Dean Winchester was seventeen and he was going to drop out of high school before he graduated at the rate he was going. Ever since his mom died his father couldn't seem to stay in one place too long – he couldn't settle down anywhere because nowhere was home without his wife – at least, that was until he bumped into Kate Milligan and she'd told him he was the father of her son, Adam, and they'd settled in Windom, Minnesota. Dean figured his dad was trying to live the life he was supposed to have with Mary, and Dean wouldn't have a problem with that if it didn't mean that John was a better dad to Adam than he'd ever been to Sam and Dean.

Now it looked like he was actually going to make it through a whole year of school without moving five times, and he just wanted out. He liked to think he was cool, but the truth was he tried too hard and the only people who looked up to him were the handful of people lower than him on the popularity ladder who were too stupid to realise that he was a fake. Even if he stayed in school until the end he was too stupid to actually graduate, and it's not like his dad cared about him enough to push him to do better. He was a failure. A failure with no friends despite the fact he'd been attending Windom Area High School for the past eight months.

"Detention, Mr Winchester!" Miss Moseley called out as he sauntered into class five minutes late.

"Whatever," he mumbled.

The only seat left was beside Castiel, the captain of the soccer team. He wasn't quite sure how that had happened, but he reluctantly approached the empty desk.

"Do you mind?" he asked.

Castiel glanced up at him, and Dean sucked in a breath because he'd never been this close to the stuck up jock, but damn his eyes were blue.

"Not at all," he said seriously.

That was it – three little words, and Dean shivered.

He sat down.

He pulled out his jotter and his textbook, and for the next twenty minutes stared at the numbers, willing them to make sense. He managed to finish about three questions, and a quick look at the back of the textbook confirmed that he'd gotten them all wrong.

"You won't find the answers to life in the back of a text book, boy," Miss Moseley called out.

Castiel snorted beside him, and Dean turned around to tell him to shut the fuck up but realised that the jackass wasn't laughing at him, but snoring.

He smirked, and stretched over to draw on Castiel's jotter. He drew two small curves, but then stopped before finishing his crude sketch of a penis. His eyes flicked up to Castiel's face, but the guy was still snoozing. He looked small, and vulnerable – nothing like the emotionless prick who strode around the school like he was God. He turned the penis into a flower, and moved his hand back to his own jotter, striking a line through the three equations he'd fucked up.

He redid the first one (a check of the answers in the back proved he still hadn't grasped the concept of differential equations) and looked over to see Castiel still snoring softly. He didn't know what possessed him to draw a second flower to keep the first one company, but he did anyway.

Miss Moseley cleared her throat and he flushed, resuming his own work once again.

He vaguely became aware of Castiel's pen scratching over the page, and he wondered what the time was. Miss Moseley didn't have a clock in her room so that the students couldn't keep track of the time. Castiel wore a watch on his left wrist so it would be easy to take a quick look at it, but he knew what people called him – pretty, delicate, the 'male model type' (he knew what they really meant by that - that he was a girly boy) – so the last thing he wanted was for people to actually start calling him gay. They'd be right, but it was none of their damn business (and had nothing to do with his looks).

"Have you got the time?" he asked quietly, not really expecting an answer.

But an elbow softly nudged his side, and Dean glanced over to see that Castiel had laid his hand flat so he could see his watch.

"Thanks," he said, unable to keep all of the surprise out of his tone.

Then he saw the sketch half hidden beneath Castiel's fingers and he narrowed his eyes, turning his gaze back to his jotter with a smile. Dean's flowers were now growing in a meadow that looked like it had been drawn by someone with paintings hung in the Louvre, and it put Dean's child-like doodles to shame.

At that moment the bell rang, and he'd stuffed his books in his bag and was halfway to the door before it had even stopped ringing.

He paused in the doorway, though, and everyone else just shouldered their way roughly past him. He was jostled into the door frame – and wow, okay, that hurt – as he turned back to see what it was that was giving him the feeling of being watched.

Castiel was staring at him, and he hadn't moved. The corners of his mouth curved up, ever so slightly, and then the fucker winked – actually winked – at him. Castiel Milton had winked at him. He knew that he should probably feel flattered and start blushing, or wave like the total dork that he was, but really all he felt was fear and dread, because this was the beginning of a set-up in every clichéd high school movie there ever was, in which the jock set out to embarrass the unpopular, uncool student.

He heaved his back up higher on his shoulder and walked out, missing the way Castiel's face fell slightly when Dean turned and walked away.