Chapter Text
Cas pushed open the door to the school, sighing as his saxophone case caught on the door and got stuck. He tugged it free and pulled the door shut behind himself with a sigh, making sure to give it a little kick to rid himself of his frustration.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” exclaimed a familiar voice. Cas looked up and let a wide grin spread across his face as he saw a familiar redhead standing in front of him. “What did that door ever do to you?”
Cas rolled his eyes and opened the door to the band room, leaving it propped open so Charlie and a few other students that had gathered behind them could get in as well. “Nothing,” Cas finally answered. “I’ve just not had a good morning so far, and then my case got caught on the door, which didn’t make anything better, and…” He trailed off as Charlie grabbed Cas by the shoulders, giving him a hard stare. “What?”
“Calm down, Cassie,” Charlie said sweetly. “It’s the first day of school. We all should go into this day with a good attitude because we will all have plenty of time to be angry and frustrated for the rest of the year.”
Cas shrugged. “You do have a point, I guess.”
Charlie gave him a dramatic mock-bow. “Thank you. I’m aware.”
Cas rolled his eyes and knelt down on the ground near his locker, setting his backpack and case down on the floor. Charlie set her stuff down next to him, and they both got their instruments ready for the performance they had to do outside of the school when the buses arrived. Every year, the marching band had to stand at the front of the school when the students started to arrive and play stand tunes while the cheerleaders danced to the music. Cas always hated it, but he was a student leader now so he had to set a good example for the underclassmen.
He didn’t want to, but he started to think about how fast his time in high school has already gone by. Here he was, his first day of junior year, and he didn’t have a clue what he wanted to do in life, what college he wanted to go to, what he wanted to major in. He had plenty to be frustrated and upset about for the next two years, as Charlie had said, but it was all hitting him now, and he didn’t know what to do.
When Cas finally snapped back to reality and got up, tenor saxophone hanging from the strap around his neck, he suddenly noticed how many people had finally arrived for their performance. All around him were the rest of the marching band kids, milling around, talking to each other, and getting their instruments ready for playing. Next to him, Charlie was playing scales and long tones on her clarinet, and across from him was a flute player—Cas didn’t know her name, but he was pretty sure she was a freshman—warming up.
“Hey, Cas,” Charlie said, tapping Cas on the shoulder. “You have to go grab the flipbooks for your section. You know, be a good section leader, set a good example.”
“To my four-person section?” Cas asked with a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah, I guess so. Thanks for reminding me.” Cas reached into his locked and pulled out the small bag he kept the flipbooks in. He quickly located the other three people in his section and handed them their books, then returned back to his locker and put the empty bag away.
“Come on,” Charlie said, angling her head towards the door. “Let’s go outside. Mr. Ketch is probably going to call us out soon.”
Just as she said that, their band director called everyone outside to set up for the performance. Charlie linked her arm through Cas’s and led the two of them outside, basically leading everyone else to where they were supposed to go.
Later in the day, Cas was sitting in his second block English class, tapping his pencil against the desk and texting Charlie with his phone under his desk. His teacher was droning on about their course syllabus for the semester, and Cas knew he should be paying attention, but he really didn’t want to.
Cas must have fallen asleep or zoned out for a little because when he finally started to pay attention again, the teacher was talking about a project they had to do. Thankfully, she wasn’t too far into the explanation, so Cas wasn’t terribly behind on what they were supposed to do. Apparently, she was going to put them all in pairs, and they were to decide amongst themselves a topic from the list they wanted to research. They had to run it by the teacher to make sure none of the other groups chose the same topic, and then they had five weeks to put together an in-depth powerpoint to present and a paper to hand in.
“Any questions?” the teacher—Ms. Harvelle, Cas remembered—asked, looking out at the class expectantly. When no one raised their hand to respond, she clapped her hands together and said, “Okay! I’ll assign partners now.” She ran through a few groups; Cas knew some of the people she mentioned, but he hadn’t heard of some of the people she had mentioned. “All right, so, Novak and Winchester.”
Cas looked up suddenly and locked eyes with Dean Winchester, who was sitting a few rows ahead and had turned around to look at Cas. He wasn’t angry, per se, he just didn’t know what to think about being paired up with someone who probably wouldn’t put any effort into their project so Cas would end up doing all of the work.
Once Ms. Harvelle had finished assigning all of the groups, she returned to her powerpoint slides and put up the agenda for the rest of class. “Before I let you guys work on your summer reading assignments for the rest of class, I would just like to say that I will give you all minimal class time to work on the research project. You will have to make an effort to meet outside of class and get the project done on time.”
Cas rolled his eyes, then reached down into his bag to pull out his summer reading book and a notebook. He started to write a few things down that pertained to the project, but he quickly grew bored. He pulled out his phone and started to text Charlie.
Hey , he typed. Where do you wanna meet for lunch? The band room?
It took a little while for Charlie to text back. Nah. I think we should brave the cafeteria for once in our lives. I met someone in my first block class that we can have lunch with.
Cas inwardly sighed. Fine. But still meet me at the band room so we can walk to the cafeteria together.
Sounds good , Charlie answered.
Cas set his phone face down on his desk, then returned to working on his summer reading assignment.
Right as Cas was about to leave the classroom so he could meet Charlie by the band room, Dean walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Castiel.”
Cas grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, then looked over at Dean. “Hello, Dean.”
“So, uh, I figured we should exchange numbers so we would be able to communicate with each other about our project. You know, find a time to meet when neither of us are busy.”
Cas shrugged. “All right.” He pulled up the contacts app on his phone and handed it over to Dean, who did the same. They both put their numbers in, then traded their phones back. “Thank you.”
“Thank you as well, Castiel,” Dean replied. “I’ll see you soon. And I’ll text you so we can find a time when neither of us are busy with football or marching band practice.”
Cas nodded, but Dean was already on his way out of the classroom.
“So,” Cas said, walking up to Charlie, the redhead leaning against the wall outside the band room, where she promised she would be, “who is this person you met during first block? Will I like them?”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re both on the track team during the winter and spring, so you have that in common.”
“Oh, great, so I already know this person?” Cas rolled his eyes. “Probably means I won’t like them.”
Charlie lightly shoved him in the shoulder. “Get over yourself, Cassie. He’s in the cafeteria right now waiting for us, so hurry up.”
Cas heaved a small sigh and followed Charlie as she started to make her way towards the cafeteria. Cas took a few larger steps so he was next to Charlie. “If I don’t like whoever this is, then I’m not eating lunch with them ever again, okay?”
Charlie turned her head towards Cas and thought. “Fine. But I think you are going to like him. Or, at least you won’t mind him that much, I think.”
Soon, the two of them arrived at the cafeteria. The room wasn’t too crowded, but there were enough people in there to make Cas nervous. He hadn’t eaten in the cafeteria in a few years, opting instead to eat in the band room because he felt comfortable there.
“Come on, Cas,” Charlie said, grabbing Cas’s arm and tugging him to the left. “He’s over here.”
Cas reluctantly let himself be dragged halfway across the cafeteria. They stopped in front of one of the smaller tables in the room, meant for about five people. Cas refused to let himself look at who was sitting there, but he did notice there were four open seats at the table. At least there was only one person there to make Cas feel uncomfortable.
Charlie let go of Cas’s arm. “Cas,” she started to say, making an attempt to make Cas feel more comfortable with the situation, “this is Dean. Dean, this is Cas. You two have probably met before, during track.”
Cas’s head snapped up from the ground, and he made eye contact with the guy sitting across from him at the table. Dean Winchester.
Charlie sat down at one of the free seats, and she gestured for Cas to sit down as well. Cas slumped down into one of the seats and let his bag fall on the floor next to him.
“Hey, Cas,” Dean said brightly, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Nice to see you again.”
Cas nodded slowly. “Yes. Hello, Dean.”
“Oh, when did you two last see each other?” Charlie asked, her gaze sliding between the two guys sitting at the table.
“We’re in the same English class,” Dean explained. “And we’re working on a five-week research project together.”
Charlie’s mouth fell open. “You guys have a project already? That’s just way too early in the semester for a long-term project like that!”
Dean shrugged. “It’s fine. It doesn’t seem too bad, so long as we budget our time properly and don’t procrastinate.”
Cas nodded. “Yeah. And it might actually be better that it’s now rather than later, when all the other teachers want to assign their projects.” He pulled his lunch out of his bag and took a sip of his water. “But what do I know? I’m not the teacher.”
The three of them stayed in comfortable silence for a little while, just simply eating their meals in peace. Every so often, one of them—normally Charlie or Dean—would crack a joke about one of their classmates or teachers, but it was mostly quiet.
“Dean, I have a question,” Cas said after a while. He had already finished his lunch, but he was still taking sips from his water bottle.
Dean looked up from his crappy cafeteria burger, wide green eyes locking on Cas’s blue ones. “Yeah? Shoot.”
“Why are you sitting with us?” Cas twisted the cap off his water bottle, then replaced it again. “Don’t you have… Oh, I don’t know. Better, more popular friends than us that you would rather sit with? Why sit here, with us?”
Dean shrugged. “I think you overestimate my popularity. I’m friends with some of the guys from the football team, but I don’t really enjoy hanging out with them outside of practice. You two have always seemed like cool people, and I always wanted to talk to you.”
Cas didn’t say anything. He really didn’t know what to say because he hadn’t expected that kind of answer out of Dean Winchester, star of the football team and one of the best runners on the track team. He couldn’t help but wonder, just briefly, why had hadn’t spoken to Dean sooner. He just seemed so much more down to earth than most of the rest of the school.
“Oh,” Cas ended up saying after an extremely long, extremely awkward pause. “That’s… cool. You… I don’t know. You never seemed like the kind of person I wanted to be associated with, so I never spoke to you before.”
“Oh, well, that was nice of you to tell me,” Dean said, a note of sarcasm in his tone.
Cas panicked for a second, afraid Dean would leave the table and never speak to him or Charlie again. “No, no, no! Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Dean grinned. “I’m just joking.”
Cas breathed a sigh of relief. “All right. That makes me feel better.”
The bell rang for the end of lunch. The three of them packed their stuff up and cleared off the table the best they could so there would be less work for the janitors.
“I’ll see you later,” Dean said to Charlie.
“You too, Dean,” Charlie replied. She pulled her phone out of her bag and started tapping away at it, probably texting someone Cas didn’t know.
“I’ll text you later, Cas?” Dean asked.
Cas nodded. “Yeah. We can work out a schedule to work on our project.”
Dean scratched at his head. “Yeah, yeah, of course. And the three of us could hang out sometime. You know, if you have the time to.”
“Of course,” Charlie said. “Now, you better get to fourth block, Winchester. Cas and I have to go to band class.”
Cas rolled his eyes. “And then we have three hours of marching band practice after.”
“Well, have fun you two,” Dean said. He waved goodbye, and then he was making his way down the hall, heading towards his fourth block class.
Charlie linked her arm through Cas’s as the two of them started to make their way towards the band room. “So,” she asked, inclining her head towards him, “what did you think of Dean? Especially since the two of you have to work on a big project together.”
“He’s fine,” Cas said nonchalantly. “I just have to get to know him a little better and rid myself of what I used to think about him, I guess.”
“Well, if that’s it, then I guess that’s good.” Charlie gave a small smile and lightly tugged on Cas’s arm. “Come on, let’s get to class.”