Chapter Text
Dean Winchester was about as normal as a teenage guy could get. With a vintage car he cared about more than most girls he dated, an eternal love for classic rock, and a position on the varsity baseball team, he didn’t get much more ordinary.
Sure, his mom had died in a house fire that no, he still wasn’t over, so leave it alone, okay? And his dad was kind of a drinker and had left him and his brother to live with their sort-of uncle Bobby. Sure said uncle was a bit of a drinker as well, and maybe the boys were a bit too comfortable with large guns than boys at their age should be, but hey, every family has their eccentricities, right?
Anyway, Dean Winchester. Tallish, muscled from years of baseball, snarky sarcastic sense of humor and green eyes. Pretty ordinary as teen boys go. He wasn’t exactly a god of high school, but he was popular enough; had a close knit group of friends and dated some of the prettiest girls around. Sometimes for longer than a week. He was a high school Junior, with a little brother who was just about to start his freshman year of highschool. He had a decent GPA, though occasionally he almost failed a classs and had to weasel his way out of it. Though, all in all, Dean Winchester was happy. Dean Winchester was normal.
Dean Winchester was freaking the fuck out.
Sorry, perhaps some explanation is necessary. Let’s start at the beginning shall we? Not of Dean’s life, but of the events which led to Dean’s internal crisis. Which is to say, his Junior year of high school.
————-
It was the first day of his Junior year, and Dean was running late.
“SAM. GET YOUR SCRAWNY ASS DOWN HERE OR I AM LEAVING YOU BEHIND.” Dean shouted up the stairs of Bobby’s house, scooping up his backpack from the floor.
Bobby smacked him on the back of the head. “Boy, what'd I tell you about shouting in my house this early in the morning?”
“Sorry Bobby.” Dean gave him a smile. “Sam, let’s go!”
“Coming, coming.” Sam said, running down the stairs in a misbuttoned plaid shirt, some ripped jeans, and one shoe.
“Dude. Who taught you to dress yourself?” Dean said, grabbing his little brother and fixing his buttons.
Sam smiled up at his brother and shoved his hands away. “You did.”
“Well obviously it didn’t stick.” Dean said, shaking his head. “How many layers of plaid do you need anyway?”
“Oh shut up.”
Dean smiled and handed his baby brother his missing boot. “All right, so, ready for highschool?” Sam nodded. “Well remember, never take joints from anyone named Tito or Don, never eat the mystery meat in the caf, and always use protection.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Sam rolled his eyes.
Bobby gave the two boys pats on the shoulder, which was about the extent of the affection Bobby showed anyone ever. “You two be good. Dean, I get any sort of call from anyone about your dumb ass getting into trouble, you won’t see the Impala for a month. Got it?”
Dean flashed him his best innocent smile. “Got it!” He said, pushing Sam out the door.
“Look after your brother!!” Bobby shouted from the porch as the two walked to the car. Like Dean would ever need to be reminded to do that.
Dean smiled as he unlocked the door to the Impala; there was very little he loved more than this car. Ever since he had been able to see over the dashboard he’d wanted it. It was the one thing his dad had given him before leaving, and Dean kept it pristine.
“All right, Sammy boy. Let’s do this.” He grinned and pushed a tape into the cassette player.
“Dean, do we have to start the morning off with-“
“Shut up, Sammy. My car, my music.” He turned up the volume as Back in Black came on the speakers. “And my music fucking rocks.”
“Your words, not mine.” Sam said with one of his classic bitchfaces; he had several, all of which had been carefully categorized by Dean.
“Bitch.” Dean said, giving his little brother a punch on the arm.
“Jerk.”
————-
Dean checked first his schedule and then his watch. He had thirty minutes before first period started, giving him fifty to get to class. Hell yes. Time to find Jo.
He found his little blonde talking to some girl friends of hers, two brunettes and a really pretty red-head. He snuck up behind her and lifted her up, throwing her over his shoulder as he did.
She shrieked. “DEAN. Oh my god, asshole, put me down!!”
He laughed and placed her back on the floor. “Miss me?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I in no way missed my best friend as he went gallivanting around the country all summer, leaving me alone for almost three months with my bat-shit crazy mother.” The tiny girl put her hands on her hips and glared at him, which was actually a lot more scary than Dean would like to admit. “I could kill you.”
Dean gave her a winning smile and held out a bag of her favorite kind of chocolate. “Forgiven?”
She grabbed the bag out of his hands. “No. I have new best friends now, don’t need you anymore.”
“Wait… really?” Dean frowned.
“No, not really!” Jo glared at him for a bit longer, but finally gave in to his pout and let him hug her. “Fine, fine, asshat, you’re forgiven. But hey, c’mere, want you to meet some people.”
She introduced him to the three girls; Jessica, Louisa, and Anna, the pretty redhead. Jess was a freshman, Louisa was in his year, and Anna was a senior.
“Hey.” Dean said with his most attractive smile (yes, he knew exactly which kind was his most attractive, so what?) “Sorry ladies, but I’m gonna have to steal Jo away from you for the rest of morning. We need to find some friends of ours.” And if Jo protested to him throwing her over her shoulder again and walking off with her, he ignored it.
————-
Within ten minutes, his group was crammed on and around a couch in the commons. This included Jo, Lisa, a tall dark and gorgeous yoga fanatic, Chuck, a nervous introvert writer waiting for inspiration, Ash, a senior and tech wizard, Kali, a mischevious and beautiful theatre girl with a penchant for scheming, and Meg, the senior whore. Quite the motley crew.
As Ash and Chuck rambled on about various new authors and tech things, and Kali and Meg compared summer conquests (Meg told of stealing mens’ virginities, which of course meant she had loyal puppies to buy things for her all summer, and Kali told of scamming people out of their money, stepping on others to reach the top, and all the money that came with that), Dean grilled Jo for information.
“So. Anna. Hot for a ginger. Haven’t seen her before.” And this was rare, their tiny high school in South Dakota didn’t get a lot of newbies. “Details?”
Jo laughed. “Oh Dean, sweetheart, hell no. Don’t even think about it.”
“Why not? Not like she’s out of my league.” Dean smirked. No one was out of his league, as far as he was concerned.
“Well, let’s ignore your giant ball of love for yourself and proceed to the part where if you so much as look at that girl the wrong way, you’ll be three kinds of dead meat.”
“Do tell.”
Jo sighed. “Anna has six brothers. One twin, four older, one younger. Gabriel’s a theatre kid and the psychotic side of lawful evil. He will fuck you up in a poetic justice sort of way. Then there’s Castiel, who I’m pretty sure is a black belt, Uriel, who is as big as a bouncer and professionally kick-boxes, and their cousin Balthazar, who will hack everything you love and arrange it so your car is put on a one-way flight to Mongolia.” Jo said with a smile. “Not to mention the legal adults. Michael will psychoanalyze you until you sob like a seven year old girl, then kill you and make it look like an accident. And Raphael, god, he’ll probably scrape every appendage off your body, starting with your dick; he’s a bit of a twisted guy. Oh, and there’s also their brother Lucifer. And I’ll let you imagine what he’s capable of.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Gabriel, Cassiel, Uriel, Balcazar, Michael, Raphael and Lucifer? So… are we talking a family of teenage mutant ninja turtles?”
She glared at him. “Firstly, dumbass, it’s Castiel and Balthazar. Secondly, those are names of angels, not artists. Didn’t you go to Sunday school or some shit?”
“Yeah, like I paid any attention to that white supremacist bigotted crap.” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “Angels? Really?”
“Yeah, their family is super religious. Like, they have so many crucifixes you’d think they have a blood fetish.”
“And you know this because…?”
Jo did that thing where she gave him a look that was half condescension, half spite. He’d been getting it since they were six. “Because some asshat went off with his uncle and his brother all summer and left me by myself in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota. The Novaks moved in next door. They were all I had to entertain me.” Jo had a sort of look about her, one Dean knew very well. It could only mean one thing.
“So, which one didja screw?”
She blushed about twenty shades of red. “God, Dean! No one! Get your head out of the gutter.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” He winked at her. “So there’s no one you want to get with in this little angelic clan? Uriel get your heart all skippy?”
Jo shoved him playfully. “Shut up.”
————-
By the time he got home that night, he was exhausted. He was taking some pretty shitty classes this year; english, spanish, and us history were all going to kick his ass. Thank god for the garage. His school was implementing this system so that even the idiots could find a skill they could hone and actually do something with their lives other than prostitues and jail time. And working on cars was probably something he was just naturally engineered to do, he just kind of knew how to work ‘em.
By friday, he was tired and overwhelmed with homework he had yet to do. Thankfully, one of the seniors, Lilly or Lillian or something, was having a party and Meg had snagged some invites. All Dean wanted was some beers and a hook-up, and knowing him, he’d get ‘em. Friday afternoon, after school, he picked Sam up from one of his bazillion extra-curriculars (jesus, it was only the first week of school, did the kid want to kill himself or something?) and then showered and put on his favorite black shirt and a leather jacket. After checking himself out in the mirror for an appropriately short amount of time so it was still manly, he got in the Impala and drove over to Jo’s.
After knocking on the door twice, he just let himself in. He had a key, and Jo and Ellen were basically family. He walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, looking for a soda, when he received a hard smack across the head. He turned around to see Ellen standing in front of him, hands on her hips and looking eerily like her daughter.
“Ow, Jesus, Ellen, what the hell?”
“Dean Winchester. It has been almost two weeks since you got back and I have not heard word one from you. I thought maybe you forgot where we lived, or how to operate a damn phone, but thank the lord, you still know how to filch our food.” She glared down at him. “Come here, you idiot.”
She wrapped him up in a hug, which he comfortably sighed into. Ellen at this point was basically a second mother. He had been coming to visit her since he was six, and ever since he moved to South Dakota, he had spent almost as much time at her house as he did at Bobby’s. She was frank, irritable, and didn’t take no for an answer, or any kind of excuse for that matter. She was Dean’s favorite woman.
“My daughter’s upstairs. And please tell her that if she comes down in another belt trying to be a skirt, I’ll lock her up there.”
“Yes ma’am.” Dean gave a mock salute, then raced upstairs.
He knocked on Jo’s door, just in case she was naked or something, to which she grunted permission.
“JoAnna Beth, I do believe your mother thinks you to be a harlot, not a Harvelle.” He smiled, and flopped on her bed. She was wearing some jeans, thankfully, because Dean really didn’t want to deal with a classic Harvelle mother/daughter battle.
“Ugh, cannot wait to go to college and be as whorey as I want.” She said, pulling her low cut black tank-top even lower.
Dean groaned. “Please never say that again. I get strange punchy feelings when I think of you in college surrounded by men with roofies.”
“God, you’re as bad as her.” She said, throwing a sock at his face. “Hey, do you mind if we give Anna a ride? All of her brothers who can drive can’t take her.”
Dean sat up and raised an eyebrow. “Does she have a dog? Will she puke in the backseat?”
“Dean, she doesn’t drink, for one, and for another, why would she bring a dog to the party?”
“There will be NO DOGS OF ANY KIND IN THE IMPALA.” He said in what he hoped was a threatening and authoritative voice.
“You sound like Batman.” Jo said with a mocking frown.
“Oh, shut up and let’s go.”
————-
Dean had never thought Jo had next door neighbors. Their house had a road on one side, a small forest of trees on the other, in which Dean and Jo had been playing since they met. Turns out that forest was actually part of the property next door, and if you went down the street a ways, you arrived at a huge black iron gate. Luckily, it was unlocked and opened, so Dean drove the Impala down a long gravel road and stopped in front of the Novak’s home.
Which was freaking huge. A big white house with at least three floors and balconies or terraces or whatever and freakin’ columns.
Dean felt like he needed a suit just to sit on the lawn. He was perfectly happy sitting in the Impala, but Jo insisted he come with her, since Anna had said she would be a while and invited the two of them inside.
“Hey Dean.” She said with a smile that Dean was very used to, the kind of smile that said I-have-a-huge-freaking-crush-on-you. Which was very understandable. What? He was supposed to go through life pretending he didn’t know he was hot? Please. “Want anything? We’ve got it all, from lots of meat for Lucifer to tofu and vegetable chips for Michael.”
“I’m…good, thanks.” Dean said, looking around the massive living room with a giant t.v., a huge leather couch, and what looked like pretty much every video game operating system in existence “Anna, sorry for asking, but what do your parents do?”
“Oh.” She looked around and seemed a bit embarrassed by all of her possessions “My mother died when I was a baby. Father is the head of an international company. We don’t see him often, but he does buy us anything we want, so that’s nice, I guess.” It seemed like such a sad thing to say, but she smiled brightly as she said it, so Dean supposed she was chill with the whole absent father thing.
“Oh.” He didn’t really have anything else to say.
“Jo, would you mind helping me pick an outfit for tonight? I don’t go to parties a lot…” Anna looked down sheepishly.
“Say no more.” Jo said with a smile.
“Great! My room’s upstairs. Dean, do you want to wait here?”
“Sure, I’m comfy.” He said, slowly sitting down on their couch.
He was considering whether he should put his feet on the coffee table (he decided not to, since that would probably result in like three hundred dollars worth of damage) as well as looking around the relatively empty room with vases full of lillies or orchids or some kind of flower type things, when he heard a voice from behind him.
“Anna, have you seen my- Oh. You are not my sister.”
Dean tried not to jump in alarm, and kind of succeed, though he did make a bit of a yelping noise. Whoever this guy was, he sure could sneak up on a person. He looked up and- whoops. That was a lot of shirtless man standing in front of him. Dean was currently facing a guy with crazy sex hair that was still dripping, blue eyes that were unnaturally bright, and a lean yet muscled chest. Wearing only a towel. Little beads of water still trailing his body. If Dean weren’t so straight he’d probably have jumped the guy, because come on, he was about as attractive as it got.
“Uhh…” Oh good going Dean. Well said.
“Hello Dean. Apologies, I thought you were Anna.”
“Uh, no. Sorry.” He smiled as if he hadn’t just been memorizing the shape of the guy’s hip bones. Which he totally hadn’t. He looked up a the guy’s face, which was not much better, what with those eyes he swore could see into his soul. “Wait… how do you know my name?”
The guy in front of him titled his head with an expression of extreme confusion. “We have two classes together.”
Shit.
“Oh yeah! Sure, um…” Dean stopped. Who the hell was this guy?
“Castiel.”
“Huh?”
“It’s my name. Castiel. You were attempting to recall it.”
THIS was Castiel? The bookish nerdy brother Anna complained about? The one who never left the library? He looked more like an underwear model than a bookworm. And Anna had said he was still sixteen. No way was Dean older than this guy, he looked so old, and his voice was really deep. Like, in a made-for-phone-sex kind of way. Dean struggled and reminded himself that recognizing another male as attractive was very different from being attracted to said male, and, confident in his sexuality, felt able to respond. “Yeah, sorry dude. I never really pay attention in class.”
“Hmm.” Castiel looked at him, and Dean felt like the boy was using that one look to figure out every single fact about Dean and amass information on every thing Dean had ever done ever. It was weird. “Ah. Yes. I might have guessed as much, you often sleep through History.”
“Uh. Yeah. Uh, dude. Why the partial nudity?”
Castiel looked down, as if just realizing he was standing half naked in front of some guy he didn’t know. “Oh. My brother Gabriel’s idea of humor is not as developed as I would have hoped; he seems to have stolen all of my clothing while I was in the shower.”
“Wow, that sucks.”
Castiel nodded in agreement, and, hopefully to end Dean’s painfully evident discomfort, walked back up the stairs.
Maybe five minutes passed before Dean heard thundering footsteps race down the stairs and before he could fully process what was going on, a huge ball of fabric flew onto the couch, heavier than he would have expected as it fell beside him.
“What the hell?” Dean jumped up as the ball moved.
“Sorry, man.” Someone said, and Dean looked around for the source of it, before he realized that the ball of fabric was a person. Just, in a lot of scarves and some crazy-ass pants. The guy wrapped inside the fabric shook out his hair as he stood up, looking to Dean like some sort of hipster genie.
“Gabriel.” Castiel came down the stairs and glared at the genie. Thankfully he had put on a grey v-neck and some jeans. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Maybe not to you.” Said the genie, who Dean supposed was called Gabriel; which made him Anna’s twin brother, and suddenly all her rants about her crazy brother who was constantly hopped up on glucose made sense. “The rest of your underwear is in Michael’s room, by the way.”
Castiel groaned and stomped back up the stairs. The geni-Gabriel turned to Dean. “Who are you?”
“Dean.”
Gabriel’s face lit up. “Ohhh. You’re the Dean. The James Dean. Jimmy boy. Can I call you Jimmy?”
“No.” Dean said, wondering what the hell kind of high this guy was riding, or whether he just needed shit-tons of Ritalin.
“Too bad. Hey, you know you’re not allowed to bone my sister, right?”
“What?!” Dean said, choking on nothing as the short rainbow hipster genie laughed at him.
“Kidding dude. But she’s a pretty redhead, and I don’t trust guys like you. So fuck with my twin and not only will it be like you’re getting with me,” He paused for a moment to let that sink into Dean’s head, “But I, along with five other brothers and a crafty cousin, will seriously fuck you up.”
“So, basically, stay far away?”
“Four for you, Glen Coco!” Gabriel said with a smile.
“It’s Dean.”
And for some reason that made Gabriel laugh so hard he cried, as Dean wondered how the hell Anna and Castiel lived with this kid. Thankfully, at that moment Anna and Jo came down the stairs. Anna looked really pretty, Jo did her job well. But Dean was so relieved to get away from the crazy genie he hardly noticed. “You guys ready?” He jumped up from the couch.
“Yeah, sure…” Anna smiled at her twin “You coming?”
Oh sweet lord no.
“Nah, Cassie and I are marathoning it up tonight. All the X-men movies.”
Anna smiled. “Mm-hmm. And does Castiel know about this?”
Gabriel gave the single most maniacal smirk Dean had ever seen and said “Nah, but it’s not like he’ll have any other means of occupying his time.”
“Laptop?”
“Yes’m.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere on the roof, honestly I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Anna sighed. “Well, don’t blame me if he throws away all your candy.” She gestured towards the door and the three of them gave Gabriel little half waves.
“Like he would dare!” Gabriel called to the trio as they left the house.
By the time they got to the senior’s party (Lilith’s, actually. What was with all the freaky names this year?) Dean was so ready to lose all his stress in a red cup. And when he finally left around one with a gorgeous girl in the passenger seat, it only bothered him the slightest bit that her eyes were the wrong shade of blue. Not that he’d ever admit it.