I woke up on something soft, with my skull about to crack. Everything felt like that, actually. As I turned my head - slowly, slowly now - I could roughly make out a figure.
"Who…?"
"Don't talk. Someone did a number on you." There was a pause, and I tried to lift my head. Agony shot through me, and I gasped. "Woah. Stay still, will ya?" A pause. "Should I call an ambulance?"
"No. No…" A hospital would mean hours in the A&E, and missing the exam. The fear flooded through me then. Oxford felt far, far away.
"Alright. You do you." Slowly, my head started to clear. The boy opposite me became a blob of gold and two green eyes. He had a deep voice with a Yorkshire lilt, and sounded like he cared.
"Who…?"
"'Could ask you the same, considering you turned up unconscious in my uncle's garden and all." He chuckled dryly, and when I looked back at him my vision had improved slightly.
Dean Winchester: bright green eyes, heartthrob jawline, blonde hair in messy spikes and shoulders that fill his blazer. He'd been in my class since he turned up out of the blue in year 9. Dean flirted with everyone, but everyone said that he once made out with Jo Harvelle so nobody seemed to mind.
"Dea…"
"Dean Winchester. Do we know each other?" At one point I'd been a Year Ten with a crush. Dean had been the new boy who seemed actually at ease with himself. He'd been too good to be true. He asked me for a pencil once and and broke past every defence with a wink. It would make sense he wouldn't know me.
"No… Cas…tiel Novak." Then a cough ripped from my throat, and my lungs felt like they were in pieces.
"You're sure you don't want me to call the hospital?"
"No… don't. What time?"
"11pm."
"Exam." My throat felt so raw, it ached to say one word. Dean fell silent. "To… tomorrow."
"You study English Lit? Shit. Shit! What time?"
"Ten."
"Okay. I'm going to check you out, and patch up what I can. Stay here for the night, and I'll give you a lift back to Barlow's in the morning. Anyone at home that'll miss you?"
"No."
"Okay. Okay. Can I check out your injuries, see what's wrong?" I nodded tensely, and then his hands were on my shirt and my heart was beating hard. "Usually I'd take you out to dinner first." When his hands brushed against my bruised skin, I bit back a gasp of pain. "Don't be a wimp." A pause as he inspected the bruises. Then he headed off to grab something, and I could look around. The room was crowded with leather bound books, and contained only the musty sofa I was laying on and a pulled up chair. When he came back, he had a wet towel and a pile of bandages. "I'm no doctor, but I know my way around a chest or two."
I focussed on Dean instead of the pain: he had a battered leather jacket; heavy black boots, and a silver amulet around his neck shaped like some grotesque face. My torso was throbbing relentlessly, but Dean's movements were sure and well practiced. If I wasn't so tired, I would've wondered how he'd had practice. As he worked he talked, to distract me from the pain. It was as if the person I'd known in classes was a caricature of the lad sat opposite me. "One kick, but a hard one. How many attacked you?"
"I don't know. Two?"
"They were waiting for you. Sickos. Then they attacked you, tied you up and left you there. Why did they do it? I'm gonna rip their lungs out. I'm gonna find them and rip their fucking lungs out."
After Dean produced a beer or two, more ice packs than you could imagine and even more creative threats (including and towels to clean off the dried blood), I drifted off. My nerves were sharp and thrumming, and Metallica was playing softly from the stereo. Maybe it was one of the worst nights of my life, but maybe it wasn't.
As my eyelids closed, Dean's head thumped softly onto my shoulder. He smelt like oil and woodsmoke, and I dropped off not long after.
By the time I opened my eyes again, the reassuring weight of Dean's head had gone. The boy in question was stretching in his crumpled black t shirt, throwing me a hazy grin. In one hand he held a chipped mug, and there was another balanced on the wonky chair.
"I know you're hurt and all, but I ain't feeding ya." Then the haze faded away and I caught sight of the clock.
"Exam… two hours." My throat was still shredded, but better.
He put up his palms in a 'it's all under control gesture'. "Breathe. You've barely stopped being comatose. Grab a shower, I'll hook you up with some clothes and give you a drive into school."
"They took my bag."
He blew out air through his nose heavily. "I'll find it."
When I tried to stand up, it was painful but not as bad as last night. Now it was a shock of a different kind.
The shock of standing shirtless in a strange living room with Dean Winchester when the exam that was about to decide your future was happening in two hours' time.
The rest was a blur of a cold shower (I got a chance to see the bruise blooming painfully across my chest, and the few places where the skin had been grazed and had bled a bit), pulling on Dean's slightly too big shirt and blazer and scraping the mud off my trousers and shoes. All the while, my eye was on the door for when the ghostly uncle appeared. To say I was on edge must be an understatement.
Dean however, seemed to find the situation infuriatingly amusing. When I was rooting around in a strange draw for a pen that worked, a heard a conversation through the crack of the door.
"Dean!" The voice was that of a teenage boy maybe, just young enough to have a squeak at the end.
"Hey Samantha. What's got your knickers in a twist?" Dean goaded.
"You said you'd give me a lift to school."
"Aww, crap."
"You promised dad and Bobby."
"I know I did,"
"And then you took a girl home and you said to Bobby weren't gonna do that in his house." I flushed red behind the door and Dean laughed.
"How do you know I took a girl home?"
"Cause I heard the shower going and I found a ripped up shirt in the bin. You're so gross." Dean just continued to laugh incredulously, and I stepped in and cleared my throat. The boy was short, with a helmet of brown curls and a large plaster along the top of his head. He was lugging a new looking satchel and pulling on his blazer. "What's going on?" Narrowing his eyes, he turned towards me. "I know you from the library."
"Dean didn't take me home."
"I kinda did though. Technically." Then we were all somehow squeezed into a shining black muscle car that Dean should never be able to afford, and driving out of the graveyard of rusting car parts towards the school.
A strange calm filled me, as we passed all ages in badly fitting blazers wandering into school in clumps. Sam was giving Dean the cold shoulder, which his brother seemed to find incredibly amusing. "Don't drive right up into school." Dean nodded and completely ignored him, driving as far as the school gates would let him and revving a few times for the adoring boys pointing at the car. "Jerk."
"Bitch."
Then Dean span the car around, and the calm serenity shattered as the familiar building came into view. Something sour and disgusting came up, and I shot out of the door and retched into a bush. Sick splashed everywhere, and when my stomach was empty I kept on retching into the air. There was a heavy sigh, and then a hand slapped me on the back.
"At least you stayed away from my Baby. If you had spewed on her leather interior…" He trailed off, gently tugging me away. The muscles of my stomach were pulsing sharply.
"I can't go in there, Dean."
"Bullshit."
"Look at me. I'm bruised, I'm hurt, I haven't had enough sleep and I haven't had breakfast. I don't know if this pen is going to work. I don't know anything."
"You done throwing a tantrum?" His eyes were sharp, and slowly my heartbeat slowed. "You have this. Whoever the hell you are, you have this."
