Cas skipped the Thursday installment of The Dean Winchester Show. He bluffed, telling Meg he and Gabe are going on some day trip to a vague place that has some vague meaning to both brothers. Really, he means he'll go to Gabe's tiny-ass apartment, watch Star Trek on BBC America all day, possibly eat whatever lurks in Gabe's fridge, and mope about for a few hours. He was in no way ready to face seeing that gorgeous freckle-faces asshole again after his not-so-little breakdown yesterday. Meg could survive without him; at least she enjoyed the class.
Spending the day holed up at Gabe's didn't help easy any of Cas' anxiety. He wasn't even sure why he was anxious about this. It's college for Christ's sake. Banging Meg for two years hadn't given him this kind of come-apart. She was a fuck buddy who occasionally kept Cas entertained outside of the bedroom. They were friends, if Cas was being rational. So why did this twerp Winchester suddenly have him writhing in mental agony? He wasn't any different than the other guys Cas had noticed walking around campus. He wasn't even has attractive as some of them! And he was just a kid, all fresh-faced and beaming with the open possibilities of the college life. Barf. So naïve. So unfathomably dull to think that way. College was great, sure. But that greatness lasted all of four years. If you were lucky. Cas wasn't lucky. Nothing landed in Cas' lap, no silver spoon on his tongue, no four leaf clovers sprouting up under his feet. He was the least lucky person probably in the world. He could play all the numbers right in the lotto, and they'd tell him the money was already gone or something shitty like that. None of his childhood shooting star wishes came true. He stopped blowing out candles on birthday cakes when he was six; that was moreso because he stopped getting birthday cakes at six. But the concept of luck never set well with him. No horseshoes, just hand grenades.
Hanging out in Gabe's apartment didn't give Cas the reprieve he had been looking for. He knew he could stay as long as he wanted. Gabe had an open invitation to Cas for the rest of eternity. He didn't want to stay anymore. His body tingled with restless energy. He threw on his faded denim jacket, enjoying its stabilizing weight on his shoulders. Sometimes just the feel of the soft, well-worn fabric filled Cas will a small flickering flame of joy, nostalgia and memories flooding his heart. Today, though, it just made him feel grounded. No warmth, just a cold weight to keep him from floating off into space. He appreciated it nonetheless.
The sun shone brightly against the autumnal blue sky. Somehow the autumn sky looked different than the summer skies before. The blue was cooler, the clouds crisper, the sun harsher. It wasn't a bad different, just, different. Cas stood on the sidewalk with his face turned towards the little yellow ball of heat. For a moment he focused all his energy on sensing the world around him. He didn't meditate with any serious regularity, but if he did, he'd be outside doing this right here. He focused on the small kisses of heat that played upon his cheeks, interrupted only by the cool bites of wind that swirled around him. Fallen leaves scraped and tumbled across the pavement, blowing around in some sort of organized chaos only found in nature. Deliberately he inhaled deeply the smell of damp earth and dried foliage. Summer might be his favorite season, but he couldn't imagine living anywhere that didn't have autumn.
He stretched languidly, relaxed by simply allowing himself to pause and exist among the natural elements. Meg would so topple him over with a punch in the shoulder and call him a hippie for this. Meg was kind of a bitch sometimes. He chuckled softly at his own internal dialog. His threadbare Converse padded along the sidewalk, falling into a rhythmic beat that thrummed through him. He hadn't written anything in a long time, but the further he walked, the more he allowed himself to settle in to the landscape enveloping him, he felt the words spin themselves around in his head, helixes of stanzas and verses and choruses. He didn't bother to scramble to remember anything that came out of this little jaunt. His writing process was organic, or so he liked to tell himself. The words came and went swiftly, and by the time he got back to his dorm he'd want to change all of them anyway.
Finally his dorm loomed ahead, tall and not entirely inviting. This campus was hovering between inviting and industrial, an acquired taste that Cas fell in love with the first time he visited five years ago. Cas had felt some abstract affinity towards the place, as if it represented his own hard, ambivalent exterior that covered a blossoming, warm, inviting interior. It wasn't Yale or Harvard or Oxford, but for Cas, it was perfect. Thankfully the only person he had had to convince was Gabriel, and heaven knows that was easier than stealing candy from a baby. Ironically, Cas had given Gabe loads of candy to preface that conversation, just in case his big brother decided to pull rank and object to Cas' choice. Clearly Gabe hadn't cared that Cas wasn't applying to Ivy League schools, he was just proud that Cas was going to college after all the shit he'd been through. Which fueled Cas' drive to work his ass off so that Gabriel would never be disappointed in him; Cas owed him that much.
He rounded the corner, lost in thought, caught off guard when he bumped into a mass of tangled bodies. As an RA he had to break up hormonal college kids making out all the time. With no real attempt at finesse, Cas loudly cleared his throat, adding a solid "ehem" for good measure. The two bodies separated, red faced and swollen-lipped. A giggle erupted out of the smaller body, and the broad shoulders that stood between them turned. Suddenly everything turned to ash around Cas. Those broad shoulders, covered in brown leather, shrugged with laughter as a gravelly voice rumbled out "Oops, sorry man." That voice connected with Cas' diaphragm, as green eyes swept over him. Shit. Shit. This is Dean. Dean making out with. With someone. Who isn't Cas. Fuck. Say something. Make words. Don't be a twat.
"Oh" was what gracelessly fell from his lips in a breath. Blood viciously pumped through his veins, roaring in his ears as he felt the blush race across his cheeks. Dean's eyes were wide with some unnamed emotion, pupils still engorged with lust. The air crackled with tension as both men stood wordlessly gawking.
"Hey, uh, Dean, I gotta get going" came the voice from the small dark-haired companion, still hidden behind the mass of muscled and leather that was Dean Winchester. A quick shake of Dean's head evaporated the tunnel vision encroaching on Cas, and he awkwardly shuffled his feet.
"Yeah, yeah we should uh, we should go, uh Cas fuck Ash." Dean's wide eyes scanned Cas once more before he turned to his cohort. Cas didn't even bother to look at the other person, who he assumed was male but couldn't be entirely sure. The voice was ambiguous and their clothing gave nothing away. He watched as the two of them walked away, annoyed at his lack of composure. His annoyance stemmed slightly when he noticed Dean's bowlegged gait, but only flair up tenfold when he saw the other person, Ash? Ash was leaning up to give Dean a kiss on the cheek. Cas couldn't handle the embarrassment of vomiting in public over some stupid freshman kid, so he turned away.
If Cas had waited just a few seconds longer, he would have seen Dean glace back at him. If he had waited just a few seconds, he would have seen Dean wipe off Ash's kiss. He would have seen Dean stand in the middle of the walkway for a full minute, contemplating Cas' stooped figure as Cas turned to walk in a different direction. He would have seen Dean's shoulder slump in disappointment. And he would have seen Meg hovering in the doorway of his dorm building, watching the whole scene.
x x x
Becky, he likes someone else.
meg u don't kno tht!
oh c'mon Beck. he's never wanted me the way I want him. never. ugh I'm so stupid.
don't b like that meg. i mean cas isn't my fave but idk he wuldnt cheat.
we're not even a couple Becky! I think he hates me half the time. he's my fantasy, my fairytale, my gd unicorn. and I'm nothing. he could kick me to the curb tomorrow and not feel bad about it. everyone acts like Cas is such an angel but he's really gotta be possessed by some horrible demon to treat people the way he does.
sweetie come to my rm. ive got ben&jerrys. we can watch some horrible b-class movie and rant about how stupid boys are. k? 9pm.
The timestamp was from around the same time that Cas had been walking to campus. Meg must have seen that whole shitshow with Dean and his snog partner. Fuck. If he was that obvious to Meg… But no, Meg knew him so well it was scary. She'd pick up on things no one else would. Like the fact that Cas had a major hard on for some twerp with perfectly tousled ash-blond hair and the pinkest, poutiest lips Cas had ever seen and eyes that could tear you apart and put you back together again in an instant. Jesus he was lying next to Meg thinking about Dean. Making up words like "poutiest".What the fuck?
Cas sighed into his hands. Snooping through Meg's phone was a terrible thing to do. But it wouldn't stop vibrating against the floorboards. Cas had no choice but to pick her pockets to find it and silence it. But the 3 missed calls, 1 voicemail and 5 texts caught his attention.
r u comin ovr?
meg I s2g if ur with that asshole
meg hunny please come over? im rly not mad at u if ur with cas
just don't get hurt ok?
guess ur busy so im goin to bed. let me know ur ok tho. c ya tmmr! xo
Well if Becky knew shit was going down, he should probably fess up to Meg. He knew it was unfair to call her up last night. Knew it was unfair to fuck her relentlessly until he couldn't see, hear, feel, or taste Dean Winchester. Knew it was unfair that he allowed her to still think of him as 'her unicorn' when all he resembled was a sad, decrepit show pony put out to pasture. He was nothing good for her, thinking anything else was selfish. Later, when it wasn't 3am and she wasn't sound asleep and he wasn't half-hard thinking about Dean's lips, he absolutely had to sit her down and explain shit to her completely. It just had to be done.
But for now he was half-hard, it was 3am, and jerking off to thoughts of Dean's mouth maneuvering over his cock was the best Cas was going to get.
