Author's Note:

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Sweet Pea
a My Candy Love (© ChinoMiko) fanfiction

Chapter Fourteen
Highway Help

Opening Song: "Flowers in Your Hair" - The Lumineers

so now I think that I could
love you back
and I hope it's not too late 'cause you're so attractive
and the way you move
I won't close my eyes
it takes a man to live
it takes a woman to make him compromise

On the way over to the orienteering site, I sit next to Castiel. Because I forgot my motion sickness medicine and because being in large cars makes me nauseous, I lean against him the entire time. If I weren't trying to hold back my vomit, I'd probably be blushing and sputtering (but I'm definitely still embarrassed). "Hey, are you sure you're okay?" he asks, keeping a hand on my back. "Your face is turning green."

"That's not what girls like to hear," I groan, still hunched over. Someone told me a long time ago that if I stick my head between my legs I don't feel all the bumps and I won't get sick. I discovered that whoever told me that is a liar, but I still try it anyway in the hopes that it'll some day work. (And if I even look out the window I guarantee you I'll be blowing chunks.) "Are we there yet?"

Castiel snorts. "What are you, a kid?"

"Shut up, Mom."

Someone in the behind us shifts forward so that they're leaning on the back of our seat. "Castiel, stop tormenting the poor girl," Lysander says. His soothing voice is like water in the oasis; why couldn't he be the one sitting next to me? "How are you fairing, Aome?"

"I feel like I'm dying."

Lysander chuckles as he rubs my back soothingly. "We'll be there soon. Hang in a little longer." There's a moment of silence as he continues to massage soft circles into my shoulders (he has the hands of a god, I swear) before he taps Castiel. "Why don't you lay down a bit?"

"Where?"

"Well, on Castiel."

Castiel knocks into me when he turns, probably to glare, towards Lysander. "What!?"

"Don't be insensitive." I can imagine him giving the redhead a stern look, which does make me feel a little better. "Aome isn't feeling well, and this could affect her performance for the rest of the day. She just needs to lay down for a little bit."

I shake my head, though I instantly regret it; the motion is enough to make me feel even more sick. "Forget it, I'm fine."

"Aome, I really think—"

Before I can protest or before Lysander can even finish his argument, someone (Castiel) grabs the side of my head and pushes me down. I yelp when my head falls into Castiel's lap, but his hand keeps me down and unable to move. "Cas!" I hiss. "What are you doing!?"

"Quit complainin' and just sleep."

Typically I'd smack him and sit back up, but my stomach is rumbling, I'm kind of swaying, and god dammit his lap is really comfortable. Sighing in submission, I roll so that I'm laying more comfortably, with my knees bent and feet against the side of the bus. Looking up at him from this angle, it's easy to spot the redness of his cheeks, even if his head is turned the other way. "Don't get any weird ideas," I say, trying to grin teasingly.

Castiel scoffs while Lysander sits back (with a noticeable smile). "As if. I'm only doing this so you'll owe me a favor."

"I don't know if your lap is worth a favor."

He smirks while he leans in towards me. "Girls would pay to be in your position. You're incredibly lucky."

"I don't think Amber represents the entire female population." Castiel actually winces at the idea of Amber laying down in his lap, so I can't help but laugh. "Well, if it'll help your ego, which I know is down in the dumps, I appreciate it. Thanks, Cas." The way his face blanks makes me think he's super offended. "Um, Cas…?"

He shakes his head, his usual smug expression back in place. "Whatever, little girl." As I close my eyes, I can feel his fingers in my hair, moving carefully against my scalp and brushing through the strands.

Standing on solid ground, surrounded by nature, breathing in fresh air — this is the life! "You look like you've just conquered the world," Lysander says from behind me as he steps off the bus.

"I'm just glad I'm finally out of the metal monster." I stretch, extending my arms and standing on the tips of my toes, experiencing as much of the space around me as I can. "Aaah, sweet freedom!" I spin around to face Castiel, who's looking as grumpy as ever. "What's up with you, sourpuss? You're out in nature! Take in the air, admire your surroundings, become one with the trees!"

He's more than mildly irritated as he raises an eyebrow at me. "'Become one with the trees'? Did you smack your head on your way out of the bus or what?"

"Just tracing back to my hippy roots is all."

"We should hurry," Nathaniel says from behind me, standing next to Katrina. "The principal's starting to explain the rules." He pats my shoulder lightly, offering a small smile (probably because he heard me whining on the bus), and heads over to where everyone else is going with his partner.

Castiel shoves his hands into his pockets as we follow. "You two are close."

"Me and Nathaniel?" He grunts a 'yes.' "Well, yeah. We're friends."

"Just friends?"

I deadpan. Is he seriously interrogating me about the relationship between me and Nathaniel of all people? I mean, the Student Council president is smokin' hot and I'm still trying to figure out what kind of shampoo he uses because damn his hair is great, but even the idea of the two of us having a romantic relationship is laughable. We're definitely friends and he's great, but we'd probably drive each other crazy if we dated. "Yes," I say. "Just friends."

"Hm."

I skip forward and move around him a bit so that I can see his face; his poker face is pretty impressive. "Hm?" I repeat. "What's 'hm'?"

Castiel tries to swat me away, to no avail. "Nothing. I was just asking a question."

"Why?"

I yelp when he flicks my forehead. "You're annoying me." He tries to lose me by merging into the crowd of students, but snatching onto his arm isn't too hard. "Hey! Let go of me!"

"We're partners and teammates today, remember?" I say, sticking my tongue out at him. "You can't lose me even if you want to."

"Oh, I definitely want to," he grumbles.

Before I can ask him why he's being such a sourpuss (well, more than usual) today, the principal clears her throat and everyone hushes up. "Everyone is here, right?" she asks. "Now, listen closely to the directions. The race will take place in three steps. During each step, you will have to find the checkpoint. Someone will be waiting there and will ask you a question. If you are able to answer it they will let you pass to the next step of the race. The first step is based on orientation. You will have to move around the forest. Here is a map to help you find the right path."

Mr. Faraize hands out the maps to everyone, passing them inwards. "Hm." I tilt ours to the side, admiring the fancy artwork and bright marks. "Looks complicated."

Castiel instantly plucks it out of my hand, holding it out of my grasp. "Give me the map. I don't trust you. You'll definitely lose it."

I'm more than a little offended, but he's taller than me and I figure there's no point in exerting energy in a fruitless effort. "Whatever, whatever," I sigh.

The principal dismisses us and everyone breaks up into their teams to wander into the forest. Castiel and I head in after saying bye and good luck to Lysander and the others; it doesn't take long for us to lose sight and sound of other classmates. The forest didn't look too big from the outside, but it's kind of intimidating now that we're surrounded by all these trees. When we come to a fork, I nudge Castiel. "So, we should probably pull out that map."

Silence.

I turn to face him, only to find a huge frown marred into his face. "Uh, Castiel?"

He doesn't respond, which makes me more than a little suspicious. Sure, enough, he confirms my fear when he says, "I lost the map."

My mouth drops and I resist the urge to punch him. "Are you serious!?"

"Yeah, I'm serious!" he answers, scowling at me like this is my fault. "What, like it's never happened to you!?"

"God, why are you offended?" I snap. "You're the one who lost the map after telling me you couldn't trust me with it!" Sighing and feeling my headache returning with full force, I rub my temples and turn away from him. "Okay, well, freaking out isn't gonna do us any good… Maybe we'll find our way out of here with your 'great' sense of direction."

Castiel folds his arms across his chest, leering at me. "Are you mocking me?"

"Absolutely." I lean against one of the nearby trees and blow a lock of hair out of my face. This is going to be a very long, very tiring day. Honestly, I probably would have been better off with Lysander — and he gets lost on his way to school. "Aaah, we're probably not gonna win…"

For some reason, that gets him going. "No way," he says, wrapping his fingers around my arm. "I'm not losing that prissy president." At this point, I'm not sure if he's talking about the race or something else entirely, but apparently he spends a lot of his days thinking about Nathaniel. "We don't need the map. I'll find the path."

Those are the most ominous words I have ever heard.

I give him a lot of crap on a daily basis in return for his harassment of me, but I have to admit that Castiel's got a pretty impressive internal compass. We manage to make it to the second step, run into Mr. Faraize, hunt down Amber, get the stamp, and get halfway through the second step all in a short time. Which is awesome, considering the fact that we started off on such a terrible foot. "I'll give you your props where they're due," I say cheerfully, admiring the stamp on the back of my hand. "You should be a professional mountain man or something."

Castiel snorts, but I see his grin. "Yeah, and you should be a professional cage fighter. I didn't know someone so small could be so vicious."

"I didn't actually attack her," I say. I press the paper against the bark of a tree and shade it with the pencil, getting an imprint of the bark. "And she was asking for it. It's one thing to call me frumpy in my uniform—"

"She kind of has a point."

I pause to glare at him, even if all I get is a teasing smirk. As usual. "— but it's another to steal the stamp and hide it from everyone else. Besides, Mr. Faraize looks like he's constantly on the brink of a mental break down because of the principal, and Amber's a jerk for taking advantage of that." After dropping the pencil and paper into my bag, I check that off the list. "So that's the print… Now we just need an inhabitant of the forest. Ugh, wasn't that the one everyone was complaining about?"

"I'm sure we'll find something. Besides, Mr. Faraize's the one who hid it, so it can't be that hard to find."

"Fair point."

We head down one of the paths, towards the large rock. Everyone is running back and forth, trying to find everything so that they can finish the second step and move on to the third. "Anyway, back to Amber…"

"I don't wanna talk about Amber," I say. "I swear, you're seventy-five percent of the reason why she torments me."

"And what's the other twenty-five percent?"

"I don't know, it probably has something to do with me pushing her against the lockers the first month of school."

Castiel chuckles like it's some kind of fond memory. "I hold to my professional cage fighter comment."

"Well, I guess there are worse things I could be…" There's a little dark spot between the large rock at the tree trunk. I crouch down next to it, reach into the shadow, and pull out a plastic rabbit. "Err, do you think this is what he meant by an 'inhabitant of the forest'?"

"Probably. C'mon, let's go find him."

Mr. Faraize is standing in the same place we found him earlier. "Ah, do you need a hint?" he asks.

"Nope, we found everything!" I hand him all the items in the scavenger hunt, which he counts off with a pleased expression. "What next?"

"Well, it's all here, so now I'll take you to the final step. Follow me." While everyone else is still running around trying to find the plastic rabbits (I feel kind of bad for not telling Violette or Melody since they were freaking out about it earlier), he takes us further into the forest. We come to a completely new path. "Here we are. Good luck with the final step! I need to go back in case the others need help."

When I wave goodbye to him, another familiar face walks up to us. "Hey, Aome."

I blink in surprise before greeting him with a smile. "Oh, hey Dajan! What are you doing here?"

"Helping out with the orienteering race, of course," he answers, lightly bumping his hip against mine. Since I'm manager for the basketball team, I obviously spend a lot of time with the team, especially now that it's basketball season. Dajan actually doesn't go to Sweet Amoris, but he's part of the after school program for the team…? I don't know, I don't really get it, but he's nice enough (when he's not ordering me around to get him water). "I'm the one in charge of helping you with the third step."

"How nice of you," Castiel comments. Looking over at him, I notice a dubious, super judging expression on his face. "So what're we supposed to do?"

Dajan's either oblivious to Castiel's glare, is aware of it and chooses to ignore it, or I'm just too attuned to it. "Well," he explains, cheerful as ever, "there are letters carved into trees or stones, and you need to find all of them. They spell a word. Once you figure out that word, you'll be able to leave the forest and get your prize!"

"That's all?" I ask.

"That's all!"

"Alright, thanks," Castiel says, without actually looking at Dajan. "C'mon." He takes my hand and drags me down the path, barely giving me enough time to wave goodbye. "Are you friends with everyone in this town?" he mutters.

"I'm not friends with Amber or her friends, so no," I answer.

"Tch. Whatever. Just try to keep up and let's get this over with. I'm sick of all these freakin' trees."

"Paris!"

Dajan blinks, probably I basically shouted it in his ear, but gives me a thumb's up in the end. "That's right! Wow, you guys finished at the exact same time, basically…"

Castiel curses. "That priss got here before we did?" Earlier, aka five minutes ago, we ran into Nathaniel and Katrina, who apparently were the only ones to get passed the second step aside from us. Naturally, Castiel refused to sit down and give in, so we literally sprinted all the way here to try and beat them — and apparently failed.

"You're done, so you just have to take the path straight ahead to get out of the forest," Dajan says.

"Cool," I say. "Thanks!"

Before I can get further down the path, Castiel grabs me (again). "Wait. If we take the same path we'll never pass Nathaniel. We can take a shortcut and still beat him."

"Geez, why do you wanna beat him so bad?" I ask, trying to tug my hand out of his grasp. "Let's just go straight and get out of here. You were saying that you're sick of all these trees. What if we get lost?"

"We won't get lost." I have half the heart to remind him of what happened to us the last time I entrusted directions to him, but he's already dragging me down some obscure path. "No way I'm gonna lose to him," he grumbles to himself. It's entertaining, but this little rivalry thing he has going on with Nathaniel is getting out of hand.

Minutes pass by, and all we see are trees, trees, trees, and more trees. No exit, just trees. So much for his awesome inner compass.

"Castiel," I whine. "It's getting dark. Maybe we should head back and use the other road. Obviously this one isn't—"

"If we head back now, we'll lose more time. We might as well just keep going."

"You know, Nathaniel and Katrina have probably already crossed the finish line."

As pissed off as he is (I can tell by how hard he squeezes my hand), he doesn't say anything. We travel around the woods for a while longer, until light no longer makes it through the trees and we're basically wandering around in the dark. Castiel finally comes to a stop, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea," he finally admits.

I slap my free hand to my forehead. "Well, what are we gonna do now?"

"We should just stop here. It won't help anyone if we keep running around in circles." He drops my hand (which makes me sad for stupid reasons) to fold his arms across his chest. "If we wait here, they'll probably find us."

"Maybe you're right, but…" I shiver involuntarily. The November air is already really crisp in the forest, up in the mountains, but now that it's dark it's worse. The track suit has been warm and comfortable today, but now I can definitely feel the cold.

"Here." He shrugs off his jacket and throws it at my face, leaving him in just his green muscle shirt. "Put it on," he says, looking away. "You're gonna catch a cold if you don't take care of yourself."

"But what about you?" I pull the jacket off my head, feeling the warmth between my fingers. I can feel myself blushing just at the thought of putting it on. "You're just wearing that and it's cold and—"

"Just do it." He grabs it, but not to put it back on; he drapes it around my shoulders and pulls it close around my neck. "C'mon, sit down. You're probably tired." Castiel eases me onto the ground, against a tree trunk. "This trip into the forest was dumb, we had to walk around all day, I'm exhausted…" And then he sets his head in my lap.

"C-Castiel…!"

"Shut up. I'm resting." He rolls over so that he's looking up at me, and suddenly my heart feels like it's going to leap out of my chest. "Besides, you owe me a favor, remember?"

"Yeah, I guess…" I should be protesting and smacking him and pushing his head off my knees, but there's something about the way he's looking at me and this position that I'm not totally against. (Oh, right, like the fact that I have a crush on him.) Swallowing thickly and doing my best to stay cool, I lean back against the tree trunk and close my eyes. "Okay."

"Okay?" I open eyes, but his hand is near my face with his fingers ghosting the ends of my hair. "That's not like you. I'd expect you to put up more of a fight."

"I'm exhausted, too," I say lamely.

He snickers loudly, which barely covers up my gasp when he moves his touch to my jawline. "True. You were five seconds away from vomiting all over the bus this morning." I can't even register what he's saying because all I can think about is how intimately he's touching me and how my heart is pounding against my rib cage and how this is supposed to uncomfortable but I'm so happy. "Are you feeling better now?" His voice is soft, lacking its usual mocking tone.

"Yeah, it's just being in a car that makes me sick." Focus on my words, focus on my words, not his fingers or his eyes or the fact that his head in my lap. Focus focus focus focus. "But I'm fine now." Yeah. Totally fine. Just peachy.

"Then why's your face so red?" The way he asks it sounds like exactly why my face is so red, which only embarrasses me even more. There's no way I can win in this situation.

"It's not," is all I can say.

The sound that comes out of his mouth isn't a snicker or something teasing, but a soft laugh. "You aren't fooling me, Aome." I wait for him to elaborate (or maybe just because I can't talk and I'm so shocked that he used my actual name), but he just closes his eyes. There's a serene expression on his face as he falls asleep, with his head still in my lap, one hand on his chest, and the other laying on the ground.

He's totally doing this on purpose. He knows I have a giant crush on him and he's embarrassing me on purpose.

But… I don't think he's trying to really take advantage of me or anything. He'd not rebuffing me like he does Amber. (Then again, she could just be a special case.) Maybe… I don't know. Maybe he likes me, too?

When his chest rises and falls slowly, when I'm sure he's asleep, I reach for the hand that's laying in the grass. His fingers curl upwards naturally, almost like they're reaching for something. My fingers brush against the tips of his, across his palm—

"Hey! You two!"

Oh shit.

Closing Song: "On Top of the World" - Imagine Dragons

Okay, so in terms of time, I plan on bringing Ken back after Christmas break, which is soon! But there's some important development in between, so we can't rush over that of course ahaha. Thank you for your support, and please leave a review! :)

xx, der kapitan