Castiel is the youngest, and the smallest, of all of his brothers. He doesn't like his brothers very much. Michael is always yelling at him whenever he accidentally knocks something over, which is a lot. Lucifer likes to pinch him and knock him over and Rafael just stands there and laughs at him. Gabriel's the only one who's actually nice to him. When it's sunny out, Castiel will walk with Gabriel to the playground across the street and Gabriel will push him on the swings or build sandcastles with him.
Today's the day when all the older kids go to school while he and Gabriel get to stay home. Castiel doesn't start preschool for another month and Gabriel needs to stay home to watch him since dad's never there. They take advantage of the day and race each other to the playground. Castiel thinks Gabriel let him win. When they get there, all of the swings are taken. Castiel's shoulders slump and he huffs and plops down on the ground.
The swings have always been Castiel's favorite place to play. He feels like he's flying whenever he's on them.
He's just beginning to pull up strands of grass when a green-eyed, freckly boy comes running up to him. He skids to a halt right in front of Castiel and looks down at him, smiling wide.
"You can swing on my swing, if you want."
It's when he looks up to get Gabriel's permission that Castiel realizes his brother isn't standing behind him. He's gone off to sit on the see-saw with a tall, dark haired boy and they're laughing like they've known each other their whole, albeit short, lives. Since he figures Gabriel's too busy to say no, he just nods and accepts the boy's hand to help him up.
The boy leads him to the empty swing and Castiel sits on it and just swings his legs back and forth. The green eyed boy just looks at him for a moment.
"Do you know how to swing?"
Castiel shakes his head no and the kid walks around to the back of the swing. He puts a small hand on Castiel's back and gently pushes him, his pushes getting stronger as Castiel starts swinging higher and higher. His favorite part is when you reach the top, and you think you're going to fall and you lift up off the seat a little bit, but then you just swing right back down. Castiel swings for a while before he notices that the hand has stopped pushing on his back. He turned to look for the boy who gave up his swing and noticed he was just standing off the side, watching him. He slides forward a little bit to drag his feet against the ground and stop the swing. When he's stopped moving, he walks over to the boy.
Castiel holds out his hand, and the kid stares at it momentarily before reaching out and taking it in his own. Castiel leads them both over to a bush and temporarily removes his hand to reach in and pull out two shovels and a bucket. He and Gabriel keep them there so none of their brothers steal them. He then takes the boy's hand again and leads him over to the sand box, plopping down inside the box and pulling the boy down with him. Castiel hands him a shovel and starts filling up the bucket.
Castiel looks up after a minute to find that the kid hasn't even started shoveling yet. He's still just staring at him- so Castiel stares back. He stares into green eyes, and he starts to think that maybe green is his new favorite color. Or maybe brown like his freckles. After another minute of their little staring contest, the boy holds out his hand again. Castiel grabs it.
"I'm Dean. Dean Winchester." Dean shakes his hand and looks at Castiel expectantly. He figures it would only be kind to give him his name too. So he does.
"I'm Castiel."