Chapter Text
Four years ago.
A song of gray doves chirping, trampled grass, and an influx of flowering white petals make up the landscape of the library's large glass entrance. Only a few short weeks ago the ice had melted from their branches. Castiel always thought that those rose bushes would make a lovely addition to the landscaping of the entryway when he first planted them. The flowers first bloomed last year, and the library’s staff got together to celebrate the long mostly achieved through volunteer work hours the landscaping had been. When the roses were in season, they were every bit as beautiful as he’d imagined. Though he’d probably regret thinking that, give or take in the incoming weeks of cleanup he’d need to do. Last fall, it took him a consecutive month of sweeping to finally clear the sidewalk of those rotted, tiny little red petals. He just kept finding traces of them everywhere.
Anyway, it's only very recently that Castiel has started returning to his full-time schedule at the library. His older sister, Anna, was finally able to convince him that he could take Jack to a babysitter, at least for however many hours he'd be away. She’d connected Cas with a very kind older woman named Missouri, who had a daughter named Patience, and if that wasn’t ironic. Missouri’s personality was a little curious, but as a whole, Cas would deem her of good natured character. She lived not too far down the street and was a wonderful host the first time he brought Jack over to meet her. He still felt a little antsy about it though, because unlike Claire—Cas had practically nursed Jack since he was just a newborn. The gradual rise in independence is a little sad, but understandable. Claire is old enough to insist on walking herself to school, but he always expects a call whenever she gets home. So-called ‘Mother-henning’, be damned.
So it was with a heavy heart that morning as they finished up their usual breakfast with the TV on in the background as Claire got ready to leave. Cas catches her in the act of sneaking another slice of toast, stopping her for a quick forehead kiss before she rolls her eyes and Cas allows her to leave quickly enough to give the benefit of doubt to whether or not he was able to see the small smirk peeking over her shoulder. Cas is familiar enough with the routine that he doesn’t try to get up and watch the silhouette of her back turn into a little dot, but it doesn’t mean that he hadn’t had the urge to.
In any case, he returns just in time to see his toddler decide that playing basketball with his cheerios was a good idea—the goal being a piece of cereal on every square of kitchen tile. Somehow, the boy even managed to throw his bowl a good third of the way across the kitchen. "You have a lot of power, don't you, Jack?" Jack giggles, and Cas can't help but return the motion. " But , we don't do that," Cas shakes his head, gently prying away the remaining bowl and utensils from the giggling toddler's small hands, replacing it with a kid's bottle nearby. He makes sure to tell Jack to sit still while he starts cleaning up the mess.
The TV buzzes overhead as he sweeps the cheerios up with a broom.
It's some kind of news program about entertainment. A red-headed woman pops up on screen, she wears a blindingly sunny-yellow blazer with a T-shirt that reads 'I'm one with the Force!' "Hey everyone! I'm your host, Charlie, and welcome to the Mint Condition, where we talk about all things new in books, comics, TV, movies, you get it. Anything my fellow geeky followers need to know. Today, I've got a treat for you, my subjects! I'm going to be joined by a special co-star and dear friend of mine—have you guessed it yet?
Cas' eyes flick up.
The woman on the screen continues, gesturing to the graphics appearing beside her. "Starring in 'Leviathan Apocalypse', this rags-to-riches actor first gained popularity in the now-popular fantasy-adventure trilogy, 'The Road So Far'. Please welcome, Mr.—as so many others have said before—Perfectly Fine himself, Dean Winchester! Yes, that's—"
He hits the off button on the TV, staring at the electronic screen as it blips into darkness. Two green dots and a righteous smile seem to bore right back into him. Cas is silent for a few moments, feeling silly as he presses his lips together. Nobody's there, it's just a blank screen in front of him. His attention is only drawn away once Jack makes a noise and Castiel sighs. The thought is almost gone by the next hour, when he’s wishing Jack a regretful goodbye at Missouri’s place, but then there's nothing else to fill the silence of his old station wagon on the way to his workplace. Eventually, he's flooded with the memories that had long since been burned into the back of his mind. Maybe it's a combination of all of the above, but his mood dampens.
As much as he'd like to say it isn't affecting him, it's also the third time in under an hour that he's stapled multiple sheets of blank paper together.
Realizing that he isn’t getting anywhere, the librarian puts the cursed stapler down and turns his attention to one of the people lingering around the bright blue ‘library services’ sign. Cas spotted the guy entering the library awhile ago, but apparently it took awhile for them to psyche themselves up and go up to the counter.
He's a teenager, little shaggy-haired, with a few faint dark circles under his eyes. Ah, so definitely a highschooler in the thick of it. The teen’s wearing a blue pinstripe button-down with white lines and a gray blazer. In his hands is a sheet of paper, slightly weathered at the edges. His eyes are beady and stare a little too focused at the help desk sign, all the while teetering back and forth on the slopes of his feet.
“Hello. Do you need assistance?” Castiel asks with a welcome smile, tilting his head in inquiry.
The kid has a sneezing fit before he introduces himself as Kevin Tran—a junior seeking out an early summer job before school ends. “Sorry—allergies. But the flowers are new.” The creased paper in his hands ends up being a resume. Reading it over, he can’t help but think that Kevin is overqualified. Activities like key club and academic triathlon awaken something from his own highschool days, which he tries not to think of too much. Thankful for the distraction, an easy conversation starts as Castiel forgoes the layers of tension, explaining the flowering cycle of the library’s landscape and the resume in front of him. Kevin seems insistent anyway, eager to get situated.
Meanwhile, a very tall man circles around another part of the library. Not hard to miss at all, in his mid-twenties, with somewhat long hair, denim jeans, and a light windbreaker. He’s not so much as checking out any particular book, but appraising the library as a whole—to the little organic reading area they’d added last year, their humble computer lab, and even the media section with all their DVD’s and audiobooks. The strange behavior wasn’t really a nuisance to anyone, but it’s hard not to notice once when he circles around the same new-gen erotica audiobook shelf three times.
Okay, so they don’t actually have that as a section of the library, but that’s what the equivalent of “New Adult Romance” is to most of the staff members.
One of their more veteran library employees pulls out her earbuds with a small groan. She’d been lounging around watching House M.D . at the additional services desk, but it eventually comes to her attention that people are starting to avoid that section of the library, and she can’t have rumors that the library is a hotspot for creeps. So she saunters over and leans onto the end of the shelf and taps the lurker on the shoulder—all the while he’s still trying to peek through to get a glimpse at the other side. “Hey Bean-pole, if you’re looking for Colleen Hoover, it’s down here.”
“I’m not—what? Oh God, no, that’s not what I’m looking for.” Tall man retracts from his position, she’s even slightly amused that he looks offended at the suggestion.
“Then mind telling me what you are looking for? Or do you just like hanging around in the trashy romance section without opening any books for fun?”
The man glances away distractedly, looking through the peephole made of book gaps momentarily. “What’s with all the questions? I’m just…checking out the library.”
“Oh, hi. Nice to meet you. Name’s Meg. I work here . Kind of my business.” She draws out the platitudes with crossed arms and a placid expression.
“Wait—you work here? So you know the guy working at the counter?”
He looks surprised, and rightfully so. Meg isn’t really the picture of quiet, studious, and likes to be around books. Her aesthetic is composed of bleached hair, biker jackets, and bubblegum. She looks over to where Cas is helping out some overdressed kid at the service counter.
“Hmm, sure I do. That’s Novak, he owns the joint. We’re all just his little worker bees, elves, minions, whatever you want to call it.” She remarks snidely, if not with fondness.
There’s a flinch of recognition in the taller dude’s hazel eyes, which ends up morphing into something more cloudy. She raises her eyebrows, still looking for an answer to her previous question.
“As in…Castiel Novak? Oh, wow. This place, it’s kind of my childhood library. What I was doing earlier—just um, revisiting some old memories. It’s really changed a lot since the last time I was here.” He doesn’t quite frown, but there's a silent omission that he wasn’t expecting any of the newfound info. “You said he owns the library? Since when?”
“Dunno the exact year, I got here after. At least six. Why, you know him? He tutor you or something?”
Meg questions, she can't say she’s not the least bit curious of what Castiel was like before she met him. The long-haired man closes the gap of books back together, turning to face her. Now with a clearer look, she sees that the man’s jacket has a bold red logo across the right breast—it's a big patch with a capital ‘S’ and a white pine tree in front of it.
“Yeah….Uh, we were—he and my brother. They were friends.”
___
High school, 201X.
Castiel remembers the first day he ever met Dean Winchester. There was no glitz, no glamor. No make-up, nor sadness. Actually, he was a bit frosty if anything that day.
It’s sophomore year. January. And it’s cold.
Castiel runs his thumb across the scabs on the knuckles of his numb right hand. It’s just past the New Year and he starts high school today. Again.
He walks through the Crossroads, which is quite literal for its name. It’s a popular intersection just by a railway line that isn’t too far of a walk from Lawrence High School, which is the place he’ll be attending for the remainder of his school year. It’s not a good part of town by any means, so it’s been subject to the many rumors that are passed around during the Sunday services Castiel’s family never fails to attend(Although recently, the followers of The Holy Angels Church have been awfully quiet, but that may be due to the fact that he would probably be the subject of said angelic chatter. Instead, they keep their hushed whispers to themselves and express their scorn through hostile politeness and passive aggressive remarks). Next to the crossroad is a forest that lies adjacent to the intersection, which many claim to be a good make out spot, since antique junk tends to pile up in the foliage. ‘It’s craggy . Adds to the atmosphere’, his older brother Gabriel explains. Whatever that means. Across the street is the middle school, 6th Street Prep, and much further down the lane is his former school, and also where the rest of his siblings, aside from Anna and Gabriel, attended. Those two got dropped off too, but they’d already attended Lawrence High for a few weeks. Once they get to the gritty steel gates of the building, Anna sets him up with his schedule and goes her best to figure out where he’ll be going. She pats him on the back and tells him it’s easier because the majority of the students this late in the year have established their cliques. But that just makes him stand out as the new transfer kid all the more. On the other hand, Gabriel says not to worry without much context, and his older brother disappears before Anna could even give their younger sibling his schedule. Way to be a deserter.
His heart thumps steadily, and he feels as if all eyes are on him. Anna tried to give him a condensed tour of school grounds, but the environment switch from an orderly boarding school with designated timestamps and line-ups is too jarring. He loses her in the crowd of rushed students somewhere, and is left stranded like a ship in foreign waters.
"Oof!"
Castiel is winded out of his listless thoughts by a hard shoulder that slams into him with an amount of force that would've made anyone but a sizable quarterback fall backwards. It's only based on trained instinct that he has the stopping power to grapple back, and push the person who bumped into him at a foot's distance.
"Ow! Damn, sorry—but c'mon, who just…stands—!" The voice he hears is unexpected, it's abundantly expressive and even someone as far-removed from social graces as Castiel could notice the exaggerated feign of an injury. It falters into a mumble as Cas finally locks his gazes onto whoever ran into him.
The face that looks back at him is a sight Castiel can only describe as striking . It’s vivid. Red cheeks emboldened by the frosty air, pouty lips and…
Castiel is certain that he hadn’t looked very apologetic when the sour expression he’d worn all morning is more than halfway to becoming permanently etched onto his face. Pair that with his hand-me-downs, he probably didn’t look like an angel of forgiveness at the moment—although none of that seemed to matter.
The tension melts away from the other boy’s face and he flusters.
"I...uh. Y-yeah. Got places to be, so you, uh—you know. Take care, dude!" The other student slipped free from his grip, not that Castiel was held on as tightly anymore. He only watched the other boy long enough to firmly lock eyes with him once again, then he bolted out of the calm and into the storm again.
Green. His eyes are very green.
And he’s quite rude.
Shortly after, Anna collects him again—which wasn't too hard, by the way Novaks tend to stick out, although it’s mainly his clothes. It comes easily enough, and it doesn’t help that his attire attracts a few snide looks, but they’re nothing he’s learned to exercise any care about. He doesn’t really see the problem—everything he wore was a hand-me-down of his older brothers' church clothes, or anything else they could find that didn't fit and wasn't exclusively a uniform. Anna tried her best to outfit him casually, but he still stuck out like a sore thumb in the end—dressed in rumpled prep clothes. It didn't help that the only article of clothing Castiel picked out himself was a tan-colored trench coat of the same variant, albeit softer material. Well, fortunately, looks weren't very high up on Castiel's priorities at the time.
Anna gave a final pat down of his wild hair before she led him to his first class of the day. She leveled her younger brother with a stare. "Schedule?"
He holds it up with his left hand, his sleeve slips just enough to reveal the corner of a folded sheet of paper.
"Supplies?"
Castiel nods. They checked earlier this morning.
"And absolutely no…?"
"...Getting into trouble." He grumbled, glancing away.
"Hm." Anna doesn't contest it, but she doesn't look like she fully approves either. "Unless…?"
"Ever. Unless you and Gabe find it to be for an acceptable reason. Does that please you?" He snaps quickly. He doesn't mean to, but they've gone over this thing a hundred times, so he's a bit bitter to elaborate.
Anna shrugs, her hands settled onto Castiel's shoulders. "Castiel, what you did…It wasn't wrong, and Gabe and I can't always be there to tell you what to do. I know Father, Michael, and the others got mad when you stood up, but if you really feel—and I mean it, feel , that it gets to that point, then you need to decide for yourself. We'll find a way."
Castiel only straightened his jaw, and Anna leveled her gaze directly back. It wasn't like she was looking for any particular answer, but…
"I know." They both know. But Anna finds a twinge of comfort in her younger brother's ability to acknowledge his autonomy.
The school bell rings. Anna lets go.