A/N: Casually starts a new fic when three others are unfinished lol. I have like five chapters of this written already though so expect regular updates!
Chapter One
The bus is late again. The bus has been late for three days in a row. And it's starting to piss him off.
Cas sits on the bench and pulls out his phone, mindlessly scrolling through his pictures and checking his calendar. The first day, the bus was late five minutes. Then, fifteen. It's currently two minutes late and he doesn't know how long he's going to be there for, but he settles in and watches the rain through the clear roof of the shelter and sandwiches his hands between his thighs for warmth. It's the end of winter, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the dark grey sky. Cas is wearing three layers. He forgot his gloves, like an idiot.
An elderly lady sits to his left on the bench and they ignore each other while they wait. There's a free space to Cas's right, but he doubts anyone will sit in it. Hardly anyone takes this bus; who'd want to get from one shitty town to the other? He recognises the old lady, though, as he takes this bus every day, at the same time, to get home from high school, and she sometimes joins him, though they've never spoken. He doesn't really want to change that. He likes anonymity, even if it's meaningless, because it's rare around here.
Four minutes late. He needs to get home before six. His hands start to shake with the cold and he pulls his sleeves over them. Cas considers putting his hood up, but it would look a bit silly seeing as he's under the shelter. Still, his ears are cold, so he pulls the cotton of his hoodie up over his head.
The material blocks his peripheral so he's unaware of the presence approaching beside him until he feels them sit down in the empty space to his right. He glances over quickly with surprise: a boy of about the same age is sitting with a meatball sub and a smile, and he's fucking beautiful. Cas has never seen him on this bus before, or at school. It's possible that he's a few years older and already graduated, seeing as Cas is a senior. The boy doesn't look at Cas, or any of his surroundings, just watches his sandwich with glee as he eats it. He drops sauce on his shirt, and Cas wants to point it out, but that's not a very good first impression to give someone, so he re-evaluates and tries something else.
"What is that?" he asks, pointing to the sandwich.
The boy turns to him in surprise. "Oh, this? Sandwich."
"What kind?"
"Meatball."
"Where'd you get it?"
"Subway, just down the road."
"Smells good."
"God, I know, right?" He looks at it proudly. "I'd offer you some but I don't want to."
Cas laughs. "That's alright. Hey, I come on this bus every day, I haven't seen you before."
The boy swallows his mouthful before speaking. "I got a new job. Today was my first day. Got the bus in this morning, taking it back home."
"Oh, right. I get a ride from my father in the mornings. He works late every night, though."
The boy nods. "Right."
"How was your first day?"
"Pretty good. It's just a temporary thing, to raise some money. My brother's going to college, so I gotta bring in some dough otherwise I won't be eating for months." He seems disconnected from what he's saying, looking up at the sky as he says it.
"What's the job?" Cas asks conversationally.
"Sweeping up hair in some barber shop. Not the most glamorous or skilled of gigs, I know, but it's so gross that they pay well." He looks down again, meeting Cas's eye, and Cas sees that the boy's eyes are green, the greenest he's ever seen. The light isn't too good so he has to squint, but he thinks he can make out a spattering of freckles on the boy's nose.
"Did you graduate already?"
"Yeah. Well. I dropped out, actually, half way through senior year. Been working shitty jobs for two years." He takes off his hat and holds it in his hands, revealing short, dirty blonde hair.
"So you're, what, twenty?"
"Nineteen. Twenty in a few weeks. Birthday's on the 24th."
"Of January?"
"Yeah. What about you?"
"I'm eighteen. Senior."
The boy nods, remembering his sandwich and taking a bite, and Cas feels weird about referring to him in his mind as 'the boy' when he's nineteen and should be 'the man', but that doesn't feel right either, because he wants to know the guy's name.
"Which high school?" the boy asks before Cas can say anything.
"The one a few blocks away." Cas pinches the bridge of his nose, and realises he still has his glasses on. He takes them off, shoving them in the pocket of his hoodie. "I got yelled at today."
"How come?"
"I asked to skip gym so I could work on my physics project."
The boy chuckles. "Man, don't wanna piss off a gym teacher."
"Yeah, well, I know that now. He made me run five laps of the football pitch."
"Jesus, that's harsh. Man, I don't miss those days."
"What's it like, being in the adult world? Is it as freeing as everyone expects it to be?"
The boy frowns. "I don't know. For me, not really. I mean, I dropped out cos my dad made me, cos he needed the extra income after mom died, so I've not had a lot of freedom. I mean, I wanna go back to school, I wanna go to college too, but I don't wanna sacrifice Sam's education for my own."
"Sam's your brother?"
"Yeah," says the boy, and then looks embarrassed. "But I mean, for you, it might be different. You wanna go to college?"
"Yeah. I mean, I'm going to."
"You're going to? Do you not want to?"
Cas sighs, looking down at his hands as they pull at the sleeves of his hoodie. "I don't know. I have to, though, doesn't matter whether I want to or not."
"I feel you there," the boy mutters, and lets out a shaky laugh, his breath fogging up the cold air.
There's a silence, and then Cas remembers the question he wanted to ask. "Hey," he says, turning back to the boy. "We are in the unusual situation where I know your story, not your name."
It's the longest second of his life as Cas waits nervously for the boy's reaction.
He smiles, and holds out his hand, and says, "I'm Dean."
"Cas." He takes Dean's hand and shakes it, and it's warm, though Dean isn't wearing gloves either.
"Jesus, your hands are cold," Dean says, and lets go to dig through his bag, coming up with a pair of gloves. "Here."
"No, it's alright, I have some at home."
"I know, idiot. Borrow them for today and give them back tomorrow."
Cas raises his eyebrows. "Tomorrow? You mean here?"
"Yeah. I mean, if we both get the same bus, we're bound to see each other."
Cas stares at the gloves, and then at Dean, and smiles. "Okay. Thank you."
"No problem."
He puts the gloves on, and they help immensely. He's about to tell Dean this when Dean stands up and looks at the bus that's just arrived.
"It's the 4:20, that's us," he says to Cas.
"Oh. We must live in different places. My bus is at 4."
Dean frowns. "What are you still doing here, then?"
"It's late. It was late the last two days, too."
"Oh. Looks like we're not on the same bus after all."
"Yeah." Cas is disappointed, obviously. He'd wanted to sit next to Dean and talk more.
They look at each other for a few moments before Dean says, "Right, well. I gotta get on this. See you tomorrow, though."
"Yeah. See you tomorrow." Cas smiles, and Dean smiles back, and then he's gone.
Cas sits there, staring at his gloved hands and the abandoned sandwich on the seat next to him.
"He seems nice," says the old woman next to him.
"Yeah," Cas replies, and doesn't elaborate, because it takes a rare case to get him to talk to strangers, and it seems that Dean is just that.