"Awe geesh Sammy! I told you we were gonna be late," Dean sighed with annoyance as the school bus sped off down the road.
"Sorry Dean," Sammy replied apologetically, "I couldn't find my shoe. It was under my bed."
"Yeah, well come on," Dean mumbled while grabbing Sammy's hand, "now we gotta walk to school."
Dean stopped short, however when he noticed a small rumpled figure sitting on the bench by the bus stop. Dean walked over to the bench with Sammy in tow, and upon closer inspection, discovered that the figure was actually a boy of about his age wrapped in a tan coat that seemed to be two sizes too big. Dean inched forward.
"Hey," Dean said, trying to get the attention of the boy, who had his head bent low, examining his hands. The boy looked up to reveal shining blue eyes. "Are you okay?" Dean asked with curiosity. The boy looked forlorn as he met Dean's innocent green eyes with his own.
"I missed the bus, and I don't know how to get to school," the blue-eyed boy stated sadly. "I'm new here," he added quietly.
"Well hey, Sammy and I can show you the way. We have to walk allllllll the time, right Sammy?" Dean added playfully, making Sammy to smile. "My name's Dean by the way."
The blue-eyed boy hopped down from his seat on the bench and smiled gratefully at Dean. "Thank you Dean," the boy grinned.
"So you got a name?" Dean asked as he them all down the sidewalk.
"Castiel," was the boy's short and almost embarrassed reply.
"Castiel?" Dean questioned. "How about Cas? Can I call you Cas?"
Cas smiled, never having been given a shortened version of his name before. "Alright," Cas mumbled shyly.
Along the way to school, Dean did not hold back on telling Cas all about his love for Batman, or his mom's delicious homemade pies, or how he and Sammy went camping every summer with their dad to do some hunting. Dean LOVED to talk. Cas wasn't used to talking much, but he enjoyed hearing Dean's stories, and smiled whenever Dean shared a funny recollection about the pranks he sometimes pulled on Sammy, making the youngest boy roll his eyes as he stumbled along beside them.
They made it to school just in time to hear the school bell ring. Dean waved to Sammy as he raced up the steps of Miss Madison's kindergarten class to join his fellow classmates, ready to begin a new day of school.
"So do you know who your teacher is?" Dean aked.
"I think I have Miss Ellen," Cas answered quietly.
Dean smiled enthusiastically, "Perfect! She's my teacher too. You're gonna love her. She's the best!"
Castiel followed Dean all the way to Miss Ellen's classroom, where Dean promptly took a seat near the middle of the rows of desks, motioning for Cas to sit beside him. Cas obliged, taking the seat nearest to Dean, and the rest of the class period passed by as expected. Miss Ellen was very kind as Dean had promised, and the other children greeted him warmly when Miss Ellen asked him to introduce himself, which only made his cheeks turn slightly red. Most of all, though, Cas enjoyed hearing Dean's whispered jokes throughout class, and loved being able to turn to Dean whenever he had a question. Cas wasn't much of a talker, but with Dean it felt easier.
At recess, Dean took pleasure in teaching Cas how to work the monkey bars and the seesaw, neither of which—to Dean's astonishment—Cas had ever had any experience with.
"Don't you ever go to the playground with your brothers?" Dean asked with interest.
Cas held on tightly to the seesaw as Dean continued to propel them up and down by pushing off of the pavement with his scuffed sneakers.
"I have two older brothers and an older sister, but they don't like to take me places. They say I'm not big enough and that I'm boring," Cas sighed.
Dean was a little shocked by this, having always held such a strong relationship with Sam. "Well, I don't think you're boring Cas. And you've got me now, and Sammy, so you can come play with us whenever you want. Hey! My mom's makin' one of her pies today! I bet it'll be done by the time school's over. Want to come over?" Dean asked hopefully.
Cas's face brightened at Dean's invitation and he nodded his head happily. Dean smiled in return and slowly brought the seesaw to a halt. "Let's try out the swings now. Those are the best part," Dean suggested as he raced towards the swing set laughing with joy. Cas followed with equal amounts of happiness radiating through him.
The rest of the day passed by quickly, and Sammy was full of stories to tell about class to keep both Dean and Cas entertained for the entire walk home. The Winchester home was nothing out of the ordinary, but still, Cas privately believed that it was magnificent, surrounded in a colorful array of flowers and emitting the most beautiful aroma of fresh apple pie. The three boys hurried up the front steps and into the house, where Mary Winchester was just pulling a fresh pie out of the oven. "Welcome home boys," Mary said cheerfully as she turned to place the hot pie down by the window to cool. "Oh, and who do we have here?" Mary smiled in Cas's direction.
Having been mesmerized by the beautiful aroma of the pie, Dean snapped back into the moment. "This is Cas. He's new here. Just moved in down the block. I told him he could come over for pie," Dean answered quickly, ready for a slice of pie.
Mary smiled at her son's friendly gesture. "Well of course he can have some pie, and you boys are in luck, because I baked two and this one," she pulled a second pie away from the windowsill, "is already cool."
The three boys savored the taste of the sweet and gooey apple pie in their mouths and thanked Mary once their plates were cleaned. Dean wiped a finger across the plate to pick up any bits that he had missed. Sammy, scurried off not long after to get started on his homework, something Dean playfully told Cas made Sammy a little bit of a nerd.
"Want to come up to my room and play?" Dean asked, wiping what was left of the pie crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand, "I'd invite ya to come outside and play in the tree house, but Dad's not done building it yet. I got lots of action figures, though. I'll be Batman and you can be Robin. We'll chase the bad guys and put 'em in jail. What d'ya say?"
Cas had never been invited to play with someone else's toys before, and so he was very excited by this proposition. He nodded with a smile, and thanked Mrs. Winchester once more before hurrying to chase after Dean, who had quickly bounded up the stairs to get his collection of action figures in order.
The boys laughed and talked animatedly back and forth for quite a while as they chased after one another all across Dean's room, and created fake explosions as they pretended to save the city from evil. It was about an hour and a half later when Cas mentioned with regret that his parents would be expecting him home soon, and that he should get going.
Dean was sad that their fun was over for the day, but he invited Cas to come over and play whenever he wanted, and even let Cas hang on to one of his action figures so he could play at his own house. Cas thanked Dean joyfully and said goodbye to Sammy and Mary before taking the short walk down the sidewalk to his own house, Dean's Robin action figure held tightly within his small hands.
The days that followed only got better, with Sammy and Dean finally making it on time for a change to get a seat with Cas on the bus, where Dean would enthusiastically report about what he and Sammy had gotten up to the afternoon before and Cas would listen attentively, smiling whenever Dean got excited. Everyday, the boys went to school together, and Dean and Cas quickly became inseparable. They shared inside jokes at recess and made silly faces at each other in class, and twice Dean even let Cas borrow some of his superhero comic books, Dean's most prized possessions that he wouldn't even let Sammy borrow on the premise that he might "bend the pages."
It was about midway into the school year as Dean walked hand in hand with Sammy, pulling him along to meet Cas at the bus stop. On the way over, Dean had spoken about nothing but Cas and how Cas made the best sound effects when they played superheroes, or how Cas always let Dean have his pudding at lunch because Cas didn't like chocolate, or how Cas never bent the pages of his comic books, and always had the best things to say about them after he read them. Sammy was more than used to Dean's constant chatter about Cas by now.
Brushing up alongside Cas at the curb, Dean smiled, still pulling Sammy along behind him as they waited for the bus to arrive; they were early for a change. The boys looked down at the sidewalk as they waited, and Dean feeling a bit warmer than usual standing so close to Cas. There was a brief silence as they waited, until Sammy spoke up for once and broke it.
"So are you guys like boyfriends yet?" Sammy questioned with complete intrigue. Dean blushed deeply and looked at his younger brother with an open mouth, unsure of what to say before he took a sigh of relief at the bus's perfectly-timed arrival. Following Sammy and Dean onto the bus, Cas was also thankful that Dean had been too distracted by Sammy's words to glance over at him, or else he might have seen the deep color of pink that had tinged Cas's cheeks at that moment.
The rest of the day went on as usual. When the boys arrived at the Winchester home at the end of the day, however, Dean was overjoyed to find that his father John had finally finished building him the tree house he and Sammy had been asking for all year. Sammy, though, had been invited to go over to play at his friend Garth's house, which left only Dean and Cas to go explore the new tree house, promising Mary they'd be careful climbing the tree of course.
Examining the tree house didn't take very long, since it was still pretty basic and empty. Dean looked around with big green eyes, "I love it! Not much now, but once we get some of our stuff up here it'll look awesome! What d'ya think?"
"It's amazing," Cas agreed without removing his eyes from Dean as the green-eyed boy bounced around the tree house with excitement.
"And I bet we can do all kind of stuff up h—ouch!"
"Dean? What's wrong?" Cas asked with concern, taking a step towards Dean.
Dean held his finger out to Cas with a squint of pain. "It hurts," Dean complained.
"Let me see," Cas suggested, moving closer and holding Dean's hand to get a better look at his finger. "It's just a splinter. Here," Cas said in a comforting fashion, as he nimbly removed the splinter from Dean's finger with one careful pluck.
Dean looked at his finger for any further signs of pain, and smiled at Cas when he found none. "Thanks Cas! I hate splinters. I always get 'em when we go camping and they're the worst."
His small hand still clutching Dean's lightly, Cas looked up into those illuminating green eyes filled with hope. "Dean?…"
"Yeah Cas?" Dean asked, taking no notice of the fact that Cas still gently held his hand in his own.
"About what Sammy said earlier…..about us being—" but his words were cut short when Dean took his other hand in his own, so that their small fingers laced together on either side.
"Yeah," Dean nodded hopefully and cautiously, "…I mean, I'd like that a lot Cas….for you to be my boyfriend…only if you wanna be though," Dean whispered the last few words with uncertainty, as he looked into Cas's astonishingly blue eyes.
"I would like that a lot Dean," Cas whispered in response with no hesitation, making Dean grin from ear to ear. After several moments of staring into each other's eyes and holding each other's hands, uncertain of what to say next, Cas spoke up again. "So..now what do we do, Dean?"
Dean thought for a moment before jumping up with enthusiasm, the grin still plastered on his face. "Wanna play pretend superheroes?! I'll let you be Batman this time," Dean suggested excitedly.
Cas nodded and smiled as Dean began to set the scene, using his best comic book voice to illustrate to Cas the Joker's latest crime in Gotham. But Cas was only half listening as he watched Dean run enthusiastically from one corner of the tree house to the other, with a huge smile on his face, because more than the treehouse, more than Mrs. Winchester's pies, more than being Batman, Cas loved that he finally had someone who made him smile, and to whom he could finally return the favor.
*****A few days later*****
Sammy laughed as he and Garth swang on the swing set in the park. Mary had decided to bring the boys out to play for the day, as she chatted with the other moms on the park benches.
"I don't think I can do it Dean," Cas said, a hint of fear in his voice as he stood at the mouth of the slide, looking down its yellow snake-like, plastic base. Dean looked up at him from the ground, where he was waiting for Cas at the end of the slide.
"Awe come on Cas. You can do this!" Dean encouraged him. "You already saw me do it, so you know it won't hurt ya. Plus, it's super fun. Come on Cas, just try it," Dean begged with big green eyes.
"But what if I get hurt, Dean?" Cas added, still uncertain.
"You won't get hurt Cas. I promise," Dean assured him. "I'll be right here in case anything happens."
That made Cas feel a little bit better, and it did look like Dean had a lot of fun went he slid down earlier. Cas gulped and, before he could think about it too much more, pushed himself down the slide. He picked up speed quickly, as the push might have been a little harder than necessary. Before Cas could go flying off the end of the slide, Dean reached out and caught him by the shoulders, pulling them both onto the ground in a warm embrace.
Cas, still wide-eyed from the joy of going down the slide and the fear of flying off the end, looked at Dean gratefully. "You caught me, Dean."
Dean, arms still wrapped tightly around Cas, replied, "I told you. I'll always be here to catch you when you fall, Cas."
Cas could only smile at him in return, eyes gleaming with happiness. "Let's go again," Cas said. "But this time, let's go together."
Dean liked the sound of that. "Okay, Cas, just gimme one more minute. I wanna make sure you're okay," he said as he continued to hug Cas tightly.
"I'm always okay when I'm with you Dean."
"I told you they were boyfriends," Sammy said to Garth as the two boys looked onward at Dean and Cas wrapped lovingly around one another on the ground.
"You owe me, Garth."
Garth sighed and handed Sammy a dollar.