The one where everyone is human - or maybe not.
"Have you ever felt like you're forgetting something really important, and no matter how hard you try you can't remember what?" Castiel asks.
"All the time," Dean replies. "Every single day."
This is Dean's last year, his 'victory lap' as he keeps saying it. Senior year is a joke at this school - Dean has already looked at his schedule, and decided that he's going to get last period woodshop moved up to his third period study hall, and have two study halls at the end of the day, which he will never go to. He'll be out of this hell a full hour and a half sooner than planned.
This is gonna be a good year, he can tell, except that there's someone in his cafeteria seat.
Dean stands right behind the kid, backpack dangling from one shoulder, and pulls the chair away from the round table to get the guy's attention. "That's my seat," he says, in a tone that means he expects to get it back right away.
The guy stands up willingly enough, turns to face Dean. He's new, but a bit big for any freshman who isn't Sam, who shot up like a weed over the summer.
"I am sorry," the guy says, with none of the usual awkwardness. "I didn't know there were assigned seats."
"There's not," Dean tells him. "I just always sit here, and I don't like people taking my seat or my chair. Gives people the idea that I can be messed with, and then where would I be?"
The guy looks like he doesn't know that was a rhetorical question and wants to ask where Dean would be, but he doesn't.
"Who're you?" Dean asks.
"I am Jimmy Novak," he says. "I'm a new senior."
"Dean Winchester," Dean introduces himself, and waves a hand at the rest of the seats around the table. "The rest of these guys will be here soon, but you can sit. Pretty soon the homeroom bell will ring and you'll have to go - who's your homeroom?"
Jimmy digs around his backpack, and pulls out a schedule. "This says J. Crowley."
Dean whistles. "Tough luck, man. He teaches Chem - lucky you don't have to sit through that. Has no idea how to teach. He talks a lot and tells the same three stories over and over again, but he'll let you eat during homeroom and sometimes throw a party."
"Who is your homeroom?" Jimmy asks.
Dean grins. "Ms. Talbot. I'm determined - this year I'm turning eighteen, and then she won't be able to turn me down. I am going to tap that."
Other students begin trickling in then, and Dean gets up to greet one with a hand-slap-turned-manhug. Then there is a lot of loud noise as they get reacquainted after a summer apart, and are joined by more people.
Jimmy goes to find a more quiet table, and muses that Dean Winchester is never going to be a close friend - he isn't the type of person Jimmy hangs out with.
"Hey, Cas!" Dean calls, jogging up to Jimmy in the hall.
Jimmy turns, feeling something buzz through his skin that isn't his cell phone on silent. "What did you call me?" he asks.
Dean frowns, like he didn't even notice the name he called. "Oh, damn, sorry man, got your name wrong. That's embarrassing."
Jimmy smiles, because Dean doesn't look the least bit repentant. "What did you want, Dean?"
"Me and a few friends have last period study halls, and we were gonna skip out early and get somethin' to eat. You wanna come with us?"
Jimmy feels his brows draw together. Why is Dean inviting him?
"No, thank you," Jimmy says.
It takes two more such invitations for Jimmy to finally accept that Dean is actually trying to be his friend. And after an entire afternoon spent in Dean's presence, in his car, eating food bought with his money because Jimmy didn't have any on him, Jimmy decides that despite being loud and acting stupid and looking like he just wandered in off the street, Dean is a good person.
More than that, he might be the best person Jimmy has ever met.
Dean keeps calling him 'Cas', and eventually both of them stop noticing.
The first time Dean comes home with Jimmy, he kind of invites himself. He drives Jimmy to his house, then gets out and comes up to the front door with him. Jimmy's frowning and about to ask, and then Dean lets himself into the house and asks where the bathroom is. Jimmy figures he'll do his business and then leave, but when he leaves the bathroom it's to make a trail for the couch, where he sprawls like Jimmy has invited him to sit down and stay a while.
It's actually pretty reminiscent of how Dean forced his way into Jimmy's life in the first place.
Jimmy awkwardly offers to get Dean something to drink, and is pretty sure that he's the only one feeling the tension in the air here. His brothers and sisters will be home soon - they don't skip out on school like Dean has him doing, now, and Jimmy never used to be a delinquent before he met Dean.
Michael's in the door first, like usual so wrapped up in his own stuff that he doesn't even notice the stranger in their living room. He works somewhere around town while he goes to college, and sometimes doesn't come home 'til the sun is down.
Next is Anna, the baby of the family. She's in the obligatory rebellious phase and seems to think that everyone is out to make her miserable, and has countered with all-black clothing, chains, piercings, and a tattoo that Jimmy has been sworn to secrecy about.
Last is Luke, who's the middle child between Jimmy and Anna, and may never leave his rebellious stage. He seems pretty angelic until he explodes with anger over the smallest things, and Jimmy knows he's a great liar.
Only Luke notices Dean, and he comes for a closer look. "Who's this?" he asks.
"My friend, Dean Winchester," Jimmy says, and Dean grunts. His attention is fixed on the television, where women are playing volleyball in little more than tape and scraps of clothing.
"Hey, Cas, c'you get me that drink now?" Dean asks.
Jimmy nods and gets up, and Luke speaks up again. "What did he call you?"
"Cas," Jimmy says. And then he adds, "It's short for Castiel," but he doesn't know why because that's not his name, he doesn't know whose name that is.
"Have you ever wished that things like magic and dragons and ghosts were real?" Dean asks him.
"No," Jimmy says, because it's true.
"Well I do. How'm I supposed to believe God can exist if there's no more proof of him than there is of demons and dragons and monsters? Sometimes I forget that they're not real, you know. I'll find myself thinking and have to say, it's not real, Dean."
"Why would you want that stuff to be real?" Jimmy asks. "It's bad. It's evil."
"Well, yeah," Dean says. "But at least it's something to believe in, right?"
Then there's the time Dean is supposed to be taking Jimmy home, and instead just goes right to his own house and along the way tells Jimmy that he's sleeping over, and also that Jimmy is going to help him study for his physics test, because the grading curve is already pretty steep and if Dean takes it right now he'll set the bar so low that everyone else will have As.
Jimmy doesn't really get a chance to say no, but that's Dean.
Jimmy knows Dean has a little brother because Dean sometimes can't shut up about his little Sammy, all the embarrassing shit he does and how he's a genius freak, and Dean is always calling Sam names but Jimmy can tell he's proud of his little brother.
He doesn't know that Dean has a dad, who is drunk on the couch when Dean mostly drags Jimmy through the front door.
"Hey, dad, just going up to my room." Dean says. The man's head lolls a bit in answer, maybe.
Jimmy thinks John Winchester could die on that sofa and no one would notice the difference for a while. The smell wouldn't even change a lot.
Dean's room is covered in posters and clothes that might be dirty or fresh, drawers full of the sort of clutter that just accumulates and nobody knows how, or why, or how to get rid of it. There's a desktop computer in one corner, and a path leading to it that's blocked halfway by what appears to be an actual fallen tree. The foot of his bed is taken up by more clothes, and a precarious pile of notebooks.
Dean grabs one of these, shifts some debris off of what reveals itself to be a chair, and gestures for Jimmy to sit there. He takes the bed, and then tosses Jimmy the notebook.
"Quiz me," he commands, and what else could Jimmy do but obey.
At home, Luke starts calling Jimmy Castiel in order to mock him, and Jimmy answers because he can't help it.
"Why's he call you that?" Anna asks, once.
"That's what one of my friends calls me," Jimmy explains.
"D'you like it better?"
Jimmy considers it, realizing that he really hasn't before, and that should be telling him something. "Yes," he says.
Anna nods once, thoughtfully, and she never calls him Jimmy again.
Michael thinks it's a phase, like Anna's rebellion. Castiel doesn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.
"Do you ever feel like things aren't right?" Castiel asks. It's the first of many conversations that go this way. "Like someone's taken your real life and tilted it just ever so slightly and put it back wrong?"
Dean nods. "And you're not quite who you're supposed to be," he adds.
"Exactly," Castiel says.
Dean asks Castiel what he dreams about.
"Angels," Castiel answers after a pause. "A million billion heavens. Two thousand years. A voice - my brother's - telling me 'don't step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish'. And - I dream about you. About Falling."
Dean is silent for a long time. "I dream about forty years in Hell," he says, "Ghosts and monsters in the darkness, deals with demons at a crossroads. And flying, I always dream about flying. You have wings, and you're holding me up, right here," he grips his left shoulder.
After that day, a burn scar that looks like a hand print appears there, and they don't tell anyone.
Castiel's hand fits it exactly, like he's the one that put it there.
Castiel looks at Dean, who's staring into the sky like he can't quite believe it's real. "Do you remember?" he asks.
"Some of it," Dean says. "What happened? What did I - what did we do?"
Castiel stares at his hand print on Dean's shoulder. "I lost you, and then I lost myself. I... I'm sorry, Dean. I tried to put things right. I remade everything. I took away the magic, and I thought I was making it better."
"Can't you put it back?" Dean says it like he already knows the answer, and he does.
"No. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Castiel says.
"You were supposed to be the one thing that would never leave me, Cas."
"I know."
"You were supposed to be my angel."
"I know."
"You left."
"I'm sorry."
"No wings for anyone anymore."
Speech cannot get past the lump in Castiel's throat, but they're not the right words anyway.
"But I can understand trying to put things right, and screwing it up. I... I think I can forgive you."
Castiel kneels in front of Dean like he's going to beg for something, or pray. Dean reaches down and pulls him up to stand again.
"Give me something else to believe in," he says.