Chapter Text
Every child is born with their soulmate's mark on them. It's usually on the wrist, but if it were to ever get damaged, it would just move to a different location. Scientists have been studying the phenomenon for almost a century at this point, but were still no closer to figuring it out, and by now it was really only the scientists that cared about why it happened. To most, it just was.
In the beginning, it was always just a blur, as if you'd smeared a bit of dark gray ink on your wrist. Only when you finally met your soulmate did it change itself into their name. Fake psychics made a killing, claiming to be able to read the name in the blur before it actually became legible, but with success rates barely above a zero (since all they could do was guess and hope for the best), they never stayed in one place for very long.
Even for the people who weren't very romantic, the idea of finding their soulmate, their very most perfect person in the universe, always held at least a small portion of their average thoughts each day. It didn't exactly help matters any that it was pretty much everywhere. Most of the highest grossing movies each year had at least a decently-sized soulmate subplot, and quite a few of the highest grossing films of all time were romantic stories centering around it. It was everywhere in television shows, and literature had been using it as the ultimate plot device since it had first been understood enough to write about. History classes in public schools would teach about the soulmate principle and how it had affected world events throughout the centuries. It was even included briefly in the sex ed classes taught to the older students (where the teenagers were taught to wait, even if it was their soulmate).
The soulmate finding industry was positively booming. Speed dating sites were some of the most successful businesses out there, since all you really had to do was meet in person for a few minutes, and if your mark didn't change, you moved on. Dating wasn't unheard of outside of soulmates, obviously, since there was really no way of ever knowing when you'd meet yours (and even, Heaven forbid, “if”). But the focus everywhere was always on soulmate love and finding yours.
Within the last few decades, even colleges were getting in on the deal, offering programs that let you spend each of your semesters at a different location, so as to have more of a chance of running into them. The best schools all offered this as an option, and that tended to make them more difficult to get into. But thankfully, Dean Winchester had lucked out and managed to snag an early acceptance letter for one of the best ones for the program, and would be starting there next fall after he finished high school. Turns out good grades and a lot of extracurricular activities really did pay off in the end.
Dean was one of those not-very-romantic people. Or at least, the front he put forward to everybody was. Inside, deep down where he'd only admit it to himself and his little brother (and okay, maybe Charlie that one time, but he'd basically had no choice), finding his soulmate was what he wanted more than anything else. Sure, he knew he was still really young, and didn't need to be thinking about it too much just yet (a recent study that Dean had actually bothered to read in its entirety had said that the new average age people met their soulmates at was 26), but that didn't stop him from daydreaming about it any chance he got. And this was the perfect chance, because they had been discussing this same story in his English class for almost a week now, and there were only so many times the teacher could drone on and on about the symbolism of the demon that was the soulmate of a trickster spirit before Dean felt like falling asleep where he sat, snores and all. Daydreaming was the much less noisy option.
She was only a few minutes into her latest spiel when there was a light knock on the door, before a very timid looking boy entered, staring down at his feet the whole time. He had hair that was dark enough to look black without being it, and his hoodie looked like it was at minimum one size too big. When the teacher motioned him towards the front of the classroom, he shuffled his feet as he walked.
“Class, we're having a new student join us today for the last few months of the school year. This is Castiel Novak.” She looked at the nervous boy and asked “Would you like to say a little something about yourself, Mr. Novak?” When the kid shook his head, she shrugged and pointed him near the back, where there was an empty seat next to Dean's.
The new kid, Castiel (how on Earth did you even spell that?), shoved his backpack under the desk before sitting down, staring through the desk like it was the next best thing to his feet. Dean couldn't help but stare, himself. Up close, he could see that the hoodie had most definitely seen better days, that the jeans had probably been there for most of those days, and the sneakers that were lightly kicking the leg of his desk were possibly white at one point, but the world would probably never know. The boy put out an air of wanting to disappear into the floor, and Dean couldn't help but feel sympathy for him. Changing schools a few months before the end of the school year had to be tough in general, but when it was your senior year (since this was the 12th grade exclusive English class), that had to suck even more.
Deciding that this act of altruism had absolutely nothing to do with how hot the kid's messy hair looked, and that amazing jawline that was pointed towards the desk's top, Dean shifted a little in his seat so that he would be close enough to speak to the new kid without being overheard by the teacher, who he was pretty sure at this point mostly just liked to hear herself talk. “Hey, I'm Dean,” he said softly, trying to sound reassuring while being quiet enough to escape attention and detention.
Castiel just shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This caused his unkempt hair to shift, and revealed to Dean the quickest glimpse of the most beautiful shade of blue he had ever seen in his short life. He couldn't hold in the amazed gasp, and then the blush that crept up to cover his face in seconds when the face containing those eyes automatically turned towards his gasp. Meeting the blue head-on made it difficult for Dean to breathe. They stared at each other like that for at least twelve eternities before blue eyes widened in fear and immediately looked back down at the desk.
Confusion filled Dean's voice as he tried to get the other boy's attention back. “Hey?” He said, still trying to avoid the teacher's attention. He reached over to try and tap Castiel on his shoulder, but the boy just dodged out of the way. Dean could take a hint, so he spent the rest of the class session trying to pay attention to the teacher drone on and trying to not keep looking over at the person in the desk next to him, and failing at both.
When the bell finally rang, Castiel was up and out of his seat and halfway to the door before Dean had even fully comprehended that it had rung. A few seconds later, he was out the door completely, leaving a stunned Dean Winchester in his wake. But as Dean reached for his own backpack under his seat, he noticed something different. The smudge on his wrist was gone. In its place was a neatly written word: Castiel.
'Oh,' Dean thought, too stunned to really think straight, 'that's how it's spelled.'
~~~
Castiel bolted out of the classroom the absolute second the bell rang, and managed to make it to an empty stall in the nearest men's room he could find before he really started hyperventilating.
What the hell was that? What the hell was that? What the fucking hell was that?
As he tried to get air into his lungs, his head was just screaming that over and over again. There was... some sort of connection? What the hell? Castiel had literally never felt anything like that before. Hell, he'd never even felt anything that came within a mile of that before. What the hell?
Castiel sat down on the toilet lid a few minutes later when his breathing started to return to normal, thankful that the bathroom had stayed empty during his entire panic attack. As he reached his hand up to his forehead to push the hair out of his eyes (he'd needed a haircut for the past few months, but had just never gotten around to it), he froze. The sleeve of his oversized hoodie had slipped down just enough that his wrist was bare. His wrist that now had the word “Dean” written on it, as clear as day.
“No...” Castiel whispered, right before jumping up and turning around just in time to get the lid back up again before throwing up violently into the toilet.