don't look him in the eye, a supernatural fanfic

So, my first venture into the SPN fandom and it's an AU. A high school AU. But I figure I've gotta do ONE and get it out of my system and then everything will be better and I can resume writing about two adults going at it, hunting ghosts and brooding and all that.

Basically, writing about first love and the discovery of it and Dean being oblivious and frustrating. It doesn't delve into the world at all, just an analysis on what a teenage, human Cas might be thinking and how it feels to realize that he's in love with his best friend.

Started as a drabble, but it ends kind of shoddily, so I'm working on a second chapter or something and hoping it'll go somewhere...meaningful. Uh. Yes.

Apologies in advance if they act completely wrong (AU is no excuse hah).

look him in the eye

Sometime between yesterday and this morning, something changed.

When Cas tries to think about it, his heart catches in his throat and he loses all hearing for about thirty seconds because all he can hear is a beat, beat, beat rapidly filling his head. But, he thinks about it anyway because he can't not think about it.

Yesterday was a normal day, of course—filled with the usual dose of schoolwork and soccer practice and studying at Dean's. But somewhere in there, during some minute between wind and green grass and the smell of the night air as he went home fuzzy and lost, something happened.

Castiel Milton fell…

With an unsteady hand, he draws his fingers through his hair and attempts to concentrate on the formulas being written on the whiteboard. His notes are jumbled and a mess, but he keeps on trying to make them look neat if only to give him something else to do.

Anything to keep himself from staring across the room, at the dark-haired boy sitting by the window, tapping his pencil on the corner of his desk because the Algebra II lesson has already gotten too old for his tastes. Tanned, calloused fingers hold up a stiff jaw, tips of nails playing against a lower lip and Cas realizes that he has indeed gone back to staring.

He tries to bring his eyes back to the teacher and the board, but all he can stare at are his notes and his fingers resting, white, against the edges of his spiral. His own skin has an olive tint to it and he wouldn't really consider himself pale, but, compared to Dean's skin, it seems incredibly light. Pasty and ashen. He'd never noticed it before—not until last night when, while they were laying together on Dean's bed with books propped on their chests and straws and Cokes in hand, he'd looked at the legs scrambled with his, attached to the boy across the mattress. His eyes had traveled up them, observing everything—from the built calves, to the black shorts and the Superman T-shirt, to the broad shoulders and long neck, to the tanned face, deep in concentration and irritation and pure boredom, and he had…

The bell ringing causes him to jump, and he groans in dismay at the realization that several new problems have been added to the board while he was in his reverie. He gathers his things quickly, hoping to be able to get up as fast as possible.

"Yo, Cas."

A kick to the leg of his desk and a low voice cause him to look up before he can tell his brain that that's a dumb idea. "Eh?"

Dean Winchester is bearing down on him, face between irritated and a bit sleepy. "You're really slow," he mutters, and he grabs Cas's books and spiral from the desk before he can tell him not to. "Go ahead and get your bag."

Castiel slings his book bag over his shoulder, quickly and awkwardly and laughs a bit nervously, "Sorry," but he looks at the wall just past Dean's ear.

His friend hits him lightly over the head with one of the spirals. "Stupid."

It's an almost nervous revelation, but, by the end of the day, Cas realizes that he can no longer look Dean in the eye. If he were to do so, he knows, he'd be at risk of losing his sanity. His legs would wobble and crumble underneath him and his chest would burn all the way up his neck to his face and his mouth would move and his voice would say things that aren't supposed to be said—not now, not now—and he would have to see and discover everything that he had been trying to avoid thinking about.

It hadn't started until after he had walked a sufficient distance from Dean's house last night, after he'd broken through the fog that had possessed his brain. Only an hour before, Dean had looked at him abruptly, catching him in a study that had nothing to do with World History—had met his eyes with deep, dark green ones—and smirked.

And Castiel's chest did something peculiar then. It fizzled and popped and erupted so fast that he felt cold in the way that suggested that his blood had suddenly stopped being warm, stopped being pumped with blood at all. And his whole body suddenly became acutely aware of where he was in the world, where his skin was meeting and burning against some worn and tanned expanse. He could suddenly smell Dean all around him—in the blankets under his bare feet, in the pillow under his head—and the smirk, the smile, was like a hand instead, reaching out and cupping his face in a slow and tingling motion and Castiel realized…

This is love.

And Dean's gaze and eyes became something more than just a part of his face.

They were open and honest and overbearing and intense—and they bore into him, twisting in his stomach and heart and wrenching heat and blushing powder onto his skin. For a moment, his words were lost and his mouth forgot how to form anything but what he didn't want to say.

So he looked away instead, laughed nervously and asked the next question on the review sheet, purposely making it harder than necessary so Dean would complain and forget about anything that might have happened.

To Castiel, though, everything sounded further away, muted and muffled.

All he could think about was getting out of there. Getting away.

And when he was finally back at home, finally laying down in his bed at night, he couldn't stop thinking, couldn't get it out of his mind. He ran through the event over and over in his head, trying to find something to disqualify it, to prove his mind wrong.

He could not be in love with Dean.

He couldn't.

…

Could he?