Chapter Text
Dean turned the page of the book. The pen in his right hand flipping over and over as his boot tapped lightly against the leg of the table. He bit his lip as his eyes roamed the pages of the book.
He had been doing this activity for the past half an hour now, and by the looks of it, he wasn’t going to stop.
How did Cas know it was half an hour?
He had been watching him, waiting for Dean to look up, because Cas himself was too nervous to clear his throat to gain his attention.
Cas hugged his notebook closer.
The rhythm of Dean’s foot tapping changed, and Cas recognized another song, but he couldn’t tell what exactly it was.
Dean flipped to another page.
Uhhh… Cas thought. Or said? He couldn’t tell, because his thoughts were too loud for him to tell if they were thoughts or words. He blamed the quiet library for this. His mental dialogue—or whatever they called mentally stuttering these days—echoed in the silence.
Finally, five minutes later, Dean sighed and the tapping of his feet stopped. He closed the book with a thud, which Cas’s heart mimicked, and he looked up.
He wasn’t Cas anymore. He was a statue, and those green eyes were those of Medusa’s.
“Hey there.” Dean leaned back in his chair, a smile crawling onto his lips. Then his brows furrowed. “You’re late, no?”
“Um,” Cas had to tear his eyes away from the figure in front him to poke at his brain to do something. “No.”
“No?” Dean pushed himself up, and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
Phone in the library? Cas frowned. He should’ve expected it. This was Dean Winchester after all.
“It’s mute,” Dean said, and Cas looked at him to see that he was smirking. “Also, you’re fifteen minutes late.”
He wasn’t, but Dean didn’t know that. He was too busy reading, and Cas definitely wasn’t going to admit that he was staring at him for thirty-five minutes straight.
“There’s no problem in that,” Cas decided to look somewhere else. Where? Um… table. Table looked good. “We’re not doing much today anyways.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. No, Cas didn’t see it in hindsight.
“We’re not?”
There it was, the very pointed throat clearing from behind a book shelf. They were talking to loud.
They shouldn’t be here.
Dean smiled at that, amused.
“We should go,” Cas nodded, and—he didn’t have any books to pick, or coat to put back on. He just stood there awkwardly, waiting for Dean to get up.
“We should.” Dean nodded back, still smirking, as he got up and put his book and pen in his flat-top backpack. Then he shouldered it, and gestured for Cas to lead the way.
Finally, Cas thought, making his feet move.
He knew really well by now that this semester was going to be the toughest he had ever had.
When he had applied to tutor for credit, he had not thought at all that he would be stuck in this situation. It was two days ago that he had been told that Dean Winchester—the badest of bad ideas of school—had been assigned to him. The boy drove a vintage Chevy Impala to school which, according to the rumors, he dragged raced with. He was barely present in any classes; Cas had no idea how his attendance was high enough to be promoted.
And now, here he was, failing in History of all subjects.
But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that Cas was as gay as a moth was for a flame. He had watched Dean—whenever he was present—casually stroll into the classes the two had in common, and had found himself staring at his every move, until the bell rung and he got up, once again walking to the door like he was in a park. The guy scribbled notes, and Cas itched to pass by him to see what he was writing. When the teachers asked Dean any questions, Cas would drop whatever he was doing to listen to what he had to say.
It had been so obvious that Meg, his good friend for a while, teased him about it every chance she got.
He was thankful that he had enough brain-cells to decide that he was not going to tell her who his student was going to be.
Cas sighed as he turned a corner into a hallway. There were doors on both sides, numbered from a hundred and one, to a hundred and twenty.
He slowed down here, listening for the thud thud of boots behind him.
Dean was right behind him. Good.
Room one-fifteen wasn’t very far. He just had to make it to the door without tripping.
Cas held the door open for Dean to step through, and then closed it behind him.
Then immediately regretted afterwards.
Here he was, in a closed room, with a round table, five chairs, History notebooks, and Dean Winchester. What had he done to deserve this?
“So,” Cas heard a chair being dragged, and Dean’s bag being dropped onto the table. “We’re not doing much today?”
Cas turned around, and a pulled a chair for himself too, making sure that there was a chair still between them.
“No,” he nodded, putting on his teaching face. He needed to keep his head straight, even when he was very gay.
“Then?”
Cas opened his notebook to an empty page.
“I need to know your schedule,” he pulled out his pencil from the spiral ring, “and other information, like, how much you know already, so that we don’t have to waste time on that.”
Dean chuckled.
“I think they already gave you my schedule?”
“They did,” Cas admitted. As a matter of fact, it was pasted at the very start of this very notebook, but he wasn’t going to say that. “But, I need to know when you are available, because they also told me that you’re not most of the time.”
“They did huh?” Dean shook his head, chuckling again.
“Okay,” He nodded, and Cas looked up at him to see the dimples on his cheeks. They looked really good on his smile. Cas wanted to reach up and touch them, see if they were really as deep as they looked like.
He saw dean’s lips move, but he didn’t hear what he was saying.
“Huh?” he shook his head to clear it.
“I said,” Dean repeated, “I’ll send you my schedule; mail it to you or something. What else do you need to know?”
“Oh,” Cas uncapped his pen, diverting his attention towards it, “I need to know how much have you covered.”
“Let me see,” Dean leaned back his chair and held up his fingers, “I know that in fourteen ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” he lowered a finger, “I’m just like my country— I’m young, scrappy and hungry, and I’m not throwing away my shot,” he lowered another finger, “Ring around a rosie, pocket full of posie, ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” he lowered his thumb, “back in sixteen sixty-six, a baker set the whole of London on fire, “he lowered another finger, “and even though it’s irrelevant, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
Cas had no idea how to write all that out without laughing.
Dean raised a brow at him, and he shook his head, covering his face with a hand to stop laughing.
“Nothing,” he told dean, “So you know about the discovery of the new world since kinder-garden, you’ve watched Hamilton, you know things about the truth behind nursery rhymes, and you know how ridiculous history is.”
“And mitochondria,” Dean nodded, “that shit will help you do your taxes.”
“Noted.” Cas capped back his pen. “So you have to learn the rest of it, and we have to work on your grades, so will be working on homework too.”
Dean groaned.
“Don’t make me cram stuff,” he looked at him, and Cas’s heart flipped again.
“No, we won’t be cramming anything.” He nodded.
Then the silence fell.
Dean waited for Cas to say something, but he just looked like he was thinking, even though his brain had refused to work properly.
Dean had to clear his throat to get his attention.
“Well, if there isn’t anything else you need to know,” he shrugged, placing his arms on the table, “I’ll skiddaddle, yea?”
Skida—oh… oh, he was talking about leaving.
“Yes,” Cas’s mouth was dry, he cleared his throat too, “Yes.”
Both of them didn’t get up.
Cas closed his note book, slowly, and put his pen back in.
He could feel Dean’s eyes on him, observing his every move. Did he see that his hands were shaking? Maybe he did, and that’s why he was watching him. He wondered if his hair was okay, and then resisted the urge to move a hand through them just to make sure. This was embarrassing. Cas’s ears were too hot, and his fingers itched to rub them.
He could feel Dean smiling. Could he hear what he was thinking? Oh no.
He licked his lips, they were going dry again.
Dean chuckled, and Cas looked up at him to see him shaking his head.
“And here I was,” he said, “thinking it was bad in classes.”
Busted.
It was bad in classes, Cas wanted to confirm. It was worse now.
He just placed his notebook in his lap, and fixed his eyes onto its cover. He wasn’t going to look up. Nope. Not today. Not until Dean got up and left.
Dean huffed a laugh, and then Cas heard his chair move.
Good, he was leaving.
Then the chair between them moved.
Not good, he wasn’t leaving.
Cas looked up to see Dean sit down again, this time closer than before. He could smell his lavender and woody cologne from here. It embraced him like a pair of wings, and it was oddly soothing.
“This is better.” Dean smiled.
It wasn’t really. Not for Cas.
“Now,” Dean said, “I won’t do anything. I promise. You don’t have to be afraid of me or anything.”
“I’m not—”
“I know you’re not.” Dean cut him mid-sentence. “I’m just saying…” Cas saw his hand move and come close to his face, “…that you shouldn’t be afraid.”
Dean’s fingers brushed against his skin and Cas could swear that the lights in the room flickered. Cas’s breath hitched as dean trailed his finger gently down his cheek to his cheek bone. His heart threatened to beat out of his chest, and he felt like he was about to faint. All he could see was a deep glimmering forest green; as captivating as a siren’s cry.
Then it was gone.
Cas heard the chair moving, and a small chuckle as Dean put his bag over his shoulder followed by the door closing behind him.
Air rushed into Cas’s lungs, and he gasped. He had to put his down on the table to stop it from spinning. His whole face was burning, and he could bet there was smoke coming out of his ears from the fried circuits of his brain.
Yep, tutoring Dean Winchester was going to be the end of him.