, pulling back so that he could brush the hair out
of the other boy's face earning a soft smile from Castiel. "I just keep
wondering when it's going to stop bothering me so much. People shouldn't be
allowed to just say shit like that, like I don't go around pointing out the
things I don't like about everyone so why do they get to do it to us?"
"Because they want us to break," Castiel explained, prying himself out from
underneath Dean's weight so that he could clamber into the Impala. "People like
that have a hole in their lives, something they're trying to hide or fill by
pointing out the flaws in other people, all of it is trying to take the
attention off of the problems in their own lives because the last thing anyone
wants is to be pitied."
"Do you pity your dad?" Dean asked, glancing over at his boyfriend as he
started the car, wondering if he had pushed to far again and if Castiel was
going to shut him down by pulling up his phone and calling Rachel instead of
talking to him when he was right here practically begging Cas to confide in
him.
"I pity Raphael for being dumb enough to get used by my dad," the other boy
replied, his voice sounding monotone like it only did when he was trying to
hide his emotions and the fact that Dean knew that didn't really make him feel
any better about his boyfriend hurting. "Can we go now?"
"Where are we going, babe?"
"Anywhere, just drive." Castiel said, slouching down in the passenger seat and
flopping his hand into the space between him and Dean, palm up and asking for
it to be held so they were probably okay.
Dean pulled out of the parking lot of the lecture hall that they had tested in,
aiming the car for the apartment and wishing that there was something else he
could do to let the other boy know that the trial was really the last test
before they could move on with their lives, focus on the future and all of the
potential that it held now that they were together. But he was patient, he
could wait and he loved Castiel so really he could wait forever and be okay.
Even if they were grumpy old men together by the time Cas finally was able to
move past the betrayal of two of the people that he trusted most in the world,
Dean could wait and promise himself that he would never let the same thing
happen to the boy he loved ever again.
===============================================================================
Castiel rubbed distractedly at the X's that had been put on the top of his
hands with the thick black Sharpie that the bouncer had carried, wishing that
he had had enough foresight to bring something to get it off with so that he
could drink like everyone else was doing. Even Krissy had a fake id and she
definitely could not pass for 21, but the bouncer had looked the other way
because Meg had flirted with him much to Luc's eye-rolling displeasure and they
had all made it into the club with only Castiel getting marked as underage.
When he had told Dean that he wanted to go out, he hadn't really expected his
boyfriend to invite all of their friends along with them, but he figured it was
his own damn fault for saying no to a movie and no to going to the diner and no
to just sitting around at one of their houses where he could get lost in his
head thinking about the trial all over again. Studying for the SATs had proved
to be a distraction for a little bit, but really Dean was more than ready to
take them despite him pouring over every study manual he could get his hands on
and Castiel had been left watching his boyfriend freak over nothing for the
last two weeks while his trial loomed ever closer.
But he hadn't wanted to burden Dean with it, the timing was just complete and
utter shit, but there was nothing he could do about it. The date for the trial
had been set months ago, over the summer before he knew about Dean Winchester
and found something that he wanted more than the gift of dying forgiven that
his father had offered him. Now more than anything he just wanted all of this
to be over, so that he could move on with the rest of his life and he didn't
want Dean to worry about him when he was already busy taking care of John who
didn't even deserve the help that his oldest son was giving him.
So he had kept it all to himself, relying heavily on Rachel to keep him
grounded even though after the trial he wasn't even sure if she was going to be
his therapist anymore. Her job was done, evaluating him to determine what
damage had been caused by Daniel and what had been caused by his father and
being a witness at the trial to defend the parts of his sanity that he had
managed to salvage after trying to kill himself. The therapist was just flying
out for the day that she was giving testimony but Cas and his siblings were
expected to be there for the entire time, the two days allotted for the
criminal trial and then the third that their attorneys had said the custody
hearing would take place on.
Gabriel was still pulling them out of school for the whole week though;
apparently it was something that the older man had set up with the school back
when he was registering Castiel and Anna for classes and they were flying out
to Chicago on Monday morning. Dean had refused to let them take a taxi to the
airport, saying it was the least he and Sam could do for the Novaks claiming
that it wasn't really house sitting since Sam was already living there and
eating them out of house and home.
But that was all that Dean had offered, besides asking leading questions that
Castiel knew just proved the other boy loved him because no one worried that
much over something they didn't care about. He had it figured out though, how
Dean was so much better with gestures than words and maybe his boyfriend would
never be able to say it, 'I Love You', but that didn't mean that he was bereft
of emotions. Dean loved him, he knew that he loved him, but he was still more
than a little worried that his trial fears would put the other boy off of them
possibly living together one day. He was still a neurotic mess and the last
thing he wanted was to be just another person that Dean had to take care of.
So instead of thinking, he was running or writing down all of his worries so
that he wouldn't word vomit them all over his boyfriend. Castiel was just full
of this nervous energy that he felt like he needed to work off or it would
destroy him along with everything else in the immediate vicinity. Shooting
practice with the ROTC helped, they were getting ready for their first big meet
next week and Virgil was not exactly thrilled that he was going to miss it, but
the older man understood that he had other things to take care of that were
bigger than an after school club.
Sitting still in the SAT testing room had been horrible, first with Dean making
that huge scene with the testing administrator about them not being able to sit
next to each other, which he knew the other boy was trying to get just as much
for Cas as he was himself and then with him finishing almost every single
section with enough time to spare for him to start freaking out about the trial
again. His nails were completely bitten off, his lips felt raw and chapped and
not in a good way like they did after he and Dean made out, and he was pretty
sure his scratch paper that he turned in with his test looked like the ravings
of a lunatic.
That's why he had wanted to do something, go out, run, have sex, drink, maybe
even just drive around with Dean and the air whipping in the Impala's windows
as music blared loud enough to drown out his thoughts. But they had ended up at
some club called the Replay Lounge and he had been the only one to get cornered
by the bouncer and marked as designated driver by default. Even Luc was
drinking though he was by far the oldest of the people in their group and had
ended up talking to some older man in a tweed jacket at the bar who Castiel
assumed was a work colleague of his from the college. But not Cas, it was like
the world wanted his head to explode or something.
"Bro," Ash drawled, clinking a handful of bottles down on the table and before
shoving his hand into Krissy's purse and rifling around.
Castiel watched while the girl weakly protested the other boy's invasion of
privacy before grabbing a beer and looking off to where Meg and Jo were dancing
out in the middle of the open space that served as a dance floor in front of
the stage that the DJ had set up on. Ash pulled out a travel sized bottle of
hand sanitizer and tossed it in Cas's direction, making a motion towards the
back of his hands that the smaller boy should use it there.
"Rubbing alcohol," Ash shout-talked in his direction over the thumping music
that was playing the background. "Gets Sharpie right off."
"Who's going to drive?" Castiel asked, pausing before he popped the top of the
bottle and doused his hands with it.
"Krissy and I can handle it," the other boy replied, smiling up at the girl in
question when she plopped down into his lap almost immediately after he sat
down in one of the chairs that was huddled around the small round table that
they had managed to snag. "You need to relax, man. You've been hella stressed."
"Am I that obvious?"
"Dude, yes." Krissy sighed. "Thank god you and Dean are done with that test, if
I had to sit through one more 'study lunch' with you guys I was going to kill
you all. This graduation shit is seriously bumming me out, what am I going to
do when you all leave?"
"We've got months, dollface." Ash said, kissing her arm and tilting his head in
Dean's direction when they saw the other boy reappear from where he had gone
off to the bathroom. "There's your man, take him a beer, dance or something.
Just freaking act like a teenager for a bit Cas, you don't have to be so
serious all the time. Being happy is not going to kill you."
"Y'know, that is excellent advice," Castiel said, getting up and heading in
Dean's direction, grabbing two of the beers off of the table as he went. "You
should be a doctor or something, Ash."
"I am," he replied, punching lightly at Castiel's arm as he passed. "Doctor
Badass, remember?"
He politely excused his way through the crowd, keeping Dean in his eyeline as
he shuffled through the crush of college students and townies who worked in or
around the university. The other boy had stopped to talk to Jo, leaning down so
that she could wrap an arm around his neck and speak directly into his ear. His
boyfriend was smiling and shrugging, probably blushing too but the weird
lighting of the club was making Dean looked washed out, but Castiel could tell
by the goofy grin that the other boy had that they were either talking about
how the test went today, Sam, or him.
When he saw Jo's eyes lock onto his and her smile widen, he knew that they were
talking about him. Meg had told their friend how Cas had reacted to the news of
her and Luc's engagement, squealing like a girl and getting all teary; just
like he had expected, Jo had been teasing him about it non-stop, saying that he
and Dean should run off to Vermont and get married and open a bed and breakfast
for cats. He had just bit his tongue about it all because if he told Jo about
the necklace that Adam had gotten her for Valentine's Day then the other boy
would never forgive him, but the first time he saw Jo wearing it Cas knew that
his teasing would reach Winchester level proportions.
Dean turned around and smiled at him, making Castiel stop in his tracks just
like it always did and try to catch his breath back. He hoped that there would
never be a day that seeing Dean wouldn't make his heart beat faster and his
breath catch in his chest, he hoped that they would never be one of those
couples who got bored of each other and stayed together out of a sense of duty
or fear that they wouldn't be able to find someone else. Cas hoped that when
Dean eventually come to his senses, that he would be able to pick himself back
up afterwards, stronger because of the relationship with the other boy even if
it meant being alone again.
"Brought you a beer," he managed to choke out, grinning when Dean leaned in and
wrapped an arm around his waist, tugging him close enough that their chests
collided as the larger boy reached out to take one of the drinks out of his
hand.
"Thanks, babe." Dean said, green eyes roving over his face searchingly as he
took a long drink of the beer and pulled him over to where Meg and Jo were
dancing and laughing, clinging together and acting silly.
"Cas!" Meg exclaimed, falling into his arms and forcing Dean to step away from
his so that he could catch her. "You're going to give me away."
"To charity?" Castiel asked, earning a shrieking laugh from Jo as Meg's mouth
fell open in protest.
"NO! At my wedding, buttface." Meg explained, her speech sounding stunted and
slowed by the long island iced teas she had been inhaling since walking into
the club.
"Isn't that something that a father does?" he scream-talked into the other
girl's hair, watching Dean as Jo pulled him farther onto the dance floor and
started to bounce around him as his boyfriend laughed.
"Fathers schamathers," Meg slurred, making a face that looked like she had just
tasted something sour. "Who needs 'em, eh? Not you, not me, and not boy wonder
and supergirl over there. I'd rather have someone who cares about me give away
my virtue to Luc."
"It's really gross when you put it that way," Castiel joked, giving her a kiss
on the cheek and a nod before turning her around in the direction of the bar
and beginning to steer her towards Luc. "Let's go find him, maybe switch you to
water."
"You're gonna come back, right?" Meg pouted, leaning heavily into his side as
he half carried her to perch on the stool next to Luc who was now standing with
Adam looking off over the crowd, presumably for the other boy's girlfriend.
"From Chicago? Don't go up there and decide we're all yokels and never come
back."
"That's ridiculous," Castiel muttered, rolling his eyes at Meg before pointing
Adam in the direction where he had left Dean and Jo. "Of course I'm going to
come back, my entire life is here."
"Dean thinks you miss it," Meg said, crossing her arms on the bar and laying
her head down on them. "The big city, that's why you've been so antsy and not
talking to him about it. He thinks you're going to go back to Chicago and
realize how shitty it is here and end up wanting to go to school there
instead."
"He told you all that?" Cas asked concernedly, the only schools he had any
intention of applying to were ones where Dean Winchester would be enrolled, if
his boyfriend ended up deciding college wasn't for him and wanted to run off to
join the circus or something, Castiel planned on being right there next to him
walking the tightrope or taming lions until Dean told him to leave.
"A girl just knows, Cas." Meg mumbled, shutting her eyes with a sleepy sigh and
leaning into Luc who just wrapped an arm around her as he shook his head.
"Go on, Cas." Luc said, pushing Meg's hair behind her ear lovingly before he
hefted the smaller woman up into his arms, bridal carry style. "I'm gonna take
her home, she's been going crazy about the wedding and we haven't even set a
date yet. Oh, did she ask you about the whole giving away thing?"
"Well it wasn't so much her asking me to do it as her telling me that I was
going to do it." He explained, smirking when Meg flailed a bit and ended up
hitting Luc in the face softly with the back of her hand.
"That's my girl," Luc groaned, shaking her hand out of his face and moving
towards the door. "Have fun, Cas. And thanks for everything."
"You're okay to drive right?" Castiel asked, trailing behind the other man and
keeping his beer down low by his side when they got closer to the bouncer who
he was pretty sure would remember him since Meg had made a point to be pretty
unforgettable when she was trying to get them all in so they could drink.
Luc waved him off, nodding back in the direction of the dance floor and saying
goodbye one last time before heading out the door of the club.
===============================================================================
Cas may have hated dancing once upon a time, but apparently the right
combination of stress and alcohol and cajoling by both Jo and Krissy was enough
to make his boyfriend loosen up enough that he let Dean pull him around the
dance floor until the larger boy got impatient enough to drag Cas outside to
the Impala where they collapsed in a tangle of jumbled limbs and messy kisses
that had Dean rethinking his whole stance on having sex in cars.
The other boy was in his lap, straddling his hips like he had on New Year's Eve
and so many times over the past couple of months when they had fogged up the
windows of the Impala, kissing after movie night or not wanting to let each
other go. It wasn't even about sex most of the time, this time it was, but most
of the time it wasn't. This time it was about Dean wanting to give Cas
something to remember him by, something that would make him want to come back
home to Lawrence and all of the boring, small-town homophobia that they had to
put up with that in all likelihood wasn't as bad in Chicago.
"I'm going to come back, Dean." Castiel muttered into his ear, kissing and
nibbling at his neck, rolling his hips down against Dean's as he went causing
the larger boy to groan softly and run the flat of his palm up Cas's back to
press between his shoulder blades. "I won't leave unless you want me to."
"Well, that's never going to happen," Dean scoffed, pulling back to press his
forehead against Castiel's breathing heavily into the space between them as his
hips canted upwards, seeking friction against the only person he could imagine
dying for. "I'd have to be pretty stupid to give you up."
"Guess we'll just have to wait on the test results then," the smaller boy
replied teasingly, pulling down the collar of Dean's shirt and ducking his head
to bite softly at the base of his throat.
"Asshole," Dean murmured, moving his other hand off of Castiel's hip to slide
it into the back of the smaller boy's jeans, digging his nails into the skin
beneath the thin fabric of his boyfriend's boxers urging him to move against
him faster, harder, rougher.
"You love me," Castiel said, smiling against his throat and tugging on the back
of Dean's hair so that he could kiss him desperate and deep, exactly how Dean
liked him to. "I know that you love me, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to
come back from this trial and we don't ever have to be apart again."
"I do," Dean breathed, thinking of all of the nights he had spent teaching
himself guitar so that he could play Love Me Tender for the other boy as his
Valentine's Day present and how his dad probably wouldn't even notice if he and
Cas got their own place together as long as he still had a lift home from the
bars when he was in town. "I'll be here, waiting for you to come home."
He still wanted it, all of it; the house, the dog, the half cherry half apple
pie life with the picket fence that he had always imagined for himself and
Sammy once they got the hell out of Lawrence and found nice girls to settle
down with. This wasn't how he had imagined his senior year going, but he would
be a damned liar if he said that being with Cas hadn't made him a better,
happier person and losing that peace that he had found with the other boy
scared him senseless.
But he needed to stop letting fear dominate his life, the fear of everyone
leaving him alone and defenseless against the looming, angry voiced shadows
that had told him all life that nothing he did was good enough. The fear that
his dad would never again be the person that he had worked on the Impala with
as a kid, before his mom left and everything turned to complete shit that he
couldn't protect anyone from, least of all himself. The fear that he would
eventually be the same and there was nothing and no one that could save him
from that. But then there was Cas and everything else melted away until the
only thing he was afraid of was losing the one thing that made him fearless
about the rest of it.
Castiel nodded above him, fumbling between them at Dean's belt until he could
get the fastenings open and reach a hand inside the denim to palm the larger
boy's erection without the cumbersome material separating them. Dean groaned
when Cas started stroking him, arching his back against the seat and biting his
lip in concentration while he fought to free the other boy from his own
clothing. The pair let out a simultaneous moan when their members slid
together, Dean licking a stripe on the palm of his hand in order to provide
lubricant for the impromptu turn that their heated kissing had taken.
He was so close, thrusting and grinding against the other boy and promising
himself that when Cas got back from Chicago he would make the rest of their
lives one that people talked about until the end of time, the kind of
relationship that people aspired to and envied and prayed that they would be
lucky enough to find someday. They were going to be Romeo and Juliet, Mark
Anthony and Cleopatra, Lancelot and Guinevere; Dean could write the story of
their love. Chuck and Cas had both always said he was a pretty good writer.
"Dean," Castiel moaned, catching the lager boy's lower lip between his teeth
for a second before burying his face in Dean's neck, panting against the skin
as their hands moved together between them spreading precome and saliva down
their lengths. "I want you so bad, want you forever."
"Forever," Dean whispered, dipping his hand lower into Castiel's jeans and
pressing a dry finger against the other boy's entrance.
The other boy hissed in surprise before nodding briskly against Dean's neck and
pushing back into the intrusion with whimpering sigh. Dean watched his
boyfriend's face as the pained expression turned to one of pleasure as Castiel
timed his thrusts against Dean with how the larger boy was brushing against his
prostate, wishing that he knew how to let Cas know that he was ready for this,
that he wanted to feel the other boy inside of him in whatever way he could
get. But how did he even begin to ask for something like that?
Cas had been testing and teasing against his limits and so far Dean had just
ignored the probing, cautious digits that the other boy used to touch him when
they were fooling around, but his curiosity was rapidly getting the better of
him. His fantasies had become ones of Cas pining him down, talking to him in
that authoritative, deep voice that he used to bark out orders during ROTC
practice, and fucking him until he was begging to come for the other boy;
imagining how it would feel to have nothing separating him or Cas from each
other even though he knew how important protection was.
He just wanted to know how much it would hurt first, not that he was scared of
the pain because he was pretty sure some of his football injuries could compare
with how his first time bottoming would measure up, he just wanted to know and
asking Cas in the middle of sex felt all kinds of wrong. But he had already
decided that if the other boy seriously followed through with his leading
lingerie jokes that the thought of getting fucked by a guy in thigh high
stockings did not bother him in the slightest, in fact as long as it was Cas it
was sure to be the most mind blowing experience of his life.
Thinking of Cas in stockings and a corset and god, maybe even some heels or
something that would put the other boy taller than him for once made him groan,
thrusting with a renewed vigor against Castiel who was muttering and moaning
into his neck, pausing every so often to kiss him breathless or run his hand
down Dean's chest.
"Close," Dean groaned out, hauling the other boy as close as he could manage,
close enough that he could feel Castiel's heart beating against his chest and
the other boy clenching spasmodically around the finger that he was using to
apply a steady, insistent pressure against his prostate. "Cas, babe. Oh fuck,
you're so sexy, so beautiful. Need to feel you, want to see you come."
Castiel arched his back, biting his lip to stifle the low groans that were
still managing to tear their way out of his throat. He griped Dean's bicep like
it was the only thing anchoring him to the moment before swooping down and
dominating Dean's mouth, tongue fucking him in a way that just made the larger
boy's mind race with the possibilities of what else that mouth could do to him,
what his mouth could do to Cas, what he had been wanting to do to Cas.
And then he was gone, seeing only beautiful blue and sparks as he came shaking
apart under the tight grip that Castiel had around their throbbing cocks while
they both thrust shallowly through their orgasms against each other. The other
boy stroked them until their erections started to deflate, sighing into Dean's
neck when the larger boy gingerly withdrew the digit that he had pressed into
Castiel. Dean didn't know when he had let go of the other boy to grip the
passenger side armrest of the Impala, but there was a Titanic worthy handprint
smearing the fog that their breath had created, revealing the slushy parking
lot of the club and the distant, hazy streetlights that dimly lit the space.
"It's just a week, Dean." Castiel murmured, looking disapprovingly at the mess
they had made of their clothing and shrugging in a defeated sort of way. "This
time, next week I'll be back and it'll all be finished. I am going to come
back. What was it you said?"
"Stuck for life," Dean replied, smiling ruefully at the other boy and
struggling out of his over shirt so they could have something at all to clean
up with, so much for not having sex in the car.
"No, it was you're going to hate me by the time I'm done with you I think,"
Castiel said, smirking as Dean struggled to clean them both up without making
it worse than it already was.
"Like I could ever hate you," the larger boy said under his breath, laughing
when Castiel pushed him back hard against the seat, crushing their lips
together again before clambering out of his lap with a triumphant grin.
"Like I could ever be done with you," his boyfriend retorted, yelping in
surprise when Dean climbed on top of him, pushing him down on the seat until he
was trapped comfortably under the weight of the larger boy.
"I guess you're right about that," Dean murmured, kissing the other boy's jaw
one last time before sitting up briskly and starting the Impala, thankful that
seeing Castiel stress-free and smiling had replaced the appeal of alcohol for
him almost completely before steering them towards the apartment which felt
more like home than any of the other ones he had lived in. As long as Cas was
with him, anywhere could be home.
Chapter End Notes
     Snow day smut! Literally its like driving on an ice-rink where I live
     and I have only left my house to get the mail, mail-people are
     officially my heroes, btw.
     One more chapter guys, which I've already started and hope to have up
     early so that waiting for the first chapter of the sequel (Nomad By
     Fate, guys look for it) won't take forever. But if you're jonesin'
     for other stuff to read my other two fics are going to update and
     there is probs (def) going to be a punk!Cas AU that I will be
     starting also. I'm the worst or crazy, either way I'm sorry for all
     of the suspense my loveys.
***** Head Is Not My Home *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Is it just me or are you expecting Gabriel to jump out and scare you too?"
Dean asked, cautiously opening the pantry in the Novak household so that he
could try to figure out something for him and Sam to make for dinner. "I mean,
I know we just dropped them all off at the airport, but the house is too
quiet."
"I know," his younger brother agreed, nodding vigorously where he had hopped up
on the counter after he had followed Dean into the kitchen. "I've been here
over a month and I still can't sleep sometimes because I'm used to John's
yelling and snoring or being able to hear the TV in the next apartment over
blaring through the wall."
"But you're good here, right?" Dean asked, glancing over at his younger brother
as he perused the instructions for a box of fancy looking Hamburger Helper that
Gabe had in the pantry. "I mean, I know you aren't starving or whatever and you
don't have to worry about Dad anymore so you're better off being here instead
of with me, right?"
"I think both of us would be better off not living in that apartment anymore,"
Sam replied seriously, repeating the sentiment that all of the Novaks had
expressed on the ride to the airport in his Impala when Dean had made the
comment that it was going to be lonely without Cas staying over every night
with him. "No one would blame you for getting your own place, you are eighteen
now. Or hell, come stay here, it's not like you don't already just walk in
whenever you want anyway."
"Anna gets all pissy when I knock," Dean mumbled, shoving an arm blindly into
the freezer of the refrigerator and hoping that he would come up with something
that would defrost quickly. "And somebody has to take care of dad, make sure he
doesn't drown in his own vomit or something."
"He is a fifty year old man; he can take care of himself."
"You sound like Cas," Dean muttered, tossing the pound of ground beef he had
had back into the freezer with a disgusted sigh before pulling out his wallet
and rifling through the cash he had inside. "I'm ordering pizza."
With John out of town so much it was easier to not be broke all the time, Dean
ate most of his meals with Bobby or at Cas's house so he had pretty much
stopped buying groceries apart from basics. He hadn't had to settle one of his
dad's bar tabs in ages and all of the bills were practically nonexistent now
that it was just him and Cas hanging around the apartment. Even then most of
the time they kept to Dean's room, not even bothering to turn on any lights
throughout the rest of the apartment because the other boy liked that they
could cuddle up together more comfortably now in the faux full sized bed.
"He worries about you a lot," Sam offered. "We all do."
"I can take care of myself, Sammy." Dean replied, pulling out his phone and
dialing in the closest pizza place. "Go pick out a movie or something while I
get the pizza, nothing with accents unless it's Star Trek. I don't know how you
and Gabe stomach it because Simon Pegg is about the only British dude I can
stand."
"You don't know any 'British dudes'," the younger man scoffed, making air
quotes and earning a groan from Dean because Sam had to have picked that shit
up from Castiel.
"Yea well, if I did. I probably wouldn't be able to stand them," Dean muttered,
turning his attention back to the phone when it was picked up and quickly
placing an order to for his and Sam's usual half veggie half meat-lover's pizza
that they used to get when it was just the two of them.
Sam and Dean set themselves up in the living room, sprawled out on the couch
and loveseat respectively while they watched a halfway decent bootleg of
Captain Americaand waited for their pizza. The movie appealed to both of them
for different reasons: Steve Rogers reminded the older brother of his soft-
spoke, kick ass, naive to the point of adorableness boyfriend while Howard
Starks' irreverent, sass-mouthery was a dead ringer for Gabriel's quick,
unthinking humor. Needless to say, they missed the Novak brothers more than
either of them was willing to admit to each other.
Dean kept checking his phone, waiting for Cas to text him when they got to the
hotel that they were staying at and getting more and more worried by the
minute; he didn't trust airplanes. But then again he had never had a reason to
be on one, it would have to take something monumental to make him put his trust
in a big metal tube that moved through the air against all the laws of gravity.
No, he really preferred having two feet or four wheels on the ground and he had
asked Castiel more than once why they were flying instead of driving to Chicago
for the trial since they had plenty of time to get there.
It had something to do with Gabe wanting to visit with his old buddies from
high school and one very courageous aunt who were acting as character witnesses
for the older man during the custody portion of the court proceedings, but then
again if the criminal justice system worked at all then Dean thought it was
highly unlikely that any judge would turn Anna over to a man convicted of
kidnapping, endangering a minor, and trying to force his son to commit suicide
under duress through torture and coercion.
He shook himself out of the funk that he was steadily working himself into
thinking and worrying about Cas when the doorbell rang, signaling the arrival
of the pizza and the rescue of Bucky Barnes from Hydra. Dean got up to answer
it, nudging his brother's foot that was sticking off the end of the couch as he
passed to signal that he wanted the other boy to pause the movie while he was
out of the room. He was surprised to find that the pizza boy was Kevin Tran,
looking just as miserable and unenthusiastic as Dean felt in his horrible
Domino's uniform and hat at the front door.
"Dude, when did you get a job?" Dean asked, ushering the younger boy into the
house and taking the pizza out of his hands, leading Kevin through to the
living room and Sam who was frowning at his phone like it had personally
offended him.
"A couple of weeks ago," the other boy muttered, pulling his hat off and
tossing it down on the coffee table with a disgusted shake of his head. "My mom
made me do it, said it would make me look more well rounded on my college
applications and not like some spoiled brat. Plus, I'm trying to save up for a
car so I don't have to deal with her driving me and Anna around everywhere for
the rest of our lives."
"I dunno, the mini-van will be good for all of those soccer games and stuff
you're going to drive the kids to," Sam teased, flipping up the lid on the box
of pizza and gesturing towards it before grabbing a slice for himself and
settling back down on the couch. "Seriously though, have a piece, take a break
or something. We're all just sitting around being depressed about our favorite
dysfunctional family being out of town."
"Hey, they're more functional than some other families I know," Kevin sighed,
picking out a smallish slice off of Dean's meat lover side and jutting his head
back towards the door. "I can't stay though, my mom is waiting on me. I'm not a
delivery boy or anything, I just make the pizzas. When I saw this one was
coming here I offered to bring it over because I figured it would be for you
two."
"Doesn't that mean you have to go back to pay for it though?" Dean asked,
pulling out his wallet and fishing out a couple of bills. "Here, I'll even tip
you for coming out of your way to bring it."
"Nah, its on me." Kevin muttered, waving away Dean's hand and shuffling his
feet. "You guys hear anything from them yet? Anna said she would call me."
"We're in the same boat as you, man." Dean replied, dropping back down heavily
on to the loveseat and running a hand worriedly over his face. "Sitting around
pining after Cas and Gabe like a couple of old biddies."
"I asked my mom if I could go with them," the younger boy admitted, causing
both of the Winchesters to look up at him surprised. "Anna has to testify and
stuff and I wanted to be there for her, y'know moral support. But my mom said I
couldn't miss that much school, not when I already had perfect attendance all
year so far."
"Yeah and how would you get there anyway?" Sam asked around a mouthful of
veggies and cheese.
"I know it was a dumb idea," Kevin scoffed, shoving his hands deep in his
pocket. "But um, you'll let me know if you hear anything, right? I just want to
know that she's okay."
"Of course, Kev." Dean assured the younger boy waving at him one last time
before the freshman turned and showed himself back out of the house.
The front door shut with a soft click and Dean heard an engine rev in the
driveway, Mrs. Tran was hell on wheels, even more so than he was and Anna joked
all the time about how riding in a car with her boyfriend's mom made her
thankful for Gabriel's distracted, gesticulating method of chauffeuring her
around. He glanced over at Sam who was frowning down at his phone again. His
slice of pizza drooping precariously in his other hand forgotten in favor of
whatever it was that he saw on the small screen.
"Well, Gabe's probably drunk," Sam sighed, tapping agitatedly at the screen
with his enormous fingers. "Nobody spells this badly in real life if they're
sober. Text Cas and make sure that Gabriel's friend Kali is still picking them
up from the airport."
"Shit," Dean cursed, shooting off a quick message to his boyfriend that he knew
was probably pointless since he had made Cas promise him that he would turn his
phone all the way off on the plane. Dean didn't want it messing with the
controls, flying was complicated enough without the pilots having to worry
about interference from cells phones too. "Gabriel must have drank a shit load
of those little bottles of alcohol, fucking asshole."
"He's stressed, Dean." Sam defended. "Imagine how you would feel in his
situation. Gabe has spent a year taking care of Anna and Cas, all because their
dad is a batshit crazy, homophobic asshole and now the court might decide he
isn't doing good enough. Anna and Cas are all the family he has and he might
lose half of it by the end of the week."
"They have us," the older boy mumbled, glaring down at his phone and trying to
decide if it was better or worse that it hadn't lit up with a reply from his
boyfriend yet. No reply meant that Cas's phone was off and he had kept his
promise to him, not that the other boy had never not kept a promise that he had
made Dean. But it could also mean that their plane had crashed, blazing in a
twisted metal fireball in the middle of a cornfield somewhere with all the
passengers trapped inside.
"Gabs is a sappy fucking drunk, too." Sam groused, running a hand through his
hair when his phone lit up again in his hand with another message. "Jesus, he
wants to talk to the pilot and ask him to turn the plane around to come and get
me."
"Cas has an aisle seat, I doubt he'll get very far." Dean sighed, relieved that
even if his boyfriend couldn't message him or reach his phone that at least he
wasn't dead or something somewhere.
"We should go," Sam said suddenly, biting his lip and looking pleadingly at his
older brother. "To Chicago."
"Don't be ridiculous," he replied, shaking his head and grabbing up a slice of
pizza that he wasn't even sure he wanted anymore. "Can't miss school."
The idea had flittered through his head more than once over the weekend
actually.
When he had been sitting at the head of his bed in the apartment twiddling and
tuning his guitar over and over while he fought the urge to play the only song
that he had managed to learn so far for Cas besides Smoke on the Water and
watched the other boy gnawing on the end of his pen while he proofread what
they had written of their short story for Chuck's class so far. When he had
been watching his boyfriend pack his suitcase, Cas glancing over at Dean with a
sad smile before he folded the larger boy's grey AC/DC shirt into his bag along
with a book of short stories that he had lent the other boy to read on the
plane. When he had been driving the family to the airport; dropping them off in
the white zone, which was for the loading and unloading of passengers only, and
hugging Castiel hard until a surly looking security guard had told the two
Winchester's to move their car.
Dean had been thinking about it, driving the eight hours not including stops
for gas and eating and restroom breaks all the way to Chicago.
Being there while Cas testified against his dad, recalling all of the vivid
details of being held hostage in his own home. Hearing Gabe and Anna moving
around above him through the ceiling of the basement that he was locked in,
going about their business because their father hadn't even told them that Cas
had been attacked at Lake Forrest and they weren't expecting him home again
until Easter break. How the flail had felt in his hands, how much it had
weighed, what the sound of the stinging lashes had been like when it cut into
the pale flesh of his boyfriend's back and how Cas had refused to cry about it
because his father had kept telling him that he deserved the punishment, that
it would cleanse the evil out of him and make everything square with him and
god again.
Cas had told him the whole story the night before, when it had been dark in
Dean's bedroom at the apartment and the only other sounds were their soft
breathing and the heartbeat that he could hear where he had laid his head on
the other boy's chest. His boyfriend's voice hadn't wavered once as he talked
about his father and brother with something close to remorse in his voice and
Dean could understand because it was the same way he talked about John to
people who had already given up on the Winchester patriarch.
The only ones still stubbornly holding out hope for the older man were him and
Bobby. And his uncle had even gotten to the point where he refused to be around
John when he was drunk anymore, still talking to him on the phone though when
John called in during the rare times when he decided to check in on his boys
when he was out of town. Usually it was in the middle of the day when Dean was
at school and he only knew of his father's fleeting concern when Bobby slipped
and mentioned it in passing, but it was still there and that's what kept him
picking up his father from the bars even though his hurtful comments about Sam
and Gabe hit too close and too hard to home.
"Dean we skipped school today to take them to the airport," Sam pointed out,
sensing his older brother's hesitance. "And I promise you, today was not the
first time that Gabe pretended to be Bobby to get me out of class."
"Are you serious?" Dean groaned, tossing back down the pizza after one bite
that felt sandy and gritty in his mouth. "That's exactly why I didn't want you
living here, Sammy. Your head is all tied up with when you're getting laid next
instead of school and that's what you should be focusing on."
"I do focus," the younger boy objected, scooting down the couch so that he
could turn his puppy dog eyes on Dean, even sticking out his bottom lip and
making it tremble a bit until his brother huffed out an irritated chuckle and
glanced up at the ceiling muttering for help under his breath. "I'll have Gilda
get my schoolwork for me, I will stay up all weekend and do it and I won't get
behind, Dean I promise. Please, they need us."
Dean looked down at his hands that had wrapped themselves around his phone
while his brother talked, knuckles white as they griped the outdated device. He
wanted to talk to Cas, ask his boyfriend's input on all of this, make sure that
the other boy wanted him around to witness all of his secrets being laid bare
for a courtroom full of people. If the situations were reversed, he knew that
he would want Cas to be there, for moral support like Kevin said, but Dean had
never claimed to be strong enough to stand up to his own father about anything.
Castiel was just so much better than he was, could fight for his family and the
things he wanted while Dean had just always let life take him where it took
him.
It all came back to jumping, to falling and being brave enough to want to land
face first when the ground rose up to meet you. Dean had never had anything
that he wanted to be brave for before Cas.
"Fuck it," Dean muttered, rising quickly to his feet and ignoring the younger
boy when he let out a yelp of victory and shot up after him. "If we end up in
summer school then I'm blaming all of this on you."
"Totally worth it," Sam replied, racing up the stairs after his older brother
so they could each throw together a bag of clothes and gather up the things
they would need for their impromptu road trip.
===============================================================================
The first day of the trial was like a dream, surreal. Castiel hadn't expected
there to be as many reporters as there were, but since what had happened to him
was being labeled a "hate-crime" by pretty much every media outlet in the city
he shouldn't have been so surprised. If they had been able to keep the trial in
Pontiac then the local paper probably would've ran a short blurb about Revered
Novak being falsely accused of a crime by his mentally disturbed son while
trying to get him help. The county judge was one of his father's parishioners
and his sympathy towards the Novak patriarch had been enough of a conflict of
interest that their lawyers were able to petition to get the trial moved to a
bigger city where Gabriel had hoped the whole thing would fade into the
background of Chicago's other crimes.
But someone had talked to the press.
Castiel suspected that it was his old headmaster from Lake Forrest, who had
testified on the first day about the attack that Castiel had been a victim of
while at the school and had looked at him with sympathetic, apologizing eyes
the whole time he spoke and answered the questions from the lawyers. It didn't
really matter though because none of this was real. None of it mattered or had
any consequence in his life anymore, the stuff that mattered happened tomorrow.
The inevitable custody decision about Anna that his younger sister had told him
that under no circumstances was he to worry about more than the testimony that
he was going to give today.
Most of the trial hinged on what he had to say; on where his mind had been when
he had choked down the Vicodin that he had hoped would end it all and send him
to face the unfaltering judgment of Saint Peter. The jury had already heard
from his headmaster, the emergency room doctor that had tended to him after
Daniel's lackeys had finished with him, the EMTs who had responded to Anna's
frantic phone call, and the police officer who had been the first law
enforcement official on the scene when one of the two medical technicians had
followed the trail of blood from the injuries on Castiel's back down the stairs
and into the basement to find his father's makeshift dungeon that he had kept
his youngest son in for a week.
He had flinched hard when they pulled out the evidence bag containing the
flail, which surprised him because he thought that it would be the empty pill
bottle with his and his father's fingerprints on it that would make him break.
But Dean had cleared his throat softly behind him and it had been enough to
make him feel better even though the hand that he was holding was Anna's and
not his boyfriends because he couldn't reach the other boy past the several
feet and wide wooden barrier separating them.
Dean and Sam had shown up at the hotel suite that their lawyer had rented for
them for their stay in Chicago, looking wide-eyed and wind-swept as they smiled
sheepishly at Gabriel who had opened the door in his pajamas, which consisted
of one of Sam's shirts that was long enough to be a dress on him and his
boxers. His older brother had been sleeping off the cocktails that he had drank
on the plane, sprawled out on the couch where he had collapsed after dragging
himself out of the shower that his friend Kali had bullied him into before
leaving, but seeing his boyfriend standing at the door had sobered him up
instantly. Giving him enough energy that he knocked Sam down onto the floor of
the hallway outside their door when he barreled into the taller boy with his
arms wrapped around Sam's neck, sobbing and laughing the entire time.
Cas didn't ask why they were there, just grabbed Dean's hand and led him into
the room and back to the bed that he had been sleeping in before the two
brother's knocking had woken all of the Novaks up. The few hours that Dean's
arms had been wrapped around him, chest pressed snugly against his back as he
tried and failed to sleep despite the sound of his boyfriend's deep, even
breathing behind him had been enough to remind him that none of this was real.
His real life was Dean and Lawrence and the family he had managed to piece
together there, not the stranger with his father's face and the brother who had
always tried to be the son that their parents had wanted him to be when they
adopted him.
Apparently none of them had ever mentioned that fact to either Dean or Sam, as
they had both been confused to find out that Raphael was the well, dressed
African American man who had stood with their father to hear the charges that
were being leveled against them and not the ginger haired lawyer who sat
between his eldest brother and the Reverend Novak. Castiel supposed that his
father's counsel looked slightly like Anna, if you squinted, but it had never
been strange to him to have a brother who was adopted, it was just another
thing like having a dead mom and father who didn't hug him that he had gotten
accustomed to being looked at strangely for while growing up.
During lunch on that first day Anna had explained their whole contorted family
tree, pointing out their Uncle Zachariah and his wife, their Aunt Gail who was
looking nervous and small next to their father's brother as they ate at one of
the tables in the courthouse's basement cafeteria. She was testifying at the
custody hearing and had yet to tell their uncle, that's why her greeting
towards Anna had been short and tearful, because she was scared of the
intimidating figure that her husband cut. She had been meeting with their
lawyers secretly to discuss the positive influence and responsibility that
Gabriel demonstrated by taking care of his siblings and going to school and
investing the life insurance money from their mother's death that their father
had put into a trust fund for him in order provide for all of them so that he
could focus on being a parent to his younger siblings. For all of his joking
and pranks, Gabe had an uncanny sixth sense about investments.
The older woman had also allowed a fleeting smile to fall on her face when
their Uncle Zach was hissing abuse at Gabriel and distracted before their
lawyer stepped in and threatened to call security. Her gaze had dropped to Dean
and Castiel's clasped hands and then jumped to Sam who was standing
protectively half in front of Gabriel before their Uncle had turned briskly and
ushered her away, but the smile and the small nod of understanding had been
there before she dropped her eyes demurely back to the floor and hurried away.
She had declined the offer of any kind of restraining order against their Uncle
after she testified, saying that love made you endure all kinds of horrible
things when Gabe had asked her why over the phone after they saw how scared she
was. Castiel could understand that.
"Cas," Gabe muttered, nudging him lightly in the ribs to draw him out of his
stupefied thoughts. "They're calling you. You're up, baby bro."
"Oh," he replied dumbly, climbing awkwardly to his feet and heading up towards
the witness stand. He had to remember not to touch his hair, Anna had been
practically gluing it to his head and Cas had promised her he wouldn't mess it
up.
Swearing in was silly, how would anyone know that you were lying? Was swearing
on a Bible supposed to mean that God would strike you down if you fibbed,
because that was really the only surefire way that you would know. God probably
had more important things to worry about, like starvation or wars or something
more meaningful than him and his family. He did it anyway, mostly because it
would look bad if he didn't and also because the gold embossing on the outside
of the leather bound book made him feel a little better. Maybe God could spare
just a second to help Anna through all of this, he didn't care about himself,
just his sister.
He told his story just like he had told it to Dean, breathing deeply and
locking eyes with his green-eyed paramour like it was the only thing that would
pull him through this. Cas was happy that Dean was here, that Gabe had called
in to the office at school and put on a laughably weak impersonation of Bobby's
voice so that he could tell the administration that both of the brother's had
the flu and wouldn't be back until Monday. They would probably figure it out,
but Sam told him that they would deal with that when they got back. Which was
good because that, Lawrence, was their real life and this all was just a dream;
a tragic story that Castiel had to purge out of himself before the final wounds
that tore at his mind faded away into scars that matched the ones on his back.
When his lawyer asked him if the men who had held him hostage were in the
courtroom, Castiel nodded before remembering that he had to choke out a 'Yes'
so that the stenographer would have something verbal to put down on her
records. When he asked Castiel to point them out, he hesitated, glancing over
at his father and brother before his vision got all blurry and he doubled over
from the sharp pain that suddenly laced through his chest, centered on the scar
that Raphael had left on his chest. There was a murmuring throughout the
courtroom and Castiel could distantly hear Gabriel and his lawyers both asking
him if he was okay, but louder was the sound of sermons. Repeated and tumbling
over one another in his brain until it was a buzzing, jumbled cacophonous
symphony of painful, white noise.
"Are you okay, Castiel?"
He looked up, eyes swimming with tears from the pain in his chest and his head
and his memories, to see Raphael standing in front of him, having jumped up
from his seat at the defendant's table to walk briskly across the courtroom
past the stunned looking bailiff who had only just started moving to stop him
to lean across the front of the witness stand so that he could whisper softly
to his younger brother. The judge was desperately trying to get back control of
the courtroom, banging his gavel and calling for order and threatening to hold
Raphael in contempt if he didn't sit down right now.
Castiel nodded slightly at his older brother, fighting against the tight metal
bands that seemed to have wrapped themselves around his lungs so that he could
take in a breath. He looked past the older man to see Dean standing with his
jaw set and his fists clenched as he watched the exchange between the two of
them.
"I'm fine," Cas mumbled, mouthing it so that Dean could read his lips and
earning a small scowl from his boyfriend in return before Sam tugged the older
boy back down onto the bench that they were sitting on. "What are you doing,
Raph?"
"I know what you have to do, brother." Raphael murmured lowly, straightening up
briskly when the bailiff put a hand on his shoulder. "I bear you know ill will,
I deserve this."
"No one deserves this," Castiel replied, forcing back the memory of his brother
pinning him to the cold, bare concrete floor of their basement; knees holding
down his arms as the older man had cut the cross over his heart, saying that he
deserved it. That it was the only way that he could be saved and be with them
all in heaven one day.
"Can you continue, Mr. Novak?" the judge asked once the bailiff had escorted
Raphael back to his seat and their father who was leaning across his lawyer's
lap to glare at his adopted son. He nodded at the older, white haired man who
looked so much like Reverend Novak only the lines on his face were from
laughter, probably instead of frowning disapprovingly at everyone around him.
"Counselor, please repeat the question and we will move forwards with this."
"Castiel," his lawyer began again, his voice sounding less business-like than
before when he had been looking at the jury so they would understand the
importance of his question. "You have said that they men that hurt you, that
held you hostage and provided you with the same materials that you used to try
to take your own life, are in this courtroom. If you can, will you please point
them out for the jury?"
Cas licked his lips nervously, looking back over at Dean and Sam and his family
before letting his eyes wander back a couple more rows to Rachel who was going
to be the last person to testify before his father and brother were given the
chance to. This therapist nodded once at him and the boy closed his eyes,
sighing dejectedly before lifting his hand and pointing out his father and
brother. He didn't want to do this.
The anger that he felt towards them had faded, not disappeared completely, but
it had been replaced with the overwhelming desire to have all of this be done
with so that he could move on and live the rest of his life without this
haunting him. And pity, for Raphael who had shown at least some regret over his
actions, unlike their father who just kept looking at him and Gabriel like they
were filth on the bottom of his shoes.
"Please let the record show that Mr. Novak has identified Raphael Novak and
Reverend Richard Novak as the men in question," his lawyer said briskly,
striding over to their table and glancing down at a paper there. "No further
questions."
The cross examination by his father's defense was ridiculous, hinging
completely around the incident at Lake Forrest that had injured him severely,
yes, but Castiel had gone for a little over a week after that before attempting
to kills himself. A week that he spent deprived of prescribed pain medication,
starved and sleep-deprived by his father and brother until he had lost all
sense of time when he had been locked in the basement. The torture, the
resulting infection from the flail-induced wounds, the brain-washing repetition
of the scripture that his father had battered into his fragile mind until he
had croaked out a yes.
Yes, that he would do whatever it took to be forgiven in the eyes of the Lord.
A yes that had been spoken hoarsely through chapped lips by a boy that was so
weak he could hardly stand let alone hold the bottle of pills that he had ended
up taking. It was the first and last time he could remember his father touching
him as he had helped him up to the bathroom that he and Anna shared, cradling
his head and helping him dump the pills into his mouth before offering him a
cup of water to wash it all down with. Cas had found out later that his father
had gone out to a dinner organized by some of the deacons at the church
afterwards, taking Raphael with him and leaving Anna to discover him after
school which had been unexpected since she had asked if she could go over to
her friend's house like she usually did.
It was the lack of remorse on the older man's part that made him feel the
phantom pain of the carving knife twist as it dug into his chest.
He slumped back down in his seat when the judge dismissed him; thankful that
this would probably be the last time he would ever have to tell the story
again. Cas hadn't been lying when he had told Rachel that he wanted to put the
whole thing behind him the last time that they had talked, forget that it had
happened so that he could go the rest of his life pretending that he had had a
normal childhood and adolescence like everyone else. She told him that she
understood the desire, but pointed out that the pain and the suffering had all
served to make him a stronger person, which he agreed with to the extent that
he was stronger now that he had Dean and that if they hadn't moved to Lawrence
then he wouldn't have been able to find the other half that had made him whole
again.
"You were great, sweetheart." Dean muttered behind him and he turned to see his
boyfriend leaning right up against the wooden barrier separating them and
smiling at him proudly.
Cas smiled weakly in return and spun back around to face the judge, perking up
when the older man called a recess for lunch before Anna's testimony and Rachel
gave her final assessment about his mental health. He practically dove through
the short, swinging doors that separated the public seating from the judge and
litigants on the courtroom floor, losing himself in the tight hug that Dean
wrapped him in and ignoring the derisive snort that he heard come from his
Uncle Zach behind him. They were almost done, if justice was served, tomorrow
would be a cake walk and they could all finally go home.
===============================================================================
Sam was being very careful around Reverend Novak's lawyers, fuck he was being
pretty damn careful around everyone. So far all that anyone outside of their
little hotel room family knew, he was just Dean's brother; the lanky minor who
had stowed away to follow the older boy on his grand, romantic quest to be
there with his boyfriend through this whole fucking ordeal.
It hadn't really been that epic, the car ride to Illinois. Mostly it was them
bickering over the radio station and taking turns calling Anna who had known
that they were coming up the whole time, but her acting was pretty good and she
had fooled Gabe and Cas long enough for the whole surprise to seem legitimate
and spontaneous until at least the next morning when Gabs had wised up and
asked him how they had known what hotel they were at.
Gabriel had been beating himself up all throughout the trial, saying that he
should have been there because if so then none of this would have happened. Or
at least maybe it would have happened to him instead of Castiel and that's
really what it was because he knew that the older man had just as much of a
complex about protecting his siblings from everything bad in the world as Dean
did. Sam had been trying to convince him that he wasn't at fault, but he knew
that Gabriel wouldn't sleep easy until Anna and Castiel were well and truly
safe from their father instead of just temporarily held in the limbo that they
had been living in since Anna had walked into that bathroom and found Cas lying
in his own vomit with his lips blue and his limbs growing cold.
The older man still had exaggerated nightmares about it, picturing things being
much worse than they actually had been because he hadn't gotten to see Cas
until he was already in the emergency room, stashed behind a curtain with a
tube running down his throat as the half-digested pills were pumped out of his
stomach. Gabriel had been hiding out at Kali's house, avoiding his father who
he did nothing but lie to in those last, final days before all the shit that
their lives had become was revealed and the call had come from Anna via a
courtesy phone in the ER while the police hunted down their father for
questioning about what exactly had been going on in the basement of their
Pontiac home.
Gabe had been sitting stone-faced and silent the entire trial, alternately
griping one of his siblings' hands or the edge of the table depending on
exactly how graphic the testimony coming from the witness stand was. During
Anna's, Sam didn't think that his boyfriend's jaw relaxed once and Gabe would
probably be complaining about it hurting later in that cute, pouting way that
he did. He had already resolved that ice cream would be the best way to work
the older man out of his funk and they could use the time alone together; Dean
was planning on taking Cas out to some pizza place he had found online,
determined to try a real Chicago deep-dish before they headed back to Lawrence
and the backlash of skipping school for a week.
With Rachel's short and sweet professional summation about Castiel's mental
health confirming everything that the prosecution was trying to prove about how
the desperately, warped version of Stockholm syndrome that Castiel had found
himself with because of their father and Raphael was what drove him to try to
kill himself, Sam saw Gabriel's shoulders relax more and more. This was it, the
final nail that would be driven into wedge that separated Reverend Novak and
Raphael from the three siblings sitting in front of him and Dean. There was no
judge in the world who would given Anna back to those men and after Gail's
testimony, it would insure that the court knew that Anna wouldn't be safe with
good ol' Uncle Zach either.
"Will the defendant's please rise?" the judge intoned after dismissing Rachel
from the witness stand and making a note on some paper that he had in front of
him. "Reverend Novak, Mr. Novak, you are charged with kidnapping, assault,
coercion, endangering a minor, and assisting a suicide attempt by providing the
means and the motive for said attempt. How do you plea?"
"Guilty," Raphael said lowly in reply.
"Not guilty," the Reverend Novak barked out, stiffening his shoulders and
raising his chin defiantly at the judge.
"Raphael Novak you have pleaded guilty to this charge," The judge began
frowning in confusion at the eldest Novak child. "In previous arraignments you
have entered a plea of not guilty. Is there new evidence that should be
presented to the court before your revised plea is officially taken into
account."
"There is no further evidence, your honor." The young red-headed lawyer said
quickly, cutting off Reverend Novak who had opened his mouth to speak. "My
client has decided to take full responsibility for his involvement in the
incident that lead to these charges and only asks that you take his honesty
into account when sentencing is being considered."
"Very well," the judge muttered, gesturing towards the jury. "Ladies and
gentlemen of the jury you are dismissed to deliberate and court is in recess
until such time as a verdict is ready to be announced.'
With a bang of the gavel, Gabriel was up and striding over to his eldest
brother, ignoring their father who reached out to grab his arm as he passed by
the older man, before he wrapped Raphael in a tight, rib-crushing hug that the
other man hesitantly returned. By the time that Sam reached them, the older
brother was sobbing brokenly into Gabriel's hair and muttering apologies over
and over again while the uncomfortably looking bailiff hesitated about whether
or not to separate the two men.
"I didn't know Gabe," Raphael choked out, pulling back to look down at his
younger brother with a tear-streaked face while their father shook his head
disgustedly and walked off with their lawyer towards the hallway outside the
courtroom. "I thought I was doing God's work, I thought that I was saving him.
It just...all became so wrong and contorted, I deserve whatever punishment that
they give me. Father and I, we almost ruined Castiel's life and we've stolen
yours. I'm so sorry."
"Look at him, Raph." Gabriel replied, wrapping an arm around his brother's
waist and nodding at Sam to step out o the way so that the two men could look
over at where Dean was holding Castiel's face in his hands, talking low and
soothingly to the other boy who was smiling valiantly against the unshed tears
that were brimming in his eyes. "You didn't ruin his life. Sent it down a path
that none of us expected, but it worked out for the best. For Cas and me and
Anna too, we've been able to build ourselves back up alone; find a family with
the people we have met and fixed the things that were broken. You didn't steal
anything from me, not unless you count the time that we might lose together
while you pay your debt to society."
"I couldn't ask for you to let me back in their lives," Raphael said, gesturing
towards Anna who had pulled out her phone and was probably talking to Kevin who
had been pretty pissed that the two Winchester's had stolen his idea about
going to Chicago and hadn't even bothered to take him with them.
"You aren't asking and you don't have to," his boyfriend replied firmly, giving
his older brother's arm one last squeeze before moving towards Sam and the rest
of their family. "We've lost mom and dad, there is no reason to lose each other
too. Just give Cas some time, I'll talk to Anna and we'll visit you once its
settled where you are going."
Raphael nodded sadly, looking down at the shiny tops of his dress shoes with a
defeated sounding sigh. His pleading guilty meant a lot of things, not just
that he was admitting his involvement in helping their father try to save
Castiel, but also that there was no way that he could avoid punishment. The
kidnapping alone was probably enough to get him several years in prison and
they all knew that, but Sam also saw the spark of relief in Gabriel's eyes over
at least one member of the fallen duo taking responsibility for their actions
and he knew that it wouldn't be long before his boyfriend was making care
packages full of cookies for Raphael.
"That was very big of you, Gabs." Sam told the other man lowly, wishing that he
could wrap Gabriel in a hug like Dean was able to do with Cas, but resisting
the urge because he did not need lending any fuel to the fire that was the
judge's incredulity over Gabriel being a twenty year old who could manage to
raise his fourteen year old sister for the next four years.
"Now I know you aren't making a joke about my height, Moose." Gabriel warned,
glancing up at him with a teasing smile so Sam knew that he was okay. If Gabe
was composed enough to joke and let his most mischievous smile fall on his face
then he was good, "Because you love me and you know how fragile my ego is and
you wouldn't do that to me."
"You're right," Sam said shrugging to work off the unspent energy in his arms
and his fingers that wanted nothing more than to card themselves through the
floppy hair of the man he had fallen so disgustingly in love with. "That's not
what I'm doing, I'm just proud of you for being mature enough to see the only
gesture of apology that Raphael could possibly make at this point. When did you
decide to grow up?"
"After I put Nair in Dean's shampoo this morning," the other man said softly
and breezily. "Call it payback for his leaving my house unattended."
"We locked the door," Sam defended, putting his hand on the other man's arm and
squeezing slightly. "Which is more than you do most of the time. Kev said he
and his mom would do a drive by to make sure that no one broke in, don't worry
about it."
"Would you rather me worry about the custody hearing?"
"What custody hearing?" the younger man replied innocently, glancing up when
the judge appeared from his chambers and the jury started filing back into the
room with a look of grim satisfaction on their faces.
"I love you," Gabriel blurted softly, putting his hand over Sam's and griping
it once hard before smiling tightly at him and moving towards the table that
his other siblings were sitting at.
Sam moved back behind the barrier that was separating him and Dean from their
boyfriends, leaning over it at his waist so that he could tug on the back of
Gabriel's suit jacket. "I love you too, moron."
He sat back down quickly when the judge called order to the courtroom with a
bang of his gavel, glancing over at Dean who had his hands clasped tightly in
his lap, folded together as if in prayer.
"Forewoman have you reached a verdict?" The judge asked, sounding just like
every mid-day TV courtroom show that Sam and Gabe had sat around watching
during Christmas break. Only he lacked Judge Judy's sass, he and his boyfriend
both whole-heartedly agreed on that.
"We have your honor," the plump suburban looking mom replied, tucking a curl of
her Dorothy Hamill haircut behind her ear and clearing his throat determinedly
before she glanced down at the paper that she was holding. "We the jury find
Reverend Richard Novak guilty of kidnapping, coercion, assisting a suicide by
providing a motive, and endangering a minor. He has been found not guilty on
the counts of assault and assisting a suicide attempt by providing the means
due to lack of convincing evidence to pro—"
"That is bullshit!" Anna proclaimed loudly, jumping to her feet and slapping
her hand down on the table in front of her. The younger girl's face had gone
beet red, a shade that rivaled her hair that had been pulled back into a
professional looking bun at the back of her head all throughout the trial. "He
did this to Cas, his fingerprints were on the bottle of pills."
"Young lady," the judge said sternly, peering over his glasses at her and
frowning deeply. "I feel that I must remind you that your fingerprints were on
the bottle as well and justice can only be served if the charges can be proved
without a shadow of a doubt. There are shadows, there is doubt, the wheels of
justice keep turning. Now sit down before I have you removed for your
outburst."
Sam watched as the girl dropped timidly back into her seat, allowing Castiel to
wrap an arm around her shoulders as she folded into on herself in the oversized
wooden chair.
"Please continue forewoman," the judge offered, waving the startled jury
spokeswoman on with a wave of his hand.
"Due to a lack of convincing evidence to prove his involvement," the woman said
again, her voice sounding tight and apologetic before she cleared her throat
once more and continued. "We have found Raphael Novak guilty on all counts per
his plea before the jury left to deliberate. The jury would like to suggest a
reduced sentence for Mr. Novak due to his forthrightness and genuine show of
remorse for his actions towards his siblings."
"Please let the record show that the jury's suggestion has been taken into
account by the court when considering the sentencing for Mr. Novak which is as
follows," the judge began, glancing down at the paper that he had been keeping
on his desk before he lifted his eyes to Raphael who was sitting ramrod
straight in his chair. "Two years in a minimum security federal correctional
facility for each convicted charge totaling in ten years with the possibility
of parole after three years with good behavior. Reverend Novak you are also
being sentenced to time served in a federal correctional facility however,
taking into account your manipulation of the criminal justice system, you will
serve three years for each convicted count totaling twelve years with no option
of parole regardless of behavior."
The Novak patriarch fist clenched on the table in front of him and the man's
lawyer leaned over, saying something about an appeal that Sam only heard
because he read the ginger-haired lawyer's lips, but he was pretty sure that no
one else noticed it because Cas and Anna were hugging and Gabriel was crying
soft, silent tears that just laced across his usually smiling face as the judge
wrapped up his proclamations and dismissed them all from the courtroom.
He didn't know why the other man was crying, all of this was good. If their
father was in prison then he wouldn't possibly be able to have custody of Anna
and after Gail's testimony there was no way in hell that the younger girl would
be handed over to hot-headed Uncle Zach who even now was ranting about the
unfair harshness of the sentencing to his younger brother the Reverend. The
priest was glaring, lip curled up in disgust at Cas and Dean who had outright
jumped over the wooden barrier as soon as the judge was out of the room and
caught his boyfriend in an intense, celebratory kiss.
Sam saw it coming light years before anyone else even registered the fact that
Reverend Novak was striding across the space separating him from his biological
children towards where Dean and Cas were standing with their foreheads pressed
together, swaying side to side slightly and smiling at each other in a relieved
sort of way. His spidey-sense was tingling that something bad was about to
happen, but he could only excuse his way through the crush of people pushing to
exit the courtroom so fast and there was no way he was going to be able to
intercept the older man before he got to his brother; so he did the only thing
he could think of that would break Dean out of his love-sick stupor.
"Damnit, Dean!" he yelled, lowering his voice and pressing on his vocal chords
with his fingers in an effort to make it sound gravely and wizened like John's
was. It was a cheap tactic, but his brother had always jumped to attention when
their dad barked out a cursed directed at him and this time it was no
different.
Dean jumped back from Castiel like he had been burned, causing the other boy's
expression to fall into one of confused terror before he saw his father
storming over the last couple of steps to stop in front of them and then it
changed into disbelief and anger. Sam smiled his way past the last reporter who
had their nose buried in their notepad, scratching out the story that would
inevitably be in the paper in the morning about the outcome of the trial, and
rushed over to Gabe who had moved to stand guard behind Dean and Castiel who
had gone back to holding hands in defiance against the hate that the older man
had started spewing towards his youngest son.
"Do you have any idea how this will affect my parishioners, Castiel? Your
selfishness is blinding you to the sins that you are still committing and the
gates of hell are looming wide to catch you and that slack-jawed hillbilly that
you had the nerve to bring here with you," Richard Novak hissed, a vein in his
forehead pulsing its way to the surface of his skin like the angry dark hatred
that lurked inside the older man was trying to force its way out from more than
just his mouth. "You have fallen out of God's grace and you and Gabriel will
taint Anna with your deviant behavior. All of you will burn for this, you've
made the Novak name into a laughing stock. Why couldn't you have just died like
you were supposed to?"
"Listen, Father or Rabbi or whatever you are." Dean began, shouldering his way
in front of Castiel who now looked like the scary kind of pissed that was only
reserved for serial killers and soccer moms. "You may be a laughingstock, but
all of the Novaks that I know are kind and generous and brave. They have more
chutzpah in one finger than you will probably ever have in their lives and Cas
didn't die, won't die because of you or himself or anyone else just because you
don't like the things he chooses to do with his life."
"Who are you?" the Reverend seethed, running his gaze dismissively over Dean
before glancing back at Castiel and leering at the younger man. "Really,
Castiel; of all of the people you could have chosen to backslide with, I
would've have at least hoped for a shred of intelligence."
"Don't talk about him like that," Castiel growled out at his father, causing
Dean to look back at the smaller boy slightly startled. "Dean saved me when
nothing else could. He fixed everything that you did, everything that you broke
with your lies and your hatred. He loves everything about me that you don't and
I love him."
"Oh you love him," the older man spat, grimacing like the word left a bad taste
in his mouth. "You love him and he loves you, is that right? Tell me, Dean.
Tell me exactly how much you love my son. Tell me the words you used to
convince him that Heaven and his mother and his family were worthless to
whatever tawdry, cheap emotions that he experienced with you."
"I..." Dean began before trailing off weakly, glancing back apologetically at
Castiel who was still just staring at his father like the older man's head
would explode if he kept at it.
Say it, Dean.Sam willed, watching his older brother swallow and mouth
soundlessly before the revered who had started smiling with wicked glee in the
face of Dean's complete inability to voice his emotions. Show this old bastard
exactly what the Winchester's have to offer his sons. Do it for both of us
because if he finds out Gabe is dating a sixteen year old we're all totally
screwed.
"He doesn't have to prove anything to you," Gabriel interrupted, glancing
worriedly at Dean who had dropped his gaze to the courtroom's wooden floor.
"None of us do, in fact I'm pretty sure that you're in violation of the
restraining order that Castiel has against you; fifty feet daddy dearest or did
you forget?"
Revered Novak leered at his oldest biological son, smirking triumphantly before
he looked one last time at Dean and the hand that Castiel had put on his
boyfriend's shoulder, leaning in to murmur into the larger boy's freckled ear
that he loved him and he knew it and it didn't matter if no one else did.
"You two don't know what love is," the Novak patriarch declared with a scornful
nod at Dean and Castiel. "Love isn't fornicating or sharing your petty little
secrets, it's so painful that it breaks your heart. What you have is nothing.
It's fleeting and shallow like rain falling on a sunny day, it won't stand up
to the first obstacle it comes up against."
The older man spun on his heel and walked away, joining his lawyer who had been
watching the whole exchange nervously while Raphael still sat slumped
defeatedly in his chair at the defense table. Sam moved beside his older
brother who's eyes had glossed over with tears, angry ones if the set of his
jaw was anything to go by.
"It doesn't matter what he thinks," Sam offered, brushing his fingers over the
back of Gabriel's hand in an attempt to calm down his own boyfriend who looked
like he was either about to faint or throw up. "He's just angry that everyone
knows what an asshat he is now, don't let it bother you, Dean. Let's just go
home."
"The hotel isn't home," Dean muttered shrugging Castiel's hand off his shoulder
agitatedly before sighing and snatching it back up again to hold it in his own
again. "I want to go home."
"Then go," Gabriel said briskly, locking his fingers through Sam's for a moment
before releasing them and punching Cas lightly in the shoulder. "And take
sourpuss here with you, drive back a day early. He doesn't need to be here for
the custody hearing, I can change his plane ticket to Sam's name and we'll all
fly back on Friday morning."
"I can't leave you here to deal with this alone," Castiel said, shaking his
head at his brother's offer even though Sam seen the way that Dean's eyes lit
up for the brief moment that the offer had been on the table. "What if father
tries to confront you again?"
"Oh, I'm totally telling the police about him violating his restraining order,"
Gabriel scoffed, smirking at the disbelieving stare that he was getting from
his assembled siblings and the Winchester brothers. "What? Fifty feet is fifty
feet, dude shouldn't have messed with you. I'm like a momma bear protecting her
cubs, that bag of dicks is going to jail so hard. With any luck Uncle Zach will
miss the hearing too while trying to bail him out."
"Are you sure, Gabe?" Cas asked, glancing over at Dean who was doing his best
to imitate the puppy-dog eyes that Sam had used on his older brother only days
before.
"Get your shit out of my hotel room," Gabe deadpanned, pointing a stern finger
towards the door of the courtroom and trying not to laugh when Dean hurriedly
pulled his younger brother in that direction, telling Cas to shut up and move
faster so that they stood a chance of sleeping in their own bed that night.
"You're real sweet sometimes, Gabs." Sam muttered, bumping his shoulder against
the other man's before holding open the short swinging door so they could head
towards the Impala that Cas and Dean were probably already molesting each other
in.
"It's probably all of that candy," his boyfriend teased, looping his arm
through Anna's and smiling when the younger girl leaned into him tiredly.
"Let's go get some ice cream, I feel the sugar shakes coming on."
===============================================================================
Dean didn't let him drive until they had crossed the state line into Missouri;
stopping on a long, lonely stretch of highway to put more gas into the Impala
and pushing Castiel's aviator's that he had stolen up into his hair as he
squinted at the digital screen on the gas pump. They stocked up on beef jerky
and energy drinks and homemade slices of pie that had been rotating on a little
rack next to the register that Castiel had bought on a whim as he paid for gas
and Dean cleaned the bug splattered windshield of the car while he hummed under
his breath.
Baby handled differently than Betty did, the Cadillac was bigger and heavier
and took so much time to get up to speed that it was no wonder that the little
old men who still drove classic cars around didn't bother with going faster
than thirty miles an hour. Dean's car drove like a storm cloud, rolling dark
and thunderous along the blacktop when Castiel pressed the gas pedal all the
way down to the floor mat that covered his initials carved forever into the
floor next to his boyfriend's at Dean's insistence. The weather was nice enough
that they kept the windows open, diffusing the loud music that they were
singing along to, laughing when the words got turned around or one of them came
in too early on the chorus.
His father didn't know anything about him or Dean, hadn't known anything about
just him in a long long time. They were in love and they had passed the tests
that life had thrown at them already, gone through the hell of the trial and
still come out the other end unable to go a minute without touching or glancing
happily at one another. Revered Novak was a madman and he didn't know what the
hell he was talking about as far as any of his children were concerned.
They were chasing the sun as they drove towards Kansas and rapidly losing the
race though truly neither of them really cared. The sinking hazy, orange/pink
sliver of the star that they hurtled around felt like their future to Castiel,
like something that he and Dean would always be looking towards together
laughing and smiling their way through college and growing old and caring more
about the stars that shone at night than the one that lit their day like the
stupidly, love-struck fools that they were.
The trial and Chicago and Pontiac and his father were all behind them,
darkening and fading out in the twilight that grew ever more distant in the
back windshield of Dean's car. Cas knew that now everything would be alright;
God couldn't possibly want to test him anymore than he already had. The test
had served its purpose: to make him stronger and to help him meet Dean, but
enough was enough for one lifetime and he felt fairly confident that his
version of his creator couldn't possibly be cruel and capricious enough to put
him through anything else. Not now that he had a home and a family and had lost
all the hesitance that he used to associate with those words when he had first
moved to Lawrence over a lifetime ago.
Home, Dean, Family. Practically the same words now they felt so interchangeable
and they all caused the same exploding, expanding warmth in his chest when he
thought or said them. So he kept saying them, to himself and out loud the
entire time that Dean let him drive. They got lost in the music and the sound
of the wind whipping though the open windows of the car, but that didn't lesson
the effect that they had on him. Dean looked at him confusedly when he noticed
it but didn't say anything, he didn't have to. Cas knew what he wanted to say,
what he hadn't been able to say to his father: Love.
So Cas added it in, chanting it like a prayer that he would never forget even
when his boyfriend made him pull over and move into the passenger seat because
Cas was obviously getting sleepier and sleepier the closer they got to Kansas.
He was saying them as he dozed off, seeing Dean's face backlit only by the
stars that lent their light to the glow of the headlights that illuminated the
interior of the car.
Home. Dean. Family. Love. Home. Dean. Family. Love. Home, Dean, family, love.
HomeDean. Familylove. homeDeanfamilylove home...
Chapter End Notes
     Firstly, I would just like to thank everyone who has ever read or
     reviewed or favorited or followed me or this story. You kept me going
     when sometimes I just wanted to stop writing and you are really all
     of the ones who turned this into the massively huge story that got
     away from me in all the best ways. During a really lonely time in my
     life, you all gave me something to look forward to and for that I'll
     be eternally grateful.
     Secondly, I know that there are unresolved questions. What happened
     with Chuck and Naomi? Will Raphael ever pop back up in his siblings'
     lives? Is Meg and Luc's wedding going to be as epically epic as we
     all hope it will be?! The questions are there on purpose as much as
     you may hate me for it in order to give you incentive to read the
     sequel. Nomad by Fate should have it's first chapter up sometime next
     week and it will be starting off with a bang so keep your eyes
     peeled.
     Thirdly, if you've just finished reading this and feel gypped by the
     time that I have stolen from you for any reason at all (you hate my
     writing style, you think I ramble, the smut to plot ratio is waaaaay
     off, whatever reason you have) then know that I do truly and honestly
     lament that. If there was a way that I could give you back your time,
     I would in a heartbeat.
     Thank you for reading, even if you hated BtR or me or both. Thank you
     because I enjoyed writing this story that started out as a random
     thought that passed through my brain and went on to haunt my dreams
     until it had to be written just to get it out of my head. Just...f'n
     thanks already!
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