"Cas, Dean, can I see you two for a moment?"
Dean looked up briefly at his friend, both of them pausing in the act of shoving their spiral notebooks into their backpacks. Cas's plaintive expression of "what did you do now?" was unmistakable, and Dean shot back his best innocent look as he slung his bag over his shoulder and led the way to the teacher's desk in the corner.
"Don't worry, I'll write you notes," Mr. Morris said as he pulled a pad of paper toward him and began doing just that. "I wanted to talk to you about next week's assignment."
Dean blinked. "I haven't even had time to screw that one up yet," he said.
Mr. Morris looked up with a weary expression. Dean was used to it. "You've heard of the flour baby assignment, I assume."
Dean only just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. The flour baby assignment was infamous, and always disrupted classes for at least a week while the current batch of ninth graders being shuffled through health class lugged around bags of flour with varying amounts of enthusiasm. The premise was that the teenagers would realize the trials of being teen parents. Dean figured that it just showed they were all unsuited to work at bakeries.
It was Cas who answered, and as usual, he'd seen to the bottom of things before Dean had even begun to ponder the surface. "There are more boys than girls in this class."
"Yes," Mr. Morris said, and the mild congratulatory look he aimed at Cas was also familiar. "I was hoping that I could ask you two to be mature about being paired together for the assignment, and honor the spirit of it rather than its literal connotations."
Dean didn't shoot a worried glance at Cas, but he wanted to. Cas, however, simply shrugged, a motion Dean could see from the corner of his eye. "I don't really care."
"Me neither," Dean replied.
"Good." Mr. Morris tore the sheets of paper he'd scribbled on from the pad and handed one to each of them. "If you hurry, you probably won't even need to use those," he said, looking up at the wall clock.
Indeed, the hallways were still full of students milling about between classes, and Dean took advantage of the two of them being in close proximity squeezing through the multitudes to mutter in a low voice, "You sure you're gonna be okay with that?"
"They haven't bothered me for weeks," Cas replied, his offhand tone just a little too casual. "I think they moved on to more amusing targets."
"I can take it during biology and math," Dean offered.
Cas shook his head. "How are they even going to know who I have a flour lovechild with? Everyone knows about the flour babies. Everyone knows the entire project is a ridiculous display of heteronormativity and usually ends up with slut shaming. They're all going to assume that I've got a girl partner who doesn't want to put up with the bullshit and that I'm taking one for the team so we get an A."
They rounded the corner and paused. Dean looked down the hallway towards his next class and shrugged; when Cas started using those phrases it usually meant a diatribe would follow, one he honestly did care about but had heard a dozen times before. "As long as...I mean, you'd tell me? If they were bothering you again?"
"You'd be able to tell," Cas replied wryly, and Dean winced at the memory of the black eye Cas had sported for three weeks. He'd told everyone else it was a kendo sparring mishap. Dean had given the captain of the basketball team a matching black eye and accepted the three-day suspension as his due. That was just what friends did.
"I'll see you in math," Dean promised as he started backing down the hall towards his classroom.
"Right." Despite his bravado, Dean could tell that Cas was distracted as he opened the door to his next class.
"I'd like you to get into your assigned pairs now."
The rest of the classroom shuffled as seats were exchanged; Dean simply shared a look with Cas, who grinned at him. Dean could tell his friend was trying as hard as he could to ignore the startled glances being shot their way by the rest of the class; now that Dean was included in the scrutiny, the attention that had always made him a little angry and defensive now made him distinctly uncomfortable.
"I'm going to hand out your bags now." Mr. Morris hefted a laundry basket filled with bags of flour onto the front desk. "Your names are written on them, and my stamp is on them. You can't replace them with another bag if yours rips or breaks. All the requirements for the project are on your rubric. Please read it carefully."
And with that, he began calling names and carefully handing over the bags of flour, as though they were actual children. There were nervous titters as Garth immediately dropped his and Mr. Morris rubbed his temples in exasperation, declaring that this was why they no longer used eggs.
When Mr. Morris called out "Dean and Cas," Dean rose to his feet before Cas could, motioning discreetly for Cas to stay seated. He wasn't sure whether he should saunter up to the front desk or just walk normally, but as he started moving he realized he had no idea what "walking normally" was, now that he was thinking about it. He was very aware of the curious eyes on him as he accepted the bag of flour and he met a challenging stare with one of his own as he hefted the bag in one hand as he returned to his seat.
"Don't do that," Cas muttered as Dean slid into his chair.
"Do what?"
"Toss it around like that," Cas replied, reaching out to take the bag from him. "You could drop it."
Dean blinked. "Cas, you're not actually going to take this seriously, are you?"
Cas responded with a glare. "I have a four point oh and I'm being inducted into the National Honor Society in June. I am not going to get a B in this class because you chucked our baby across the room."
"It's not a baby," Dean said pointedly. "It's store brand all-purpose flour."
"Dean." Cas balanced the bag of flour on its end and laid a protective hand across the top of it. "Think what you want. But for all intents and purposes, act like it's a baby. Our baby. For the next week. Get it?"
Dean reached up to drag a hand across his face. "Please don't tell me you went to bouncing baby names dot com last weekend to pick out the perfect name for it."
"Well," Cas said, ears turning a little pink, "we can't call it Store Brand All-Purpose Flour." He pointed at one of the bullet points on the rubric. "And we are supposed to name it."
"For the love of..." Dean shook his head. "Just don't do that thing where people mash up their names. I'm not lugging around Destiel for a week."
Cas gave him the special scowl he reserved for when Dean dared to acknowledge that Cas had a second half to his name. "Of course not. We'll call him - it - Andy."
"It's not a spreadsheet," Cas insisted. He shifted on the edge of the stone plant bed they were using as a seat.
"It's a spreadsheet," Dean replied stubbornly. "Cas, I assure you, nobody cares as much about this as you seem to."
"Would you just listen to me?" Cas asked, and at the strained note in his friend's voice, Dean sat up a little straighter.
"You okay?" he asked cautiously.
"I'm fine," Cas replied darkly, in a tone that left no room for embellishment. "It's a timetable. We have to say how we split Andy's time between us in the final report. This is just an easy way to keep track."
Dean glanced at the bag of flour in Cas's lap. "You could stay at my place this week," he said cautiously. "If that would make things easier."
Cas shook his head, refusing to meet Dean's eyes. "Once the timetable's filled it's just a matter of percentages -"
"I wasn't talking about the assignment."
For the space of a heartbeat, Cas closed his eyes, then continued talking as if Dean hadn't spoken. "You'll need to take him the nights I have kendo."
"You were late to homeroom again. You have to walk?"
"Leave it, Dean."
"She can't do this to you. I swear, if she doesn't get a brain in her head I'll -"
"You'll what?" Cas demanded, finally looking up from the paper in front of him. "Punch some sense into my mother? She is the way she is. I just have to put up with it until I'm eighteen or until she kicks me out. I'm not gonna pretend I'm something I'm not just to make her comfortable."
"What set her off this time?" Dean asked after a few beats of silence.
Cas looked down at the bag of flour.
"Seriously?" Dean asked, incredulous.
"She didn't see it until this morning," Cas said in a tired voice. "She asked what it was. I told her about the project, and she...started grumbling about how it wasn't as though I was ever going to have kids anyway."
"Cas," Dean said, his stomach dropping, "You should have just let it go."
"Like hell I should have." Cas shook his head. "I told her I'd adopt if I wanted kids, and she just...went off. The usual. How I can't possibly know. How I'm just doing it for attention." Cas winced. "Like the attention I get for it is so desirable."
"Seriously, Cas. Just stay over for a few days. Let her get rid of some of that steam." Dean did not want to deal with the rage that nearly blinded him every time Cas showed up at school with red cheeks. Cas would claim it was from the cold outside, or from having run most of the way to school, but the redness had too often looked like handprints for Dean to believe that.
Cas took a deep breath. "I'm not sure staying over at your place will help matters, Dean." He stood up, shifting the bag of flour into the crook of his arm. "She thinks you and I are...you know."
Dean blinked. "She knows I'm straight, right?" he asked.
Somehow, judging by the way Cas's face fell, that was the exact wrong thing to say. "Yeah, well," Cas said bitterly after several seconds, "she 'knew' I was straight, too. If you listen to her, she still 'knows' it."
The bell began clanging, sounding the end of their morning break. Cas shoved the bag of flour into Dean's arms. "You deal with it today," he muttered. "Just don't drop it."
"Cas!" Dean called after him, but Cas shoved his hands into his pockets and disappeared into the milling crowd.
It was raining.
Dean watched the drops fall with some consternation. He'd seen last semester what rain could do to the paper bags of flour. Cas was a fairly nonviolent individual, but Dean wasn't sure whether that philosophy would extend to Dean if he let Andy turn into a soupy mess of papier maché.
He was also sure Cas might have a heart attack if Dean shoved Andy into his backpack, which was what any sane person would do with a bag of flour that they weren't currently pretending with all their might was a baby. Wrapping it in a plastic grocery bag also seemed to be the sort of thing that would make Cas's eyes bulge.
Faced with precious few options and the very real possibility that the stupid bag of flour was going to make him late for homeroom if he didn't do something quickly, he wrenched open the door to the linen closet to look for a pillowcase or towel, anything that would provide at least some sort of barrier as he walked - jogged - the five blocks to school.
For some reason he couldn't determine, his eyes went immediately to the top shelf, and what his gaze lit upon definitely should not have elicited such a grin from him. Except, maybe, because he was envisioning what Cas's face would look like when he saw it.
The blue fleece baby blanket was pilling, had several faint suspicious stains, and the satin hem had completely come undone on one side. It had been Dean's, and then Sammy's, and then relegated to the top shelf out of nostalgia of some sort. Dad had always been reluctant to throw anything away that had been around when Mom had been.
It was the perfect size to wrap neatly around the bag of flour in something that looked kind of like a swaddle, but mostly like a badly wrapped present. Dean shrugged. It would keep the rain off, and probably make Cas laugh - without putting Dean in the doghouse, which was the most important thing.
The rain was dripping from the hood of his jacket when he pushed open the door to homeroom, fully one minute before the final bell rang, and with some anxiety his eyes went directly to Cas's desk, fervently praying it wasn't empty this morning.
It wasn't, and with profound relief, Dean swung his backpack off his shoulder as he plunked the fleece-wrapped Andy onto Cas's desk.
"Morning," he said as he peeled off his jacket, eyes searching Cas's face for his friend's reaction.
Cas was acting rather predictably, a puzzled furrow of the brow fighting with a grin. "What..."
"It was wet outside." Dean hung his dripping jacket from the back of his chair. "And Andy is considerably less waterproof than real babies."
"A baby blanket?" Cas asked, looking up.
"It was mine." Dean shrugged. "What, did you want a little raincoat?"
"No, I..." There was a bewildering element of disbelief caught up in Cas's eyes. "I figured you'd just...put him in a bag or something."
"And then I'd never hear the end of it," Dean pointed out. "You wanted me to treat it like a baby, right?" He gestured at the bag of flour. The blanket was definitely wet, but the water had beaded on the fleece rather than soaking through. "Voila. Baby blanket. Now our bouncing baby flour bag won't get cold."
The homeroom teacher turned on the television for the morning announcements, which the entire class continued to ignore. Cas was toying with the edge of the blanket, his expression now thoroughly unreadable.
"Cas?" Dean prodded. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," Cas said quickly. "I'm just...a little shocked that you're actually taking this seriously." He looked over, and his eyes caught at Dean's in that way that made Dean swallow to cover the inexplicable jump in his stomach.
Dean shrugged. "It's important to you. You might stop speaking to me if you got an A minus because of me."
Cas nodded. "Thanks." He turned his attention to the television screen.
Dean studied Cas's profile for several seconds before he did the same. This wasn't exactly the reaction he'd been expecting.
The substitute in Biology just wasn't going to cut it today.
Dean was not strictly a well-behaved student. He was prone to smart-ass outbursts, turning his homework in late, and the occasional nap during the educational videos from decades long past. But even he was slightly appalled by the lack of order that had seized the class today.
The substitute at the front of the room looked frazzled and desperate as she tried to regain the attention of the class. Three of the JV volleyball team members had hoisted themselves to sit on the counters in a corner and were chatting animatedly. Two of the members of the basketball team had completely turned their chairs around to talk to the girls sitting behind them, and Dean could feel the smarmy from across the room. Half the class had their heads bowed, studying the screens of their phones intently.
Two tables behind Dean, Cas had given up and had opened his textbook, valiantly attempting to read it, Andy propped up on the desk next to him as though to provide some sort of barrier against the rest of the class. Dean recognized the set of his shoulders; Cas was annoyed and trying to give some sort of visible cue to the teacher that he was not a part of this class. Dean wished he could leave his seat and go sit down next to him, but if he got up, that would only add to the chaos of the room.
He watched from afar as Meg, Cas's desk partner, leaned over and muttered something to Cas. Cas shook his head, making a shooing motion with his hand. Clearly undeterred, Meg reached up to tickle at the short hairs at the back of Cas's neck.
Dean groaned. Cas smacked at the back of his neck irritably, but didn't look up from his book. If anything, he stared harder at it, and Dean could see the clouds starting to build behind his friend's eyes.
Meg did it again, her brow cocked in malicious playfulness.
"Knock it off," Cas growled in a low voice that Dean could still hear.
"It's so soft." Meg ran a finger along the locks that curled at the nape of Cas's neck. "How do you get it so soft?"
In response, Cas pushed his book until the open cover hit the wall, scooting his chair along with it until he was as far from Meg as the wall would allow him.
A loud, soprano undulation of giggles from the corner overrode what Cas said next, but Dean heard Meg's response clearly: "But how do you know, if you've never been with a girl?"
"Call it a hunch," Cas replied, pulling his textbook into his lap and turning his chair completely so his back was to Meg.
Which left Andy still standing in the middle of the desk. Dean saw the scene unfold in front of him just before it happened, and he'd half-risen from his chair by the time Meg, thwarted and still bored, grabbed the bag of flour.
"Don't touch it."
Meg looked up, surprised, as Dean's shadow fell over the desk. Cas twisted in his chair and the glance he shot Dean was something between pleading Dean to stop and gratitude that Dean was there.
"Why not? It's just the stupid flour baby thing."
"Yeah. And you killed yours last semester." Dean reached down and grabbed a handful of the blanket that Cas had rewrapped more securely around the bag, pulling it from Meg's hands and settling it into the crook of his elbow.
"What, and it's okay for you to take it?" Meg demanded.
"It's mine, too," Dean said. Too loudly, he realized a split-second too late, as he saw the basketball players turn in their seats.
"Aww, flour-baby's got two daddies," one of them said in a voice meant to carry.
"How's that work?" one of the volleyball players asked from the corner. "Who fucked who to get that?"
Dean set his jaw and walked stiffly back to his table, aware that Cas's neck had started growing red as he turned back to his textbook.
"So you a faggot too, Winchester?" the boy sitting behind him asked in a hostile whisper.
Dean turned in his chair. "No," he replied. "And even if I was, at least I'm not a piece of shit like all of you."
His eyes sought out Cas, who refused to look up from his book.
The substitute had grown desperate enough to pull out the big guns; the assistant principal pulled open the door and as the class began to notice, the silence that fell over the room in stages began to feel oppressive.
Dean was not completely surprised by the yellow detention slip that was handed to him several minutes later, but he was surprised - and astonishingly upset - at the one that was handed to Cas as well.
"You didn't even do anything," Dean muttered fervently as they filed out of the classroom forty minutes later. "This is bullshit."
"It's just lunch detention," Cas said in a low voice. "Five minutes of wiping tables and trays isn't a big deal."
"It's a big deal when you didn't do anything to deserve it," Dean insisted. "Seriously. This is absolute bullshit. What does it even say?"
Cas handed over the yellow slip of paper. Scrawled in the line that was supposed to list their crimes against the student handbook was simply the word "disturbance."
"Disturbance." Dean scoffed as he handed it back. "I hate this school."
"Dean, can you just drop it?"
Dean looked sharply at Cas, who was studying the lock in his hands very intently. "Drop what?"
"This...this crusade you have against everyone who looks at me wrong." Cas didn't open his locker. "It's...embarrassing. And it just makes everyone think it's open season on me when you're not around."
Dean's mouth opened, but he didn't have any immediate words available. He snapped it back shut in confusion.
Cas finally tore his eyes from the lock to look up at Dean. "I know it pisses you off. But I knew it would happen when I came out. And it's only been a few weeks. Eventually they'll all get tired of it and move on to something more interesting."
"It's been a few months, Cas. And you can't just ask me to stand by while everyone treats you like shit for it."
"Actually, I can." Cas rolled his shoulders back and turned to face Dean more fully as he pulled open his locker. "That's exactly what I'm asking you to do."
Dean licked his lips, words zipping through his mind too fast for him to get a grip on any of them. "Well," he said lamely, "I'm not letting anything happen to Andy, so...I'm still gonna step in there."
Cas's solemn eyes crinkled slightly at the edges as his face broke into a reluctant grin. "Fine." The smile fell as Cas took a breath. "But I mean it, Dean. It's..." He sighed. "I appreciate that you want to...protect me. Or whatever. I do. But it'll go away on its own."
"And if it doesn't?" Dean pressed as Cas slammed his locker shut.
Cas rolled his eyes. "I promise that if they're still calling me a faggot at graduation, you can garrote them with my honor cords."
"Good." The crowd in the hallway was beginning to thin as the passing period drew to a close, and Dean hitched Andy up a little in his arms. "This thing is getting heavier every day."
"I'll take him," Cas said, reaching out to grab the bag of flour. "See you at lunch."
Dean nodded as Cas dashed away to make it to class on time, their bag of flour tucked protectively under one arm. The anger that had been roiling in his stomach had gone sour, replaced by something he couldn't identify that just made him feel...tired.
Between the two of them, algebra was the only subject that both of them tended to have any difficulties with. Granted, for Cas it was because it was more difficult for him to read numbers than words; as Cas explained it, he could still usually figure out what words were saying when the letters jumbled, but transpose one digit and the entire math problem would fall apart.
That was apparently what had just happened, because Cas sighed loudly and brought a hand up to his eyes. "What did you get for number eighteen?" he asked wearily.
Dean glanced down at his paper. "Forty-seven," he replied, though he wasn't entirely sure it was correct.
Cas made an irritated sound and shoved his paper across the kitchen table at Dean. "What did I copy down wrong?"
Dean glanced at the paper, Cas's precise handwriting in neat little rows on the graph paper he used to try and force the numbers into an order that wouldn't dance on the page. "It's twelve x," Dean replied, circling it. "Not twenty-one."
Cas picked up the paper as Dean slid it back across the table. "That'd do it, I guess." He sighed again and shook his head. "How many of these do we have left? Seven?"
Dean nodded, glancing at the clock. Sammy wasn't set to get home from baseball practice for another half hour, and Dad had already texted to say he'd be late.
"I need a break. My eyes are going to start bleeding." Cas pushed his chair back from the table and rubbed at his face wearily. Dean threw his pencil into the crease of the math book in agreement, leaning back in his own chair.
An agreeable silence fell across the table, the quiet of friends who knew each other well enough that they felt no need to fill it. Cas got up to refill his glass of water, and Dean watched him as he went through the motions, a question taking root in the back of his mind. It wasn't a new question, but it was one he'd never voiced.
"Cas?" he asked hesitantly as his friend slid back into the chair across from him. "Can I ask you something?"
Cas swallowed his gulp of water. "Yeah. 'Course."
Dean forced himself to look Cas in the eye. "How did you figure it out?" At the way Cas's eyebrows rose ever so slightly, Dean rushed to take another breath, suddenly wanting to explain himself. "I mean - I was the first one you told. And I know you were scared to death it'd change something, so I never made a big deal out of it. And it didn't change anything, I swear. It's not a big deal. But I'm...we never talked about it, after that. You know?"
Cas nodded, licking his lips nervously as he glanced down at his hands. "Yeah, I...I figured you were giving me space."
"Space. Yeah." A good way to say that Dean had no idea how to articulate questions he didn't feel like he had any right asking. "If you need more...I mean, it's only been, what, three months?"
"No." Cas took a deep breath, as if steadying himself. "I kept thinking about someone," he said after a long silence, during which the ice cube tray in the freezer dumped its load into the basin with a crash that seemed loud in contrast. "And at first I just wanted him to...notice me. And I thought about him. A lot." Cas bit his lip. "And then I started thinking...other things. And wanting more than just to be noticed. And the fact that it was a him and not a her..." Cas shrugged.
Dean swallowed. The question was burning the roof of his mouth, but he pressed his lips together, refusing to let it out. It wasn't any of his business to ask who it was.
Cas looked up with a sardonic twist to his lips. "Really, though, I think I figured it out once and for all when I couldn't jack off to regular porn." He said it with a surety, a boldness that was completely at odds with the deep crimson that blossomed in his cheeks. "Zero interest."
Dean felt his eyebrows shoot up high enough to make his eyes water. His mind cast about for something to say to that, something that had nothing to do with the mental image Dean suddenly had of Cas jacking off, something that meant Dean didn't have to think about the impossible interest his body had abruptly taken in the notion of Cas jacking off, anything.
Dean reached out to the bag of flour that was sitting on the table to the side of them, covering where its ears would be if bags of flour had ears. "Cas," he said in a mock-scandalized tone, "Not in front of the kid."
Cas dissolved into a helpless, nervous kind of laughter, and Dean joined in with a relief that made his legs feel weak. Yes. Laughing was good. Laughing meant everything was okay.
Friday had the air of a holiday to it, and the short school day that went along with it this week only heightened the feeling. The rest of the class had already packed up, the inevitable milling about during the last minute before the early dismissal bell a cacophony of weekend plans, commiseration over the assigned essay, and zippers being drawn closed.
"Dean," Mrs. Hanson called over the din, "A word, before you go, please."
The bell rang and Dean held back the groan. What had he done this time?
He approached her desk at the back of the room as everyone else filed out of the classroom, some of them glancing back, no doubt to try and see what kind of trouble he was in now. Mrs. Hanson waited until the last student had shut the door behind him before looking up at Dean.
"I was very impressed with the poetry assignment you turned in yesterday," she said without preamble. "I'd really love to give it full points."
Dean stared. "Okay?"
"Except I can't give it full points, because it was three days late. I can't give it any points." Mrs. Hanson gave him a significant look. "We've been over this, Dean. You're a smart kid. Very smart. And talented. But if you keep turning in late work, you're not going to pass this class."
Dean fidgeted. "Are we done?" he asked.
Mrs. Hanson sighed heavily. "I guess we are. Have a good weekend. Your essay rough draft is due on Monday." She looked at him carefully. "Monday, Dean. Not Wednesday, not Friday. Monday."
"I'll have it," Dean promised. He probably would, too. He was nearly finished with it.
The slate gray clouds were spitting raindrops in an uneven spatter as Dean strode to the front gate of the parking lot, where Cas usually waited for him when they walked home on early days. The seniors' cars idled in a noisy queue, and he walked past them, briefly dreaming of the day he'd get to drive his own car to school. Yes, he only lived five blocks away, but seniors with cars got to leave campus on lunch break, and that kind of freedom shone in Dean's future like a beacon.
As he turned the corner to wait at the telephone pole for Cas, his stomach plummeted.
"Dammit," Cas was saying, "give it back."
"I don't think so," the older boy was saying, tossing Andy over Cas's head to another boy behind him. Yet another one - Dean was fairly certain they were juniors - was rifling through Cas's backpack as Cas stood with his arms pinned to his side by a fourth boy grasping him from behind.
"Hey!" Dean called, quickening his pace. "Shove off, asshats."
"And here comes your boyfriend." The ringleader laughed, reaching out to tousle roughly at Cas's hair. Cas tried to duck, his features twisted in disgust and anger.
Dean didn't bother to correct him; he dropped his backpack on the sidewalk as he came closer, not willing to give them something easy to grab if it came down to a fight. The one crouching next to Cas's backpack straightened, and as Dean tried to shove him aside, he shoved back at Dean hard enough to make him stumble.
"What's your problem, faggot?" he demanded, shoving at Dean's chest again.
Dean set his jaw. The shoving was only a preamble. It'd turn to punches soon enough. He might as well make it now.
He didn't bother going for the face; the face was full of nasty sharp bones, and it hurt as much to punch someone in the nose as it did to get punched in the nose in the first place. Besides, he was probably a head taller than Dean, and Dean wouldn't have any power behind it if he tried to punch up, so Dean threw himself into a hard punch in the other boy's solar plexus instead.
It had the desired effect: the boy doubled over and wheezed, automatically backing up a few steps, and Dean shoved him aside. Adrenaline was coursing through him now, and he sized up the other three assailants.
The ringleader hadn't had time to react yet to this turn of events, and he stood blinking stupidly at Dean. Dean dismissed him for the moment, focusing on the boy holding Cas - and getting a good look at Cas for the first time.
"Fucking hell," Dean growled. "You just got rid of that shiner."
The inevitable crowd had begun to gather at a safe distance, and Dean could see an adult making haste toward them from the main building. Fine. He could still do some damage before the teacher tried breaking them all up.
With a grunt, Cas lifted his legs from the ground, throwing the boy holding him suddenly off balance. With a shout that Dean recognized from his friend's kendo class, Cas threw himself forward, probably with the intention of rolling the other boy over his shoulders into the ground.
It didn't quite work. Both Cas and the boy crashed to the sidewalk, Cas grunting again as the larger boy landed on top of him. Dean shrugged. It had been a good try, at least.
"Hey!"
The teacher had arrived within hailing distance. The ringleader looked panicked for a moment before delivering a final sneer of "faggot" and grabbing a handful of Dean's tee shirt as he started to run away, pulling down forcefully and nearly dragging Dean to the ground before the shirt ripped.
The last boy, who had been tossing Andy from hand to hand, started to run after the ringleader, but not before winding up and throwing the bag of flour as hard as he could into the street.
Dean felt a flash of cold blast through his veins as he watched the bag soar through the air, thudding into the ground and splitting with the impact, flour erupting in a cloud and spilling out over the asphalt.
"You fucking bag of dicks," Cas was saying from the ground where he was squirming to get out from under the boy atop him, spitting out the words with a vitriol Dean didn't know he was capable of.
The first boy that Dean had knocked the wind out of had started to hobble after the other two by the time the teacher arrived, and Dean could see two more teachers starting the jog down to the sidewalk just outside the school. The teacher yanked the boy pinning Cas to the ground up, a stream of meaningless scolding trailing from his mouth as Dean knelt down next to Cas to help him up.
"C'mon. Let's go."
"You stay right here," the teacher said sternly as Dean hoisted Cas up.
"Not gonna happen," Dean replied, with some heat. He stooped to pick up his bag as they walked past it, Dean not so much holding Cas up as giving Cas someone to stumble against.
"Dean Winchester!" the teacher called after him. "Your father will be getting a phone call about this!"
"Good," Dean muttered. "Maybe he'll pay attention to this one."
"Dean," Cas said, voice choked. "Dean, the...Andy?"
A hot lump rose at the back of Dean's throat. "Stay there."
There was no salvaging the flour that was strewn about the asphalt, and the split bag ripped the rest of the way in half as Dean picked it up, more flour spilling over his hands. Dean swallowed hard. It was a bag of flour. That was all. He wound the blanket around the two halves of the bag as best he could, cradling the remains to his chest as he turned back to Cas.
Silently, they trudged down the sidewalk, Cas's shoulders slumped in defeat.
Dean handed over the bag of frozen peas, which Cas pressed wordlessly to his eye that was already beginning to purple at the edges. Dean winced as he spied the scrapes on Cas's arms from the sidewalk he'd been ground against, and turned to soak a dish towel with some soapy water.
"This is so stupid."
Dean turned at the words that Cas had choked out, and was alarmed to see Cas wiping at his cheek with the back of his hand. He made a vague sound of agreement.
"It's...it's a bag of flour. An assignment. Not a...not an actual kid. Not something I'm actually supposed to care about." Cas sniffed, and Dean looked away, not sure he was supposed to be watching his friend not-quite crying.
"I'm sure if we talk to Morris, he'll let it slide," Dean said as he ran the dish towel under the tap.
"It isn't that." Cas swallowed hard as Dean offered him the soapy dish towel, taking it in his free hand and blotting at the abrasions on his arm, wincing at the sting. "It's...I'm going to be a terrible father."
Dean stared. "Cas...we're fifteen. That was kind of the point of the assignment. It wasn't to be parents of the year. We were supposed to be bad at it." He forced a smile. "I mean, I know it's hard for you to be bad at something, but -"
"But what about later?" Cas pressed.
Dean took a deep breath. Cas was nursing another impressive black eye and could have gotten a lot worse, and he was worrying about an uncertain future parenthood? "Later, you won't have to worry about dickwads cornering you and throwing your kid into the street," he said carefully.
"No," Cas replied darkly, "later, I'll just have to worry they'll have guns, or that they'll call CPS with false charges to get him taken away from me, or..." he ran out of breath, and Dean rushed to stop him from continuing.
"Then we'll deal with that later." He reached out to take the soapy towel from Cas and motioned to let him clean the other arm so Cas wouldn't have to take the frozen peas from his eye. "I'm sorry," he said thickly.
"About what?" Cas asked.
"About letting that happen to Andy. To you." Dean swallowed.
Cas shook his head. "Not your fault." He sighed and lowered the bag of peas. "Mom's going to kill me for getting in another fight."
"Yeah, well, it wasn't your fault either." Dean grabbed the peas and pressed them gently back to Cas's face.
Cas didn't make any motion to take the bag back. "How much of...Andy...is left?"
Dean shot a glance at the blue bundle on the kitchen counter. "Not much. We could maybe get one batch of cookies out of it."
Cas snorted, reaching up to knuckle at the corner of his eye. "It's so stupid," he repeated. "We were...I mean, we didn't even pick each other, we were assigned as partners, and I just..."
Dean's breath caught in his chest. "You just what?"
Cas let out an exhalation that was almost a laugh. "It was fun pretending." He gulped, and his next words were a rushed mess. "I know you're straight and it would never happen, so it was fun to pretend it could. That's all. I don't...it's not like I want it to happen and don't let it get weird and..." He closed his eyes. "I...ignore me. Please. Forget I said all that."
Dean let his hand fall at the confirmation of what he'd been suspecting for some time, Cas's skin red with cold where he'd been pressing the peas.
"You don't want it to happen?" he asked finally.
Cas raised both hands to cover his face and he moaned. "Please forget I said anything," he begged.
Dean licked his lips. "Cas, I..."
"Dean, promise me," Cas said, face still covered.
In answer, Dean reached out and pulled Cas's hands down from his face. And then, while he was there and before he could lose his nerve or second-guess himself, he leaned forward the rest of the way and pressed his lips against Cas's.
It was...not what Dean had expected, though he wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting. Cas's lips were chapped and dry, but warm, and Dean pulled back guiltily.
All the color had drained from Cas's face, except in a splotchy red where his skin was still cold and beginning to bruise. His mouth worked as though he were trying to say words and couldn't command them to present themselves, and he stared at Dean as though unsure Dean was actually there.
Dean swallowed. "I, uh...I was hoping you might be able to...help me figure some stuff out for myself." He laughed nervously as his eyes dropped to survey the table. "This is probably not the best time to be asking, but..." he shrugged. "It kind of felt like a now or never thing."
Cas continued blinking owlishly.
"Words would be good?" Dean said helplessly. "Anything?"
"Yeah," Cas said finally, nodding. "Yeah. Okay. Yes." He swallowed, then reached to grab the bag of peas again. "Peas," he said faintly, bringing them up to press against his eye.
"Peas," Dean agreed, and on impulse grabbed Cas's other hand.
Cas squeezed back tightly, his visible eye still a bit wild around the edges, and then he snorted in laughter.
"What?" Dean asked.
"Nothing. Just...I hate it when my mom is right about something."
Two black eyes, a broken hand, one incident of Cas wielding an umbrella like a bokken in self-defense, three suspensions, one near-expulsion, a disqualification from the wrestling team, and four detentions for public displays of affection later, Dean applauded as Cas ascended the dais to deliver the traditional valedictorian speech at their graduation.
It was humorous in all the right spots, if slightly bland. The tassel on Cas's mortarboard wobbled as he gestured, the varicolored honor cords around his neck swaying. There was gold, for Honor Society; red for Key Club; a green one and a blue one that Dean couldn't remember the meanings of; and the last one a new addition, a deep purple and white, reserved for the officers of the LGBT student alliance.
It was the only honor cord that Dean had.
"Today, the mantle of adulthood is placed on our shoulders," Cas said in the cadences of someone who has come to the end of a long speech. "I know most of you aren't surprised to see me up here. I know some of you are. And I know some of you would prefer I wasn't, because of who and what I am."
An uncomfortable shuffle throughout the student body, a whisper of cheap polyester gowns against plastic chairs.
"But who I am, what I am, what we all are, is human. And today, we approach a rite of passage, a milestone, that we can all celebrate together, regardless of who or what else we may be. We stand in solidarity, to approach this terrifying thing called The Real World with courage, determination, and maybe a little doubt. Class of two thousand sixteen, we are a brotherhood and a sisterhood - and we are a force to be reckoned with."
It was a speech lauded in the local newspapers, with short articles about the first openly gay valedictorian the high school had ever had, some flavor pieces about the purple honor cord and what it had meant, and a few letters to the editor spewing disgust that Cas had been allowed to participate in the ceremony at all.
Neither Dean nor Cas read them. Nor did Cas's mother, who had not been in attendance and, some years down the line, would deny having a son, let alone a son-in-law.
Which was her loss, because her grandson Andy was an absolute joy.