"consequences & new beginnings"

Chaper 1. consequences & new beginnings

Throughout his entire highschool career Dean Winchester told himself that the next year would definitely be, at the very least, more bearable. He was nearing the halfway mark on his junior year and still completely certain this year was going to be just like the others, miserable and overly long.

It was a cold November Monday when he dropped Sammy off at his middle school and headed off to his own classes. The parking lot was just as over-filled as he parked the impala and the hallways were just as loud and stifling as he made his way to his first period.

His first class of the day was English 11 and he was intensely bored with it. They were discussing The Great Gatsby in class and if he had to hear one more comment about how romantic Gatsby's love of Daisy was he was going to up-chuck. It was like reading Romeo & Juliet freshman year all over again. He took his same seat towards the back of class and popped in his headphones, listening to Metallica and waiting for the bell. He still had a good ten minutes so he took out his phone and opened up his tumblr app and started scrolling through the posts he missed while sleeping. Not a whole lot of new stuff. Some more screenshots from the new Hobbit trailer, more Hiddleston fan girls, apparently they had announced a date for Sherlock, a few firefly gifs, some surprisingly graphic gay porn, Doctor Who meta regarding the 50th special. It was all the same shit he always saw. It was like his dash was on a big loop. He put his phone away, telling himself he'd find some new blogs to follow when he got home, as long as he wasn't swimming in homework. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and tucked his face into his arms to wait for class to start.

His music wasn't up loud enough to block out the sounds of students shuffling in and desks scooting around. This was one of the few classes where he didn't particularly care for anyone in the class, opting to do group projects on his own. When the bell rang for class to start he put away his iPod and pulled out his beginning-of-class journal and looked up to the front board for the writing prompt.

what do you plan to do over thanksgiving break?
Nothing. With absolutely no one.

Dean sighed deep and thunked his head onto his desk. It wasn't as if he didn't have any friends. He had plenty of friends. They just didn't ever really hang out with him outside school. They all had their own lives. As long as he had an Internet connection he'd be fine without them. He could stream whatever movies or series or talk to whatever online friends he wanted. Besides, too much social interaction tended to make him anxious.

"Can I help you?" Mr Fitzgerald's voice broke the silence of the classroom and had half the class's gaze momentarily.

"Uh yeah, I'm new or whatever. They told you about me, right?" A gruff and unamused voice shot back flatly.

"Oh, I guess you must be Castiel Novak."

What.

"I guess I must be."

Dean's head shot up from his desk to look. He was just standing there in the doorway picking a string off the overly-long sleeve of his striped hoodie and looking almost unrecognizable. The left quarter of his head was shaved and his eyes were ringed with black eyeliner. He had a silver bar in his eyebrow and a ring in his nose like a bull. He was chewing at the stud on the right side of his lip while he picked at his nails waiting for Mr Fitzgerald to find the extra textbook in his messy desk. His straight legged jeans looked fitted in all the right ways and had what looked like thorny vines hand drawn around one of the thighs. He was not the kid Dean remembered but he was fucking gorgeous.

He could feel the blush creeping up his cheeks and he ducked his head back down and tried to start working on the morning journal exercise. When he heard Mr Fitzgerald plunk a textbook down and Cas shuffle into the desk he chanced another look in his direction.