The Young & The Hopeless

A/N: Both titles are from two amazing bands: Good Charlotte and A Day to Remember, respectively.

As always, for my Benny.

Castiel Novak didn't like to be proved wrong. His professors knew it, his peers knew it, but for one reason or another—as he sifted through what had to have been the umpteenth million Q&A at this ungodly hour of the night—his textbooks hadn't gotten the memorandum. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Appraising the material didn't do any good. The probability of finding the square root of x was about as slim as his chances were of finding the winning lotto tickets in a McDonald's bathroom.

He leaned back in his crappy chair, drawing an exasperated sigh. It wasn't like he didn't like college. He wanted a decent education and a decent paying job just like anyone else, but more importantly, wanted the worst years of his life to be over. High school was basically sifting through voluntary hellfire eight hours a day with the beatings and the bruises and the low-blows and just when he thought he was one of the fortunate souls to decamp from it all, he arrived at Stanford University.

At least in high school he only had to outrun his enemies for a few hours at a time. At a university, a student has to pay to coexist full-time in the same breathing space as these twenty-somethings on his ass like clockwork. For a while he got by with concealing the more visible bruises with foundation—after all, he was getting picked on already for his "flaming" sexuality, so what was the harm he wasn't already enduring in using makeup?—but when the bruises turned into scars and his pockets were getting tight, he stopped using makeup altogether. He thought several times about dropping out of college, but he couldn't disappoint his brother Samandriel. He was barely getting by in grade school, and since his parents' untimely deaths, he could use a male role model. So a few beatings were hardly a pinch and time elapsed most of his wounds anyway by the time that he got to see him and his sister Anna in Minnesota.

Then, one rather fateful day, he met a man that changed his perspective on humanity altogether. With their soaring six-foot statures and relative fetish for flannel, it was hard not to know the Winchester brothers. The elder, Dean, was a butch senior and wore a gilded talisman around his neck. He wasn't exactly known for his intellect inside of the classroom, but outside he was a prodigy in martial arts. The latter brother, Sam, was just the opposite. He didn't wear a fancy necklace and he wasn't as masculine as his shorter brother but he was very much involved in school—almost as much as he was in the fight that went down with him Benny Lafitte, Castiel's prime persecutor. Benny was one of Dean's good friends so he had an easier time calming him down than actually taking a swing at him. Sam, however, despised the guy almost as much as Castiel and had hardly any hesitation clocking him in the face and shoving him out of the way of his prisoner.

That day, Sam Winchester not only saved his life, but stole his heart. Nonetheless, like the bruises and the scars, he was better at concealing his emotions than confronting them head-on. Following the incident, he spent more time around Sam than his own flesh and blood. Their agendas weren't too different from each other's, so this gave Castiel time to get to know Sam over various lunches, dinners, and the occasional study date for when he needed tutoring. Sam lived on the opposite end of the universe in nicer housing while Cas (that's what Sam started calling him after the first week they spent together so he adopted the name) previously resided in a dormitory on the corner of Bumfuck Central. Despite the atrocious distance between them, when these study dates became more common (and when Sam would come home after Psych more often to Cas sleeping on his couch than his dog Bones), Sam asked Cas to move in. He could still remember the night that Sam had done so. Cas was glowing with euphoria as he wrapped the taller man in a hug and snored just as enthusiastically when he fell asleep on his shoulder. Sam laughed and carried him to his spare bedroom as quietly as he could without disturbing the man's much-needed slumber.

The beatings stopped shortly after the move-in. Sam wasn't Chuck Norris, but hell if he wasn't intimidating at six-foot four and a jawline that could cut through titanium (not like Cas ever dreamt about the thought…). Most people steered clear of his presence just because they were under the impression that he was a monster, but the freshman new better. Sam was the most compassionate person he's ever come to know and he stuck out his own for the ones he loved. Sam was kind and Sam was gentle but if his friends were ever put in danger, Sam was your worst nightmare.

"Shit!" he cursed as he flung the thousand-pound book at the wall. He heard the soft click of the front door, but paid no mind. He buried his face in his hands. Cas tried to focus on the wallowing sound that his roommate's shoes made on the tile as he came up behind him.

"Long day?" he asked, setting something down on the table next to him.

He forcibly lifted his head and ran his hands through his already tousled hair. "No, I just have this restless arm syndrome that causes me to involuntarily throw things I despise at nearby walls."

"Unless the wall was talking shit first, I think that could just be a symptom of bipolar," Sam said with a light chuckle. Cas smiled. Even when he was feeling down, the younger Winchester had this way of shedding some light on his gloomy features.

He tucked a long chocolate strand behind his ear and leaned over Cas, one hand propped on the table. The younger boy inched his hand away coyly just as Sam inclined his head. Luckily, he wasn't close enough to hear Cas's heart hammering in his chest or the excess salivate sliding down his throat rather violently when he choked back the smell of Sam's aromatic aftershave. "Alright, if x is in the house and it's positive to y, the arc will always be above the graph. If x is in the house and negative to y—"

"—then the graph arcs below the y axis." Holy shit, I just spoke math. I didn't even need the textbook. "So the problem isn't about finding x it's about finding the coordinates on the graph."

Sam smiled and used his other hand to give him a congratulatory pat on his shoulder. "You got it." Even though Sam was a year above his grade and didn't have math in his curriculum this year, he had an impressive record for retaining information. In fact, he already took his LSAT's and scored a 174, so most of the time, when he wasn't going to seminars or hanging with Cas, he was being recruited for job interviews and part-time internships at some of the most prestigious law firms in Northern California.

"What's in the bag?" Cas asked, peering over his textbooks to get a better view. Cas's eyes, despite the dark stacks hanging heavy underneath, widened when Sam pulled out an endless supply of unwrapped Crowley burgers and potato salad.

"I kind of thought I would find you sitting here running on week-old coffee fumes. I have absolutely nothing planned for tomorrow, so tonight we're going to binge on red meat and potatoes until your math starts looking more like words and less like doodles."

Cas chuckled lightly, "What would I do without you?"

"Well you wouldn't be spoiled with all of this food, for one," he said, as-a-matter-of-factly.

"Shut up and start teaching, Winchester."

The sophomore grinned ear-to-ear at the comment. He picked up Cas's pencil and slid his chair closer. For the remainder of the night—or was it morning?—Castiel wasn't sure if he had spent more time studying logarithmic functions or how Sam Winchester was the most beautiful human being he had ever come to know.