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He came in quietly one day in November, drifting into the classroom like the leaves that blow across a parking lot before they're never seen or noticed again. He stands in the doorway for a few seconds, hair a total mess and clothes a little dirty and wrinkled and even ripped in a few places, before Ms. Turner waved him inside and stood beside him for a few seconds.
"This is Castiel," she says, rubbing the boy's shoulder until he takes a step to the left to get out of her reach, making one of the kids in the back bark out a laugh. Ms. Turner's face colors, but she quickly clears her throat. "He's a little different, but I expect everyone to treat him as they would anyone else. Why don't you say hello, Castiel?" The kid beside her—Castiel—shakes his head mutedly and doesn't say anything. "Right. Go find a seat, then, so we can get started."
Castiel stands there frozen for a few long seconds before marching over to take the empty seat right beside Dean, laying his secondhand dark blue backpack on the desk. The desk used to be Caleb's, but he moved away so Dean figures it's okay for someone else to have it.
"Cool backpack," he whispers unsubtly, eyeing up the peeling Batman logo printed on the front. "I like Batman. He's awesome."
"It was my brother's," Castiel replies, but then he doesn't say anything else.
"My name's Dean. Your name's kinda funny. How come?"
"I dunno…"
Dean swings his feet underneath his desk, trying to think of something to say, eventually settling on, "Do you wanna swing at recess? I'm really good at swinging."
"No," the boy answers quietly.
Faltering slightly, Dean asks, "Okay, well, how about the merry-go-round? I'm real good at gettin' people dizzy."
"No."
"Okay, uh, wanna play cowboys, then? Jo always joins even though she's a girl, but she punches really hard, so she's allowed."
"No."
"How come?" he finally asks.
"I-I don't want to get punched really hard…"
Dean frowns and tries to think of something else to invite him to do when Ms. Turner clears her throat and tries to bring everyone's attention back to the lesson. He shrugs the whole thing off and figures Castiel must not like playgrounds, which makes sense because he doesn't have any bandages on face, and probably doesn't have any on his knees or elbows or anything either.
By the time lunch finally rolls around, Dean nearly forgets about Castiel in his excitement to sit with his friends until he sees him standing there with a brown paper bag in his hand, looking kind of lost.
"Come sit with us," Dean offers quickly, much to the dismay of Benny and Gordon, who are sitting on the other side of the table.
"Why would you invite him over?" Gordon asks his Kraft Mac and Cheese sullenly the second Castiel sits beside Dean on the bench. "He's weird."
At this, Dean scowls and snaps, feeling as if someone just insulted Sammy, "You don't even know him." He looks at Castiel to see him going through his bag and instantly turns his attention to that. "Hey, what did you get for lunch?"
"PB&J."
Dean glances in the bag himself, surprised there's only a sandwich inside. "I'll trade you a juice box for some of your sandwich."
"Okay." Castiel tears off a big chunk from the corner, and Dean hands him one of his apple juice boxes; he always brings two so he can trade one, anyway.
The sandwich is delicious and the peanut butter and jelly are spread all the way to the edge, though the bread is a little soggy from where the grape jelly must've soaked through. Castiel doesn't say anything about the juice box, but he drinks it all, so it must be good.
At recess, Dean's first instinct is to run to grab a swing before anyone else can, but he hesitates and decides to see what Castiel is doing instead. He finds him sitting on a picnic table that's always shaded by the tree beside it, a strange circular thing in his hand that's constantly bobbing up and down.
"What's that?" he finally asks.
"It's a yo-yo." Castiel moves his hand again, and it dips down and then goes back up to his hand again.
"Can I try?" The other boy wordlessly nods and takes the string off his finger. Dean puts the string through his own and is able to get it to drop, but when he tries to bring the yo-yo back up to his hand, all it does is twist around and stop moving. He frowns and tries to bounce it up, but it won't listen. "It's broken," he eventually concludes, trying to pull the string off.
Castiel reaches over and stops him, instead taking the yo-yo and rewinding the string around it. "You have to make it bounce back up," the boy explains. "If you don't, you'll have to rewind it again."
It takes some time, but Dean eventually gets the hang of it and is able to make it dip down and bounce up easily. "That's really cool, Cas," he says, beaming, generous enough to hand the toy back.
At this, Castiel just looks down to watch the bugs crawling all along the ground. "It's not. Gabriel can do tricks with his."
"Maybe he has a cooler kind," Dean tries, going up to sit beside Castiel on top of the picnic table, using the bench as a footrest and getting it all dirty; he hopes someone like Alastair sits on it next and ruins his pants. "The ones that are more money are cooler, but they're more money."
Castiel nods solemnly and goes back to bringing the yo-yo up and down, his pace never faltering as Dean watches in silent appreciation.
-
Cas never talks during class or really says anything during lunch, but he always trades with Dean (not Benny, the one time he asked) and he always has all sorts of neat toys to showcase at the picnic table. One day it's jacks, another it's dominos (those were fun until that jerk Uriel knocked them all down. He made Cas cry, so Dean punched him. He didn't come in the next day, and Ms. Turner said it was because he broke his nose. Dean didn't feel bad, and nobody ratted him out).
One time he had a rainbow slinky that he immediately gave to Dean when Dean told him it was his birthday, and that he was a big kid because he was ten now; his dad tried to steal it when he came home with it, but Dean was able to quickly stash it in a box of old baseball cards that he had under the bed. He's still not sure why his dad hated it so much, and he thinks about that every time he stares down at the slinky.
It's been three months since Cas first stepped into the classroom when they finally get a group assignment they're supposed to pair up to complete. At this news, he immediately turns to Cas, who tilts his head a little but smiles anyway. This, however, makes Alastair angry for some reason.
"Big surprise. Dean and Cas, Cas and Dean. Again," he gripes, possibly put out that he has to work with Gordon—the only other one not to get chosen by anyone.
"When's the marriage?" Gordon adds.
Dean turns a fierce scowl to them—his usual reaction to anyone whenever they're being 'assbutts' to his new best friend. But curiosity gets the better of him and he asks, "What do you mean?"
"I mean you're totally gay for each other."
Dean's eyebrows scrunch together, an expression he finds Cas mirroring when he looks at him. He's never heard that word before… Before he can ask about it, however, Ms. Turner scolds, "We're not using those kinds of words in the classroom."
"But what do they mean?" a girl in the back asks.
Ms. Turner's face flushes again and she turns back to the chalkboard behind her, going on and on about the importance of one thing or another, but Dean doesn't hear a word of it, his mind too occupied by the new word that no one wants to talk about.
At lunch, he decides to ask Gordon about it, seeking out the older boy before he can sit down with his new friend, Kubrick (who's also a massive jerk that's at least two grades ahead of him). "What's gay?" Dean asks, and Gordon just sneers at him.
"It's what you are."
"Yeah, but what is it?"
"What you are," Gordon repeats, taking a big bite out of his egg salad sandwich and talking around it. "You and Cas. You're gay."
"How am I supposed to say if we are or not if I don't even know what it means?" he snaps with a huff, turning around to go back to his table and to Cas before he gets an idea. "Unless you don't know what it means, either."
"I know what it means!" Gordon refutes instantly, taking the bait. "It means you wanna kiss him!"
Gordon sits there looking proud of himself, and Dean's face scrunches up again. He walks away to consider the words, sitting beside Cas at the table, despite there being no one sitting on the other side.
"Wanna trade?" Cas asks, holding up a few carrot sticks and a grape juice box; when Cas' big brother, Gabriel, found out he made a friend and that they trade lunches, he'd been overjoyed and started packing Cas bigger lunches with a lot more things in them.
When Dean asked why his mom or dad didn't make his lunches for him, he got very quiet and very still, so Dean didn't ask again. After all, he's the one who makes Sammy lunches, anyway. Cas is just Gabriel's Sammy, and Dean's determined to make sure Sam has good friends, just like he's sure Gabriel wants Cas to have good friends.
Still, when he tried to hug him and make him feel better, Cas had flinched and looked…kind of scared—like Sammy whenever their dad yells too loudly or gets too close—but he'd accepted the hug the second time. Dean's best friend is kind of weird sometimes, but he likes hugs now, which is good. Maybe he'd like kisses, too…?
"I have fruit punch juice today," Dean says, digging around in his bag. It's not the one in the fancy pouches that everyone else has, but that's okay, and Cas has never commented on Dean's off-brand lunches, just like Dean's never commented on how all Cas' clothes and school supplies are hand-me-downs. "And grapes. Look, they're green!"
Cas' eyes light up at the sight, and Dean grins triumphantly, though it falters when he sees Gordon and Kubrick sneering at them in the corner. His face falls, and his friend immediately notices it.
"What's wrong?" he questions, eyes big and worried. "Are you hurt?"
"No," he mumbles, looking down at the table. "Let's just hurry up and eat so we can play more."
Cas tilts his head at him, but slowly nods. "Okay…"
At recess, Dean's head is still spinning as the word weighs down on him, to the point where even Cas somehow fumbling his way through solving his Rubik's Cube isn't even enough to take his attention. When Cas gives it to him to try out—something Dean usually loves to do—Dean can only stare down at it and half-heartedly twist the rows and columns.
"Why are you sad?" Cas asks, squishing some rubber thing that looks like a bee in his hands and pushing it between his fingers. "Is it 'cause of what Gordon said?" Dean shrugs, and Cas adds decisively, "He's an assbutt."
Dean can't help but smile as he twists the sections of the Rubik's Cube with a little more enthusiasm, trying to finish the entire blue side. "He is. A big, smelly one."
Across the playground on the swing that he's not even swinging on, Gordon gives him the stink eye, and he glares back.
-
Dean actually forgets all about the incident with The Word until Valentine's Day rolls around. Dean's never really celebrated before, the extent of him acknowledging the day being him cutting Sammy's sandwiches into heart shapes, because Valentine's Day is about love and he loves Sammy.
Now, though, people are starting to think about it a little more, and Dean decides that he wants to, too. So he stays up late on the thirteenth to make Cas a card, using up the glitter Charlie had given him over lunch so he can make the heart on the card sparkly, because Cas likes glitter for some reason. He works particularly hard on making sure the bees on the inside are just like the ones Cas has on his pencil case, and he makes the flowers yellow dandelions because those are the only flowers he knows.
By the end of it, Dean's proud of his work and makes sure to sign his name on it, placing a little sheriff's star inside the large capital 'd,' because cowboys are cool. He later packs it into his lunch for tomorrow as he prepares his and Sammy's food, unable to wait for tomorrow to give Cas his card.
"Hey, Cas," he whispers when they sit down beside each other at their desks. "I have a surprise for you for lunch."
Cas smiles a little and says, "Me too."
Surprised, he asks, "What is it?"
"It's a secret!"
He grins despite the news and practically vibrates in his seat until it's finally time for lunch. He then proudly pulls out his card the second they're both sitting at the table, and Cas takes it gently, looking like he might cry.
"Do you like it?" Dean asks anxiously. Cas nods furiously, actual tears running down his red cheeks before he sets the card down and pulls out a small plastic bag of misshapen cookies that sort of resemble hearts.
"I made these ones myself," the other boys explains, voice wavering a little. "That's why they're so b—"
"Perfect," Dean finishes, opening the bag to take a bite out of one. "Oh! They're really good!"
"It's Gabriel's recipe. But I made these ones."
He just beams at his teary-eyed friend, pulling him into a side hug. He's entirely unaware of the group of students sneering at them in the corner, but he won't be for long.
At recess, Cas shows Dean his latest game—a twisting puzzle game that can go into all kinds of different forms. As Cas tries to make the turtle Dean requested, Dean's encouragements urging him on despite his unsteady hands and movements, a group of kids suddenly approach them to stand over them.
"Whatcha got there?" an older boy asks, snatching up the toy from Cas' fumbling fingers.
"Hey! Give that back!" Dean demands, shooting up to try to snatch it from the taller boy's hands.
"Or what?" The boy tosses it to another boy with dark hair, who then tosses it to Gordon.
"What're ya gonna do, Dean? Go cry to your weirdo boyfriend?" Gordon barks out a short laugh, twisting the toy and ruining Cas' efforts. "You two are so gay…"
"So what if we are?" Dean snaps, and everyone pauses. He takes the opportunity to snatch the toy from Gordon's hand, but when he goes to give it back to Cas, he finds someone had pushed his friend into the dirt. Instead of trying to defend himself, Cas just sits there, a few small cuts now decorating his cheeks from the sharp rocks on the ground. "Hey! I'll tell Ms. Turner!"
"Yeah, yeah, go run along to your teacher like a real man."
Dean couldn't care less about manliness, but when one of them—the tallest and biggest overall—goes to pick Cas up off the ground by his sweater, he swings around and punches the boy in the jaw, electing a sharp crack. The boy stumbles back and spits out a mouthful of blood that makes the kids in his group go pale, and they all run off in an instant. Gordon lingers for a second longer until Dean turns around and raises his fist at him, skinned knuckles on full display.
"Anyone does anything like that again and I'll break their nose!" he proclaims, though he kind of doubts he'd actually be able to do that. Still, it sends Gordon off running with his tail between his legs, so he figures he won. Dean quickly spins around to help Cas off the ground, attempting to brush some of the dirt off of him. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Thank you." Cas ducks his head shyly, but Dean forces it back up with a hand to his chin, inspecting his face.
"I got just the thing," he announces, going into his backpack to pull out a small first aid kit. He opens it and pulls out a roll of Batman bandages. "Look, there's Batman on them." He sticks one on a cut on Cas' cheek. "He'll protect you and make you better super fast!"
Cas' face brightens a little, though it also goes a little pink. "Really?"
"Yeah." He sticks the last one on Cas' forehead before getting an idea that makes him look down at his sneakers, unexpectedly bashful. "There's something else that'll make it heal ever faster."
"What is it?" his friend asks earnestly, eyes big and trusting. Dean's own face flushes before he leans forward and shyly puts his lips to the smaller boy's forehead, his face brushing against Cas' messy hair. When he pulls back, Cas looks somewhere between meeting Batman in real life and seeing a ghost in real life. "Oh…"
"What's wrong?" he asks. "Is that okay?"
At this, Cas looks down and his face goes red. He opens his mouth to say something, but then the bell rings and they're forced to hurry back inside for class. Once again, he doesn't listen to a word Ms. Turner says, though this time for a different reason. He's worried he upset Cas. Cas never seemed to mind when people called them 'gay,' but maybe that was just because he didn't know what it meant?
When the last class of the day is finally over, Dean rushes out to meet Cas in the front of the school—something he hasn't really done before; he doesn't like watching all the parents pick up their kids because it makes him sad that his dad never did the same for him or Sam. If they didn't live near the schools, Dean doesn't know what he would do…
"Cas!" he calls out as a car comes to the curb to pick Cas up. "Cas, wait!"
Cas stops climbing in to face him, and a window rolls down despite the cold chill in the air. "Is this your new friend, Cassie?" someone asks, cooing at them. "How adorable! Is that why you were all hyper-fixated on making cookies last night?"
"Gabriel," Cas cuts in with a glare that doesn't seem very impressive, which makes Dean smile. His smile falters when he sees a big purple bruise where Gabriel's eye should be, and he turns a questioning look to Cas that the other boy either ignores or doesn't see.
Gabriel doesn't seem to mind the glare he's receiving, instead asking, "Did he give you those Batman bandaids, too? Was that his payment for the cookies?"
"No, I-I made him a card," Dean admits to his shoes before snapping back to attention. "Wait. I gotta talk to you, Cas. Can we go to your house to talk?"
"No," Gabriel immediately cuts in before faltering at Dean's confused look; Cas just puts his head down and fiddles with the hem of his sweatshirt. "Uh, the place is a mess, y'know? I'll just ride around and pick up some groceries or something and meet you at the park later."
Cas nods solemnly, which tells Dean that this sort of rerouting isn't anything new. It confuses him, but he doesn't say anything as Gabriel backs the car up and then turns around and pulls back onto the road. Unsure of what else to do, Dean silently leads Cas down to the playground he'd found for Sammy a few weeks ago. They sit side by side on the swingset, but neither of them swing.
Finally, Dean can't contain himself anymore and bursts out, "I didn't mean to upset you!"
Cas blinks at him slowly. "You didn't upset me."
"I did, or you wouldn't have tried to run away without talking to me," Dean protests. "I won't do it again if you don't want me to."
To his surprise, his friend's face flushes and he looks down at his shoes with the soles that are nearly falling off. "I didn't mind, but…"
"But what?" When Cas doesn't answer, Dean gets off the swing to step behind him. "Hold on a sec," he says, unzipping his friend's backpack and pulling out the first toy he sees—the squishy rubber bee. He quickly hands it to Cas before sitting back down on the swing. When Cas does nothing more than look at it, he says, "You said it calms you down, right?"
"Y-yeah…"
"So mess with it. And talk to me." Cas is looking at him with something akin to silent awe, his face decorated in Batman bandaids and playground dust. "What's wrong, Cas?"
Cas ducks his head and starts playing with the little rubber bee. After a few long moments in which Dean contemplates just swinging and forgetting about talking, the smaller boy finally says, "I have something called autism. It means my brain was made wrong."
"'Wrong'?" Dean repeats, because he's quite sure there's nothing wrong with Cas.
"Well, Gabriel says it just means I'm different, but Aunt Naomi says it means God made a mistake and I came off wrong—with a crack in my…chasy?" Dean makes a face at the unfamiliar word, but Cas presses forward. "That's why I always bring things to mess with. I didn't wanna tell you, though…"
"How come? I'd tell you if I had any sort of big word like that." He perks up, adding proudly, "Like photosensisis! I'm not a tree, but I'd tell you if I could make my own food. Like apple pie. I'd make you all the pies you want, too."
Cas looks a little in awe again, fingers going still on the rubber bee in his hand. "You…you don't mind?"
"Well, do you have autism now?" Cas nods. "And you had it since I met you?" He nods again. "Then how could I mind? You had it the whole time we were friends and we still became friends, even if you can't make your own apple pies." Dean's face brightens. "Wait, does autism mean you have superpowers? Can you shoot lasers from your eyes like Superman? He's Sammy's favorite, even though he's not as cool as Batman."
For some reason, Cas' face falls again and he goes back to squeezing the little bee in his hands, not meeting his eyes. "Aunt Naomi says it means I'll never be able to get a girlfriend or a wife because I'm made wrong and I'm too weird. She says I'll be alone forever."
Dean frowns at this for a long moment before he says, "Well, you're not alone now."
"Huh?"
"You're my best friend, Cas, so you can't be alone. That means your aunt is wrong." Cas frowns down at his shoes, like he's never thought of that possibility before. "And, uh, I'm not a girl, either."
Cas looks up at him and tilts his head. "What do you mean?"
Dean's face flushes, but he pushes forward. "Well, your aunt said you'd never marry a girl, but I'm not a girl so I can't be your wife and you can't be my wife."
The other boy's eyes go wide. "I didn't think of that," he admits before smiling wider than Dean's ever seen before. "Maybe that's why I can't have a wife. I'll have a husband instead!"
"Can I be your husband, Cas?" Dean asks happily. "Then we can kiss all the time and your aunt won't be upset 'cause you never married a girl."
Cas squints and says, "Don't you have to kiss before you get married?"
"Maybe that's how you get married," Dean wonders aloud, and Cas' eyes go all big again.
"Does that mean we're married now?" he asks. "Shouldn't we have rings?"
"I have a couple Ring-Pops left over from Halloween." Dean's face suddenly brightens as a wonderful idea comes to him. "Next year, we should go trick-or-treating together. I didn't get to go with you 'cause you came in class too late."
"Don't rings have to be metal? Aunt Naomi's mad that my uncle didn't spend enough money on her ring. She called him a penny-pincher!" Cas' face then scrunches up and he admits, "I don't know what that is, though."
"Doesn't matter. I'll save up all my driveway-shoveling money and get you a real ring, Cas. Promise." With that, he leans forward and presses a kiss to Cas' cheek. In that moment, a car Dean recognizes as Gabriel's pulls up beside the playground, and an obnoxious horn blares out. "Looks like your brother's here."
Mortified, Cas buries his face in his hands, but Dean helps him off the swing and even carries his backpack all the way to the car and opens the door for him like a true gentleman. Gabriel whistles a tune Dean's heard in shows where people are getting married and he isn't quite sure how to react, torn between embarrassed and delighted.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Cas," he says as Cas starts going inside, only for his friend to stop at the last second to give him a kiss on the cheek, too.
"Goodbye, Dean," Cas mumbles, face flushed as he gets into the car and Gabriel starts driving away.
Dean's too dumbfounded to even move, but then a big grin splits his face and he enthusiastically waves at the car as it turns the corner, hoping Cas could see him. He's forced to start walking home because it's getting dark, but his smile remains firmly on his face the entire walk back.
-
The next day during lunch, Dean presents Cas with a shiny silver plastic cosplay ring he'd traded three whole candy bars to Charlie to get. It matches the one on Dean's finger, and even if it isn't real metal, it still feels like a promise. Charlie had asked him why, and seemed really happy when he told her it was so he could be married to Cas, so she only charged him for one ring.
They attempt a kiss on the lips to celebrate their marriage, but that feels weird, so they decide to stick to cheeks and foreheads and noses and maybe hands. Dean likes kissing Cas on the nose—it always makes him smile.
"You guys are gay!" Gordon calls out in delight over lunch when he catches sight of the matching rings on their fingers, hoping to get a rise from them.
In response, Dean takes Cas' hand to kiss his knuckles. When he's done, he pulls away and shouts, "Yeah, we are! So what?"