Blindsided.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: T
Genre: Friendship, Romance
Pairing: Dean/Cas, Dean/Jimmy (technically)
Word count: 6531
Summary: "Who's Jimmy?" Dean repeats, clearer this time. "You were Castiel." The other student rolls his eyes. "Yeah. I was Castiel. And now I'm Jimmy Novak. Is there a problem with that?" (Or, the one where Castiel has become Jimmy and falls in love with Dean all over again).
AN: Welcome to 2016, my little sock puppets! Happy New Year! Here comes my first fic of the new year! I hope you all enjoy.
This came during my New Year celebrations: endless episodes of Doctor Who and SPN (as you can probably tell).
Title comes from the Bon Iver song of the same name.
Fic Playlist (Spotify): www. open. spotify . com user/50snettle/playlist /46OLgSoF8eMuNrdS8OEilH
DISCLAIMER. I do not own SPN or anything else. Which is a damn shame.
Dean doesn't actually meet his roommate until three weeks into college.
He's supposed to have one, he knows that much, according to his student paperwork, and he could see that he did, in fact, have one when he entered the room on his first day of orientation because there was a battered old suitcase dumped on the bed. But that's about all he's seen of Jimmy Novak so far, apart from a battered old trenchcoat that keeps disappearing and then reappearing depending on what time of day it is. It's almost like having his own room, if he manages to ignore the suitcase and occasional item of clothing that gets flung across the room during the night when he's oblivious.
So it's quite a shock to the system when his roommate finally makes an appearance. It's one evening in late September. Dean is sitting on his bed, back against the headboard, laptop resting in his lap, trying to figure out how he's going to put his paper into the proper words, when the sound of laughter from outside the door distracts him, followed a few seconds later by the sound of the key turning in the lock before the door swings open and two people stagger in, shoulders sagging with hysterical chuckling. Neither of them have even noticed that Dean's in the room with them.
"You're so full of crap, Roger," one of them is saying, pushing strands of dark hair from his face as he straightens up, still letting out the occasional giggle.
"Not as much as you, Jim." The guy named Roger claps him on the back. "I'd better get going or else Gabriel will start complaining about how much we don't love him anymore now that he's broken his foot."
"Ah, yes. How could we forget him?"
"We? I haven't forgotten him. You're just a horrible brother, Jimmy Novak."
Dean's roommate pulls a face and gives Roger a shove as a form of fond farewell before moving further into the room, shrugging off the trenchcoat and dumping it unceremoniously onto the floor. It's only when he turns to sit down that he finally registers the other person in the room, letting out a noise of surprise as he did so. Dean's pretty sure that he makes one too. Because he's never seen eyes that blue before on anyone. On anyone, except...
"Castiel?"
The other student flinches rather visibly at the sound of the name, before recovering sharply, a smile now plastered on his face. "Huh. It's been a long time since anybody's called me that. How d'you know it was me? You from Pontiac too?"
"You could say that."
Dean hadn't been very old when his family made a brief stay in Pontiac, Illinois, at some point during fourth grade. John set them up to stay in a motel for a few weeks, sending his sons to the local school whilst he got on with "business matters", a phrase that Dean was too young to understand at that point.
Castiel had been the only friend that he had during those few short weeks of school; they stuck together like they had been glued to each other's sides, spending every possible moment that they had together. In school, they'd hang around the back of bike sheds, sitting on the high wall that they weren't supposed to touch and sharing a book about bees; outside of school, they'd bring Sam along with them to the local park and take turns pushing him on the swing. Dean had promised to keep in touch when the Winchesters had moved on from the town, and he tried, really, he had tried, but life had just gotten in the way. Of course, that hasn't stopped Sam's constant teasing over the years that Dean still harboured a crush on the boy that he was most likely never going to see again.
And yet, here he is. Standing in front of him with a sudden face of recognition and blue eyes as bright and beautiful as they had been in fourth grade.
"Dean Winchester! I remember you!" He beams. "You were my best friend in fourth grade. I think I've still got one of the letters you wrote somewhere."
"Really?"
"Jimmy?"
Castiel inclines his head towards the door, beaming suddenly at the girl leaning against the door frame. "Amelia!" He all but bounds over to greet her, throwing his arms around her in a warm embrace. "When did you get back? I thought you were going out to dinner with your parents."
"Just now. Mom's currently got one of the floor dons cornered so that she can interrogate her before she has to leave." Amelia rolls her eyes. "But, never mind all that, I came to bring you these. They've started handing them out to every room after your brother had his shelf fall on his foot, so I thought I'd grab some for you." She passes him the two sheets of A4 in her hand, peering further into the room and sending Dean a two-finger wave. "Hi. You're Dean, right? I'm Amelia. I live on the floor below you guys." She slings an arm around Castiel's shoulders. "And I've been the best friend of this idiot for as long as I can remember."
"Hey!" Castiel gives her a playful nudge. "I thought I was your favourite person in the world."
"I never said that you weren't. I just said that you were an idiot." She taps him gently on the nose with her finger. "Anyway, I'd better get back before Mom traumatises the poor girl she's questioning. It was nice meeting you, Dean." She nods towards him before returning her attention to Castiel. "You're still meeting us tomorrow, right, Jimmy? Anna's trying to get as many people as possible, and you know that she's gonna be pissed if you don't show up."
"You can tell my beloved sister not to worry. I'll be there."
"Great." She pecks his temple and gives them both a final wave before ducking out of the room, calling "See you later, guys," over her shoulder.
Castiel shakes his head fondly as he watches her go, before passing Dean one of the sheets of paper - a form about safety of dorm room equipment - and taking a seat on his bed, leaning up against the wall and drawing his knees up to his chest.
"I don't see why they're doing this," he comments suddenly, retrieving a pen from his shirt pocket. "Just because my brother's so bad at DIY that he can't even assemble a shelf on his own."
Dean only frowns in confusion. "Who's Jimmy Novak?"
Castiel looks up from the sheet in his hands. "Huh?"
"Who's Jimmy?" Dean repeats, clearer this time. "You were Castiel."
The other student rolls his eyes. "Yeah. I was Castiel. And now I'm Jimmy Novak. Is there a problem with that?"
"But, Castiel! That was a cool ass name, man!"
Castiel - Jimmy - folds his arms with a disgruntled expression on his face. "Hm. Bit too fairytale."
"What do you mean by that?" Dean asks, but he gets no answer. Instead, Jimmy clicks his tongue as he reads, tactfully changing the subject. "You should come with us."
"Come with you where?"
"To my sister's big freshman year dinner that she's trying to organise and drag everybody to. You should tag along."
"Why?"
"Why not?" Jimmy looks up, meeting his eyes with a smile. "Give you a chance to catch up on the old Pontiac days. Plus, I might need moral support when I have to face three hours of my brother whining about how much I apparently hate him because I haven't gone to feed him his grapes yet."
It's not much of an explanation on Jimmy's part. Dean still doesn't understand why he should say yes.
And he understands less when he agrees to come along anyway.
He understands even less by the time one out of the three hours of this freshman year dinner have passed.
"Tell him." Jimmy is smirking as Gabriel Milton pouts in Anna Milton's direction. They're exactly the same as Dean remembers, despite them being blurry and faded in his childhood memory. "Tell my awful baby brother that he should have come and seen me whilst I was bedridden."
"Jimmy, you awful baby brother, you should have gone and seen Gabriel whilst he was pretending to be bedridden," Anna recites in a monotone, rolling her eyes.
"I was not pretending!" Gabriel insists. "I had a real serious injury; I had to go to the hospital!"
"You broke a toe, Gabe," Jimmy replies. "Your little toe, at that. I'm sure it wasn't that bad."
"Wasn't that bad?" Gabriel turns to his brother, incredulous. "I was in agony!"
"Really?" Roger pulls a face at him. "Because you didn't seem to be in much agony when you limped your way over to the vending machine in the hallway."
"I had to. It wasn't like you heartless bastards were gonna go get me anything. I could have starved." Gabriel crams a forkful of pepper into his mouth as the rest of the table falls about laughing.
"Gabriel, you couldn't starve even if you tried!" Balthazar calls from the other end of the table. "I'm not sure you're even capable of it, with all those freaking sweets you eat. I'm surprised that you got any teeth left."
"Excuse me, you were no help either! In my time of need, you were too busy wandering about after that boyfriend of yours to come and drive me to the ER! I had to call an ambulance! An ambulance! When my family is at the same university, but couldn't be bothered to come and aid their poor, neglected brother!"
Dean turns to Amelia in the seat next to him as Jimmy lets out a long peal of laughter and nudges Gabriel in the side. "Are they always like this?"
"Like what?"
"This...I don't know, sociable?"
"Um, pretty much," she replies, shrugging a little as she does so. "Gabriel's never had trouble with announcing his woes to anyone and everyone who will take the time to listen, and Jimmy's always been around to laugh about it."
"Oh." Dean casts his attention back to the guy in question, now leaning around a rather indignant-looking Gabriel in order to talk to one of his other friends (Hester, or something, her name is). This doesn't exactly match with his mental image of Castiel, still the same after all these years. Castiel is a rather shy kid from Pontiac's fourth grade, who prefers the company of books and animals as opposed to that of people (Dean, Sam, and his siblings had been the only real exceptions to this rule). Jimmy, on the other hand, is a talkative guy with a large group of friends and a loud laugh that forces others to join in too.
It's all rather confusing, to say the least.
All of a sudden, after weeks of being practically invisible, Jimmy Novak is everywhere.
He's sitting in their room studying with Roger and Amelia when Dean comes back from yet another Latin seminar; he's in the student cafeteria when Dean goes to get breakfast in the morning, bickering noisily with Balthazar and Gabriel; he, Anna and a few other students Dean doesn't know the names of are all squashed around one single computer monitor in the media editing suite when the older Winchester has to go and deliver a message to their overseeing professor - not that Marv (or Metatron, as he's more commonly known) can really be classed as overseeing. The man's not even in the room half the time.
Sometimes, Jimmy and he share the walk to classes together, Jimmy kicking up the fallen leaves with the toe of his boot as they chat idly, just like he used to when they were children on the swings back in Illinois. Not that Dean's pointed this fact out; every time he even mentions Pontiac or Jimmy's real name, the other student will flinch before trying to cover it up with a laugh or some kind of joke. It doesn't fool anyone for a second; Dean often finds himself wondering what could have happened during their years apart that was enough to make Castiel Milton want to ditch his name and become Jimmy Novak. Almost become a whole new person.
"You goin' to that Halloween thing tonight, man?" Dean asks suddenly, breaking the comfortable, momentary conversation pause between them.
"You mean the bonfire?" Jimmy pulls a face. "Nah. I'm not into all that. Just think of me as allergic to all variations of parties in general. You going?"
"Don't know. A couple of my friends from class were plannin' to go, but I might give it a miss. I can probably find somethin' better to do than freezin' my ass off."
"Well, that's okay." Jimmy smiles at him, almost looking a little shy when he continues. "I, um, I was gonna go catch a movie tonight. You could come too? If you want to, of course."
Dean shrugs and grins. "Sure. Sounds great."
Jimmy elbows him in the side. "Dude, why are you laughing?"
Dean has a hand close to his mouth to muffle his snickering as he inclines his face towards Jimmy's in the darkness of the theatre. "C'mon, man, look at this! It's awful. This is comedy, not a horror flick. Besides, you can't even kill a vampire with garlic."
"You can't?" Jimmy leans in closer in order to hear him better, ignoring the dirty look they're receiving off the couple in front of them. "How do you kill them, then?"
"You cut their heads off. I thought everyone knew that." Dean returns his attention to the screen, chuckling as the vampire on screen falls to the floor, clutching his cape and wailing in a thick accent. Close to the right side of his face, he feels Jimmy's warm laughter joining his.
"Okay. That's pretty bad."
"Tell me 'bout it."
They get thrown out of the movie theatre pretty soon after that, muffling their howling laughter behind their palms as they stagger out into the well-lit street, Jimmy hanging on to Dean's arm for support.
"I can't believe we just got thrown out," he says, as he huffs for breath. "I gotta say, that's never happened to me before."
"Welcome to the joys of being a college student, man," Dean replies, trying not to get struck by how Cas' - Jimmy's - blue eyes glow in the fluorescent overhead lighting of the theatre.
Jimmy doesn't seem to notice his inner struggle. "Let's go home," he says, waving a hand in gesture to the Chevy Impala parked in front of the building.
"Yeah," Dean agrees. "Home."
"You asleep there, man?" Dean hisses as he closes the door to their room as quietly as he possibly can. Jimmy makes no response.
It's no surprise, of course. They're leaving the golden of October behind and falling headfirst into November and the Michigan winter, where the nights are rather bitter. Dean's spent the last two hours standing outside with Jo, Gordon Walker's house party that they were supposed to be attending not interesting enough to keep them inside, no matter how many radiators the other student has got blasting. It was the promise of fireworks that had kept them there as long as this; they're still going off now, as it happens, sending golden light filtering in through the blinds, the sound of the gunpowder like a muted thud from this side of the window pane.
Jimmy's huddled on one side in his bed, his knees pulled up to his chest underneath the blankets. At first, it appears to be just the cold - Dean rubs his arms to try and warm them once he's shrugged off his leather jacket - but, as the sound of a firework explodes somewhere off in the distance, Jimmy twitches, curling tighter in on himself, making some kind of whimper in his sleep, and suddenly it becomes obvious. He doesn't like the fireworks.
Dean hovers for a few moments after that revelation, unsure of what exactly to do, until another firework goes off and Jimmy lets out another noise. He lays himself down on top of the mountain of blankets that his roommate has piled onto his bed and tucks his arm around Jimmy's shoulder, resting on his side to make it easier. Initially, it doesn't seem to have made things any better, but slowly, the tension from Jimmy's posture starts to drain away, and eventually, he settles completely, all trace of fear or nightmares gone, lulling Dean to sleep himself with the soft sound of his even breathing.
By the time Dean wakes again, after what seems like only five minutes since his eyes drifted shut, Jimmy is long gone; he is, however, still laying in his bed, one of the many blankest pulled over him to protect him from the cold.
When the two see each other again later, after seminars are over and they're walking back to their room huddled in their respective coats, Jimmy doesn't mention the impromptu sleeping arrangements and neither does Dean, but he swears that they're walking a little closer together than usual, and, in all honesty, that seems like enough at this point.
Jimmy disappears again at the beginning of the week before Christmas, gone home to Illinois with Gabriel and Anna in order to give their parents a compulsory festive visit, but Dean doesn't get the time to worry about being lonely, or the fact that Jimmy didn't seem particularly thrilled to being leaving, for long. His roommate has been absent from campus for less than half an hour when there's a knock at the door and Sam all but throws himself at his older brother in his attempt to pull him into a bone-crushing hug.
"You weren't supposed to get taller when you got Stanford a year early, bitch," Dean comments with a grin from somewhere in Sam's shoulder.
"Jerk," Sam retorts, releasing him momentarily, only to hug him all over again. "I think it's just you gettin' shorter. Happens when you reach old age." They pulls back, still beaming at each other after months of being apart. "So, where's that roommate of yours?"
"Oh, I see." Dean rolls his eyes. "You're not here to see me, you're here to see my roommate. Glad to know I'm the top priority o' your schedule, Sammy."
"Shut up. Don't pretend like you don't know that you are my top priority." Sam shrugs off his backpack and dumps it down on Jimmy's empty bed, the one he's going to be utilizing during his technically unallowed Christmas vacation. "It's just, I was curious."
"Yeah, well, he ain't here. He's shut up shop and gone back to Pontiac for vacation."
"Shame." Sam smirks at him. "I was looking forward to meetin' him. Considering that over Skype he's pretty much all you talk about the entire damn time."
"Do not."
"Do to. Every time I ask, "Hey, Dean, what you been doing, you ass?", you reply with something like, "Not much, except Castiel and I" -"
"Jimmy," Dean corrects. "I know. I can't see it either."
"Didn't you ask?"
"Well, yeah, obviously. I got a load of cryptic nonsense back, and so I ain't pried again. I'll just wait 'till he tells me in his own time." Sam snorts at this. "What? What's so funny 'bout that?"
"You must like this guy more than I thought."
"Of course I like the guy, Sammy. He's my roommate. Kinda have to like him, don't I?"
Sam smirks. "That's not the kind of like I mean."
Dean rolls his eyes. "Dude."
"What?"
"Stop tryin' to make this some kind of chick-flick movie. You always do that. We're just friends, for cryin' out loud."
Just friends who slept in the same bed that one time, but Sammy doesn't need to know about that, of course.
The younger Winchester pulls one of his bitchfaces - Bitchface Number Thirty Four, "I'm right, and you're wrong, Insert Name Here, but I'm just gonna pretend that I give up because I can't be dealing with your shit right now", to be exact.
"Fine," he says, although his tone of voice make it sound as if he doesn't think it's fine at all. "Whatever you say, Dean."
Jimmy Novak doesn't come up in verbal conversation again until two days later. But he may as well have been stood in the room with them all that time, Dean thinks, going by the amount of times he has heard Sam sigh melodramatically and watched him fix him with reproachful expressions accompanied swiftly by Bitchface Number Four ("I pity you, Insert Name Here. I really do.") every time he wanders anywhere near anything that is remotely connected to his elusive roommate, no matter what it is. No matter whether it's the movie theatre where they watched the stupid Halloween movie, the same route that they take to class during the semester, the passenger seat of the Impala, even a freaking odd sock found under the spare bed, you can guarantee Sam will be there to make some kind of silent remark. It's probably killing his baby brother inside that he can't tease Dean about his apparently enormous crush with his roommate actually there.
Eventually, Amelia agrees to come and rescue him from his baby brother's scrutiny, sending Sam down to the local convenience store for some cheap and rather crummy Christmas decorations whilst she and Dean begin to set up the tree, weaving strands of tinsel through the branches and looping star-shaped lights around the artificial trunk.
"Hey, Amelia?" Dean begins slowly.
"Hm?" She hums her response absentmindedly as she pins a paper snowflake to the window.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"As long as it's not about my sex life, sure. Fire away."
"It's not about your sex life - Jesus Christ, do you all think I'm that crude?...Okay, actually, don't answer that. No, I wanted to ask you 'bout Jimmy."
Amelia's hands cease their movement. "Oh."
"Yeah."
"You want to know about what happened after you left Pontiac, right?"
Dean frowns. "How did you -?"
She chuckles, cutting him off. "Best friend, remember? He talked about you all the time to me."
"Really?"
"Yup. I think you were his favourite topic of conversation." She raises an eyebrow. "Never tell him I told you that. I'm pretty sure he'd kill me."
"Noted. But, still, what happened?"
"It's not really my place to say, to be honest."
"Please. I don't wanna say the wrong thing around the guy and upset him just because of somethin' that happened that I don't know 'bout. Especially not at this time of year. S'Christmas, y'know?"
Amelia regards him for a moment of silence. "You really like him, don't you?" She shakes her head, Dean not sure what sort of like she's referring to. "Okay. But you tell no one. Do you understand?" She jabs a finger in his direction. "No one. Not even Sam. I'm telling you this in strict confidence."
"Yeah. I get it." Dean waves a hand through the air. "Just tell me what's goin' on."
Amelia lets out a heavy exhale, before moving to sit on Sam's guest bed, opposite from Dean's. "I knew Jimmy when he was still Castiel, you see. Our family moved down to Pontiac when I was eleven, just in time for the start of fifth grade. Both of us were...isolated, to say the least. We kind of drifted together on my first day and stuck together ever since, through everything and anything."
"So, what happened?"
"There was...a fire," she explains cautiously. "At the Novak place. During the ninth grade. Nobody died or anything, it wasn't like that, but Jimmy, or Castiel, rather, he, uh, he had to be pulled out by the fire crew. Gave him PTSD for months after that. Nightmares, flashbacks...God, it was awful. It was awful and there was nothing I could do to fix it or make it stop. I could only be there for him when he needed me, just like I always had been. And then, one day, about eighteen months after the incident, he suddenly told me that he was done being Castiel. He wanted a fresh start, to leave the whole horrible thing behind. We came up with a new identity for him, and that's when he changed his name to Jimmy Novak." She shake her head at the expression on Dean's face. "Apart from the Miltons, me, and now you, no one else here knows what happened. Jimmy wanted to wash his hands completely of the situation. As far as anybody else is concerned, the only thing known is that he isn't from Michigan originally - and we're going to try and keep it that way, okay?" She gives Dean a pointed look. "So don't go sharing it with anyone. I don't want him to ever have to relive that ever again."
Amelia rises from her seat and promptly exits the room, leaving Dean sitting on his bed, the Christmas spirit from half an hour ago fizzing out in his stomach like the last embers of a fire.
Sam almost jumps for glee when he gets to meet the infamous Jimmy Novak just before he leaves.
It's his last night in Michigan before he has to take the journey back to Stanford, and he and Dean are celebrating with beers in the privacy of their room when Dean's roommate stumbles through the door, a ridiculous hat clinging to his mop of dark hair, dragging a suitcase behind him.
"Oh, God," he huffs, more to himself than to Dean. "Never again." He raises an eyebrow as he observes the room, gaze falling on the two brothers sitting on the floor. "I see you made good use of the empty bed whilst I was gone, Dean."
Sam's practically foaming at the mouth with his shit-eating grin as he gets up. "You're Jimmy, right? From Pontiac?"
"The one and only. And, from all the excitement, I'm guessing that you're Sam Winchester?"
"Yep!" He pulls Jimmy into a hug, one that the other student returns, if a little bewildered. "So, how was your Christmas vacation?"
"Crap," Jimmy replies bluntly, before a sudden impish smirk crosses his face. "But, I did find something that I thought I should bring back with me."
"Oh, yeah?" Sam enquires, as his brother's roommate takes off his backpack, unzips it, and pulls out a ring binder. A label saying Castiel: Fourth Grade is stuck on the front, with Castiel scribbled out and Jimmy written in its place. Jimmy begins to flip through the plastic wallets fastened inside until he suddenly stops.
"Here we go. Dean, come and see this."
"What?" Dean rises from the floor, just as Sam starts snickering as he reads over Jimmy's shoulder. "What's so damn funny, bitch?" He comes to stand beside his roommate, looking down at the page displayed, cringing a moment later as he recognises it, recognises the familiar scrawled handwriting of his fourth grade self.
Dear Castiel,
Bet you didn't think I'd write so quick, huh? Well, ta da! I am! I managed to find some paper in the motel that we're staying in and Sammy let me borrow one of his pencils so that I could write this. He says hi, by the way, and that he misses you. (Sammy just said "Not as much as you miss him, Dean" as I wrote that. I told him to shut up.)
Dad's making us go to a different school now that we're here in Chicago. It's not as nice as the one in Pontiac, because you're not here. The other kids don't like us; I caught one trying to pick on Sammy, so I bonked him on the nose and got sent to the principle's office.
It's not all bad, though. This girl called Charlie says she'll stick around with me whilst I'm here and make sure I don't get in anymore fights. There's also a playpark close to our motel, and so I took Sammy out there for a few hours yesterday. I pushed him on the swings like usual, but it wasn't as much fun without you there. I wish you were here. You wouldn't try and pick on Sammy or do any of that bad stuff. There's a really nice oak tree in the park too; we could have sat there and read our books. It's not the same as the wall behind the bike sheds. I looked at the new school, but all of the older kids already sit there and they told me to get lost when they saw me.
Anyway, I'm nearly out of paper (they only have small paper in the motel) and my handwriting isn't the best or the smallest, so I'd better sign off, even though I don't want to. Sammy says to tell you bye (he also says that I should kiss the paper before I put it in the envelope, but I'm not gonna do that, because the paper smells weird and I don't really want to touch it with my mouth.)
I miss you, buddy. I hope I see you again someday.
Dean.
AND SAM.
X
THAT KISS WAS FROM DEAN BECAUSE I MISS YOU BUT NOT AS MUCH AS HE DOES, AND HE LIKE LIKES YOU
STOP IT SAM.
Sam's still chuckling by the time Dean's finished reading, the tips of his ears burning with embarrassment. "Aw! That's adorable -!"
"Shut up!" Dean gives him the finger behind Jimmy's head. "I was fourth grade - and you were the one sayin' all that stupid stuff for me to write, so don't try and pin all of this on me!"
"He's right, though," Jimmy comments, inclining his head in Dean's direction. "It is pretty damn cute."
"You think so?"
His blue eyes flicker up to meet Dean's gaze, a smile forming on his lips. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
Sam clears his throat, choking out "like like" around a cough. Dean doesn't even hide the middle finger he sends in response, but he doesn't remove his eyes from Jimmy's face either.
Sam goes back to Stanford with a smug smile on his face, even making the effort to pull over on the side of the road just to text "LIKE LIKE ;)" to Dean about twenty times. It's rather exhausting, especially when all Dean wants to do is sleep now that the hassle of Christmas is now drawing to a close. He burrows in bed whilst Jimmy is still unpacking, not even bothering to drink the last of his beer as he switches off the main light and hides his face under the duvet to avoid the soft light coming from Jimmy's bedside table and to try and block out the sound of him moving around whilst softly humming to himself. His efforts are to no use, it seems, for he keeps dozing and then waking, falling in and out of sleep, and, after a while, Dean lets his face resurface, glancing over at the other side of the room. Jimmy's bedside lamp is now off, and he's clamoured into bed too, but the fairy lights strung around his headboard are still switched on, looking like some kind of ethereal halo above his head as he snuggles further into the pillow, illuminating individual strands of dark hair.
"Why don't you just take a picture? It'll last longer."
Dean starts, not even realising that he's been staring so hard or for so long. Jimmy rolls over so that they're now facing each other across the room, his face lit by the LED lights, blue eyes shining.
"Sorry," he says, unsure of what else.
"Nah. Don't think anything of it. I can't exactly sleep on cold nights either." He pulls at his heap of blankets as he speaks, as if to prove his point. "You cold?"
"Yeah."
Jimmy says nothing in response; instead, he pauses for a moment, before lifting the sheets up and gesturing towards them with his free hand. "C'mon then. Get in."
If Dean were drinking his beer right now, he would be choking on it. "Wh - I didn't mean -"
"What?" Jimmy lets out a quiet snort. "It's not as if we haven't done it before, and I don't exactly want to have to defrost you in the morning. Now, hurry up, it's cold enough as it is. Bring your blankets too."
What he's saying is true. It is very cold, and Dean would most certainly like to be warmer than this right now. He thanks God and anybody else who could be listening that Sam cannot see this right now (he would have an absolute field day), before sliding out of bed, dragging his sheets with him and climbing into the empty spot beside Jimmy, throwing his layers on top of his roommate's. Jimmy hums, satisfied, letting his face rest idly against Dean's shoulder.
"Comfy?" Dean asks with a raised eyebrow that Jimmy can't see in the dark.
"Immensely," he mumbles, already starting to slip away into sleep. "You?"
"Yeah. You're a real genius." The words are meant to be sarcastic, but they have no bite to them.
"I always knew I was."
Dean chuckles, but he's not even sure that Jimmy hears him. Instead, he relaxes back against his roommate's pillow, his nose brushing against his mop of dark hair, sighing in contentment.
"Do you remember this?" Jimmy slides another piece of paper out of the folder and holds it out towards Dean, dropping it onto the textbook he's trying to read when he doesn't respond right away.
"What is it?" Dean squints at the sloppy handwriting. "Bo-...ket List?"
"Bucket list." Jimmy shakes his head. "Come on, I know I didn't have the best handwriting back then, but that clearly says Bucket List."
"Maybe if you hadn't tried to chase that fly across your page then I would have been able to read it."
Jimmy tries to stick his tongue out in retaliation, but he's smirking too widely and the gesture doesn't quite give off the effect it should. "I didn't give it to you for you to crap all over it, Dean, I gave it to you to see if you remember doing it."
"You mean, crap all over it more than fourth grade you appeared to do?" Dean snorts, but skims the list in order to avoid the glare he's pretty sure Jimmy is firing his way.
1. Go camping
2. Make a rainbow cake
3. Learn to cook
4. Graduate college
5. Solve a rubix cube
6. Go ghost hunting
7. Learn to sew
8. Play messy Twister
9. Send a message in a bottle
10. Sleep under the stars
11. Meet the love of my life
12. Watch the sunrise
13. Slow dance in the rain
14. Have my first kiss
15. Marry the love of my life
"Make a rainbow cake?"
"Hey, look, a kid's gotta have dreams, okay?" Jimmy holds his hands up. "Do you still have your list?"
"I doubt it." Dean gives a shrug. "Mine wasn't exactly long. It was somethin' like, Graduate school, Get a job, Inherit Dad's Impala - which I did - and Take care of Sammy."
"Which you did as well."
"Yeah. Guess so. Depends on what your definition of take care of is."
"That's more than what I've completed, anyhow."
"Which is how many?"
"That would be zero."
"What, not even campin'?"
"Nope. I nearly went during tenth grade, but then I realised that Gabriel was going too, and I quickly made up some excuse. Good thing too. Gabe released a load of ants into everyone's tents and almost got kicked out of school for it."
"Sounds like a lucky escape." Dean is looking down at the list again. "Well, hey, it's not like we can't do some of these things now, right? Tick a couple of goals off?"
"You'd be willing to stand there for nearly an entire afternoon to make rainbow cake with me?" Jimmy raises an eyebrow.
"I was thinkin' more along the lines of dancin' in the rain." Dean nods towards the window. "I mean, it's rainin' now, ain't it?"
"But it's the middle of January. It'll be freezing."
"Oh, c'mon, man, where's your sense of adventure?" Dean tosses the list and his textbook aside and climbs off the bed, already reaching for his jacket and pulling it on over his shoulders.
Jimmy chuckles as he watches. "You're crazy, Winchester."
"I thought you used to like that about me."
"Eh, true." Jimmy lets himself be dragged off the floor by his roommate, grabbing his trenchcoat as they leave the room and head out of the warm dorm halls, out into the downpour of rain that has suddenly descended onto Michigan.
Jimmy bundles his coat around him. "Holy crap, it's cold!"
"Less talkin', more dancin'!" Dean is still gripping onto his hand and so pulls him forward so that they're awkwardly shuffling back and forth. "You ain't gonna warm up if you keep on like that."
"Well, sorry, but some of us don't particularly like the idea of having to crawl back indoors," Jimmy mumbles, but he complies, letting go of his coat in favour of resting his hand on Dean's shoulder and letting his roommate spin him around on the spot a couple of times. "Can we go back in now? My ass feels like it's about to drop off and that wouldn't be pleasant to watch or experience."
"Wow. Way to kill the mood, man."
Jimmy raises an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware that there was a mood to kill."
"Well, not at the rate that you're goin', there won't be!" Dean spins him around again, trying not to show how cold he's getting. Because, fuck, it's cold, and that's really not helping right now. "Besides, you need to cross more than one thing off your list."
"Can't see much else that I could achieve out here." Jimmy still looks grumpy as he speaks. "What did you have in mind?"
"Number fourteen." And, with that, Dean swoops forward and gently presses their mouths together for a few seconds, before pulling back. "Have you first kiss," he says, half a second later, just in case Jimmy hasn't quite caught up with what number fourteen referred to. But it seems that he has, because suddenly Jimmy is smiling at him, like properly beaming, all his earlier disdain for being out in the rain gone, his arms wrapped around his roommate, expression mirroring the same face he had made back in fourth grade, when Dean Winchester asked Castiel Milton if he could come and eat lunch with him.
"Today's shaping up to be a day of firsts, isn't it?" He muses after a moment of comfortable silence, save for the sound of the rain.
"Seems so." Dean winks at him. "What'cha say we play that game of Twister now?"
Jimmy raises an eyebrow and pushes out his bottom lip, caught somewhere between amusement and puppy dog, and Dean shakes his head with a sigh.
"Or we could bake that fuckin' rainbow cake now..."