Dean didn't like South Dakota. Don't get it wrong, he loved living with Bobby, and he loved knowing Sammy had something to eat every day of the week, unlike when he was on the road with his father, but he sometimes missed the open road. That part of living with his father he had liked. He didn't like the being abandoned for days. Or the starvation. Or his father's delusions of monsters around every corner, but he loved the road.
Honestly, the only thing that made it sightly interesting was the gossip, though he would never say that to anyone's face. Or even admit it to himself.
The most interesting gossip concerned the massive Milton family. They owned a store in town, that was constantly manned by one of their fifteen or so children, even during school hours. This was odd in and of itself, but odder still was the fact that neither their father nor mother, both pastors, had been in town in many years. Gossip said they were doing missions work in Tibet.
The third most interesting thing was the fact that apparently, one of their sons, Lucifer, had been sent away to a treatment center for troubled children in St Cloud because he had raped and tortured a girl for nearly two months straight. Somehow he convinced a judge to just send him to get 'help'. And Dean couldn't help but be fascinated by the case.
The absolute most interesting thing about the Milton family though, was probably their son, Castiel. The boy had big blue eyes that seemed too big for his face, and light brown skin and he seemed so puzzled by everything. Like he was raised on Mars. And Dean liked it.
"Dean," Charlie Bradbury said, elbowing him, "What's your problem? This is the best episode of Twin Peaks! You get to see Audrey Horne nearly topless and you're not even paying attention!"
"Nothing. M'fine," Dean grumbled.
"If you're going to be a dick, I'll call up Balthazar and we'll watch TNG together and you can go home and sulk."
"I'm not bein' a dick! Also, didn't he tell you last time," Dean adopted the Milton boy's cultivated British accent, "'If you make me watch one more episode of that show, I'll go upstairs and rip up your copy of 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever'page by page?'"
"He was kidding," Charlie said.
Dean gave her a look.
"And anyway, I might possibly own three copies of that book," she added quickly. "Seriously though, what's your problem?"
"You know the Milton family?"
"Well, yeah. Seeing as Balthazar is one of them."
"I mean other than'm."
Charlie nodded. "What about them?"
"You know," Dean paused. If he told her about his…crush? was that the right word, on Cas, he'd never hear the end of it, "How one of the brothers s'posedly, uh," He couldn't bring himself to say the word aloud, so instead, he made an obscene gesture, sliding two of his left fingers into the fingers of his right hand, which were curled into an o, "that one girl?"
"Lucifer. Yeah," Charlie nodded, swallowing.
"That's what I'm thinking about. How could a pastor's kid do that shit?"
Charlie nodded.
"I'm thinking…maybe if I get to know his siblings, I might figure it out."
"I could call Ba-"
"Not Balthazar. Castiel. If any of them would tell anything, it'd be him."
"Dean. Don't pretend to be his friend just to find out about his brother. Please. He's a nice boy and Balthazar says he has trouble making friends. Just. If you're gonna do this, be more Troi than Kirk, okay?"
Dean nodded. "Can we get back to looking at Audrey Horne's rack again?"
Charlie smiled, grabbed a pillow and held it against her chest and pressed play