Work Text:
I delieove iu yon.
(I believe in you.)
That’s the first note Dean receives. It’s small, folded like a cigarette and wrapped in fine gold ribbon. It looked almost like something obtained from a pigeon carrier. It wasn’t a far off guess, considering Castiel had chicken scratch handwriting.
It all started in Miss Mills’ English IV class. His teacher—better known to him as Jody—was an old friend of his adoptive-uncle Bobby; that is, until they began exchanging more than just Dean’s grades.
She didn’t give him any special treatment inside the classroom (thank God for small favors), but outside, she could sense that Dean was struggling with something much bigger than himself. She pulled him aside during silent reading one day, Dean in the midst of trying to figure out why Lenny from Of Mice & Men loved guppies so much, away from the prying eyes and ears of her students.
“Dean, is there something you’d like to share with me?”
Dean’s heart skipped a beat. She didn’t sound condescending like all his other teachers, just concerned. It made him nervous nonetheless. “Uh, no…? Anything you’re thinking of in specific, teach?”
“No! No, it’s just… Dean, I want you to know that you can tell me anything,” she said, smiling half-heartedly. Dean shifted his weight before folding his arms over his chest.
“Sorry, Jody, but if this is some sort of motherly bonding thing you’re trying to do—”
“Dean, do you have trouble reading?”
Dean scoffed, “Oh no. Hell no.”
“It’s perfectly normal if you do, Dean. A lot of kids your age have learning disabilities that don’t surface until high school,” she explained. Dean could tell she was alluding to something that didn’t quite rest on her tongue. “It’s my job to help kids who do struggle. I know some great tutors who would be happy to—”
“No, no way. I’m not stupid, okay?” he bit back defensively.
Jody’s eyes conveyed a plaintiveness Dean didn’t like. “I never said you were. But Dean, you’re on the cusp of failing this class. If you don’t get the greenlight from me, you don’t graduate.”
“Cas.”
“Come again?”
“Cas,” Dean reiterated. “I want him to tutor me.”
Cas was his best friend, and the only person he’d ever let in on his dirty little secrets. The only person he has let in on his dirty little secrets for going on eight years. They’d been inseparable since the morning after his father passed when Cas, always with those big, blue marbles and bedraggled hair, handed him a mangled tissue on the swings, so it only made sense that he be the one to help him out of his latest trench.
Since then, Mondays and Wednesdays after school, he had Cas over for their own personal teatime. A typical study day consisted of reading a couple sentences from Of Mice & Men, summarizing the main points, and, if Cas thought it satisfactory, he let Dean help him with his trigonometry homework. It’s a weird incentive, he knows. It wasn’t like Cas was belly-up when it came to math, but the dorky little guy was always; well, dorky, when it came to school. An above average grade didn’t sate him. He was going to get that A+ if it killed him. Dean wasn’t judging. It took his mind off the fact that he wasn’t a complete imbecile.
If he was being honest with himself, Dean wished he’d never get better at English for the simple fact that he got to see Cas in glasses. They weren’t thick-framed like half the planet’s prescriptions at this point, but instead small and held together by the thinnest of wire. They made his eyes look limpid; pooling with boundless blue charity underneath his long lashes. He had his lean face bent over the desk lamp, scrunched in an intense state that Dean wished he could get into, causing the frame to ride up his tanned nose.
Everything about him screamed teacher. It wasn’t so appealing until now.
Dean was pretty sure he had AD/HD (sadly he’s not mistaking it for AC/DC) on top of dyslexia.
“What do you mean by Lenny wanted to tempt the rabbits?”
Dean shook himself out of his musing long enough to read his cursive. “Huh? Oh, fuck, I meant tend. Shit.”
“It’s okay; I was just making sure your basic comprehension was there.” Cas took another long pause, drinking in the words on his notebook paper with a curt nod. “Everything else looks good, except, if I remember correctly, George wasn’t mad at Lenny for committing either crime. Lenny thought he would be, but George understood Lenny’s difficulties.”
A loose chuckle escaped Dean, “Oh yeah. Sorry, I didn’t read anything around mad and I assumed—”
“Dean, it’s okay, you don’t have to apologize,” Cas reassured, smiling. “I know you’re trying your best.”
Dean could feel the aggravation, the ever-present self-hatred he’d towed since his father’s untimely passing, boiling like a red-hot cauldron in his chest. He knew Cas understood. He just didn’t understand himself.
He cleared his throat, suppressing the antagonism long enough to ask, “Do you need help with reciprocals?”
Cas slid him his binder.
**
He woke up to another scroll on his desk. The message was slightly longer this time:
I mou’t give ud if yon dou’t.
(I won’t give up if you don’t.)
**
“This is… wow. I’m really impressed, Dean.”
Dean’s eyebrows rose up in tentative interest. “Yeah? You’re not just saying that, are you?”
“Dean, why would I lie to you, of all people?” Dean couldn’t help the smile that creased up and over his mouth. He knew Cas was right. He wouldn’t lie when Dean’s future was on the table. “But first, I need you to answer a few questions, just so I know what you say relates with the words on the paper.”
Dean, feeling more self-assured than ever, jumped in his chair as he exclaimed, “Shoot!”
Cas leaned back in his chair—Dean’s chair, he amended—as he brought his grading pen to his lips. It certainly didn’t give Dean a few ideas of what else he could be utilizing that idiosyncrasy for. “Where are George and Lenny while they wait for the lynching party?”
“Salinas River,” Dean replied. “That’s where they agreed to meet if either of them ran into trouble.”
“What does George lead the lynching party to think happened to Lenny?”
“That Lenny brought the gun, and George tried to get it away from him, and shot him in the process.”
“And, in the end, what actually happened?”
“Well George spared him, right?” Dean said, testing the words. “He helped spare him from a life of torment.”
Cas gunned him down with the same intensity as he did Dean’s papers, leaning in closer until a Cheshire smile spread across his face like freshly whipped peanut butter. “You’re going to ace this test.”
**
I knew you could do it.
***
The following week found Castiel on Dean Winchester’s couch. A slight mishap led them to studying in the living room—slight translating to spilling a half a can of Diet Dr. Pepper onthe carpet. They say you learn something new every day. Cas learned that caffeinated soda smells rank out of the can.
It wasn’t Cas’s preferred study space, just because of all the petty distractions that could ensue in an open area, but at least it was bigger. At least in here they’re not bumping legs and sharing the same breath—which he definitely wasn’t complaining about. A few more inches and they would have been bumping more than just legs. Shoulders, hands, noses, lips…
Cas shifted on the cushions. “How’s it coming?”
Dean grunted something mono-syllabic. Dean has been hunched over the coffee table for almost two hours—which was, again, something he wasn’t complaining about, except he seemed almost too focused, like his whole life was at stake if he so much as lifted his pen. If only there was a way Cas would divert his attention, even just for a couple minutes. He couldn’t have been that comfortable, mentally or physically. Plus, having a good study schedule meant taking breaks to avoid over-exhaustion.
Cas had to intervene. Maybe lie and say he needed help with identities while they scarfed down some of the fast food that remained untouched on the kitchen island. It was nearing seven o’ clock since Cas left him to it. Dean had to have been hungry. He’d never turn down a Biggerson’s crispy double cheeseburger and fries…
“Shit.” Cas swiveled his head. Dean had finally lifted his pen, but he looked far from satisfied. “Fuck, shit, da—”
“Dean, what’s wrong?” he asked tentatively, hoisting himself from the sofa.
“Everything,” he growled, shoving everything off the table with the flick of his hand. His materials slid across the tile as Dean shot up, thwacking his knee on the underside of the glass countertop as he did so. “I’m stupid, I can’t tell a b from a d or an n from a u, and what do I do to help myself? I let my fucking pride get in the way of someone actually helping me after it’s too fucking late!”
Dean’s face was as red as the cherry pie he loved so much by the time Cas crossed the floor to meet his eyes, which were flaking not sugar, but salt. Tears spilled in glaciers from emerald eyes. He felt a sob ripple through his body because Cas had pulled him into his arms. His hands snaked into his fair caramel hair, massaging his scalp. He felt the other boy’s fingers sink into his hipbones like talons before he finally released his death grip, burying his head—the one part of Dean that Cas cared about most right now—into the crook of his neck.
Cas wanted more than anything to cry too. He knew how hard it was for Dean to build confidence after the life he’s led. Cas doesn’t know what it’s like live a life of constant struggle, but he does know what it’s like being a good friend. That he’s done for eight years—until today. He should’ve held off on essay writing until next week. He should’ve stopped Dean, despite his stubborn nature. He should’ve shoved that greasy fast food down his throat if it killed him. He should’ve been better.
He could be better.
Cas reversed their positions, so that Dean was the one with his back facing the couch. Dean’s eyes had strayed off the beaten path of consciousness until finally locking in place, but he still held onto Cas just as tight as he laid him down. Eventually, Cas wriggled free of his strong hold on him to turn off the lights and toss a blanket over him, tucking him in as far in as the cushions would allow. But before Cas could so much as move another inch, Dean’s hand grabbed his wrist. Cas looked down to see Dean’s eyes looking blearily up at him.
“Stay… please.”
Dean, who teetered over the edge to make room for the two of them, fell asleep with Cas’s hair prickling his neck, his hand intertwined with Cas’s.
Cas stayed.
EPILOGUE
Dean didn’t just graduate, he graduated Valedictorian. His English scores were exemplary, but it was his AP Math and Chemistry classes that really put him in the ranks. He sacked his plans for the army reserve for a teaching degree in mathematics—a profession Jody jokes is almost ironic, considering how little numbers he’ll actually be dealing with when it came down to the pay, but Dean wasn’t in it for the money.
Except when Carnegie Mellon offers him some impressive numbers to attend their school, well, then Dean has to make the tiniest of exceptions.
He not only learned to live with a learning disability, but embrace it as well. He’s in the middle of writing a novel centered on the aforementioned topic. He plans to write the entire book as a dyslexic would see it, that way when they buy the audio book; they can not only differentiate the words, but read a piece of fiction in the process and, most importantly, be proud of that.
The protagonist’s name is Cas, after his boyfriend. He has messy hair and big, blue eyes.
“Do I really have that distinguished of a jawline?”
“That’s not the only part of you that’s distinguished.”
Cas blushed a deep shade of red and dropped the argument. Dean reached for the note on his desk that Cas had put there yesterday—almost a whole year after their tutoring sessions. It was the first note he’d ever written, according to Cas. It was nothing more than a discarded draft until recently.
This one isn’t decoded, because it’s three words that speak a universal language:
I love you.