This is a high school AU, but not necessarily all human. Castiel and all other non-Winchester characters tagged or introduced thus far are human and with no connection to the supernatural. But that doesn't mean the supernatural doesn't exist. This fic is primarily written in Castiel's POV, as he tries to untangle the mysteries surrounding the Winchester family. As such, ideally I'd prefer readers discover the truth along with him. Is John delusional, manipulating his sons into believing the same or forcing them to go through the motions at least? Or is there more to the world and hidden in the Winchesters' past?

However, I recognize that we all have our preferences with fanfic, and that a lot of readers who seek out High School AUs prefer an all human setting while some readers aren't interested in AUs that don't contain supernatural elements. If that's the sort of thing that can make or break a fic for you and you prefer that information before starting a fic, regardless of spoilers, please PM me and I'd be happy to give you a definitive answer on that point, while still remaining vague on the details.

Content wise, this fic will deal heavily in themes of abuse and neglect, emotional health and recovery, as well as underage prostitution. The first chapter contains a brief but explicit scene of the latter, but it is not written with the intent to arouse and while there will be references throughout the rest of the fic, that should be the only such scene.

Perception is reality.

Castiel read that once, though he never could track down where. One of his father's books probably, before he took them with him and left his children behind. But whatever the source, the words had remained with him.

Say a man comes to a fork in the road and takes the left path. Is that fate, the outcome written in stone long ago? Or is it choice, a future that did not exist until he exercised free will? Only God can say for certain, but in the absence of omniscience, every man decides for himself. For someone who believes events exist as predetermined inevitabilities, fate is as real as it is mythical to the man who believes those same events are the unpredictable consequences of free will.

And so it goes. Time is linear, unless one views moments of deja vu as time catching up to intuitive glimpses of the future. Dreams are neurons firing haphazardly in your sleep, unless they're the universe guiding you via portents to heed when you awake. If God made man in his image, it only makes sense that men share in his drive to shape the world around them, each creating the lens through which reality as they know it is viewed and thus defined.

But as it is only natural to be protective of one's creations, man does not take kindly to having his view of reality cracked and broken, let alone replaced by someone else's. Wars have been fought over less.

Then again, maybe that's the only reason wars have ever been fought at all.

For Castiel, reality had always been binary. Black and white. Good and evil. Befores and afters.

Before his father abandoned he and his siblings, and after, when they came to Sioux Falls to live with Aunt Amara.

Before he told his brothers and sister he was gay, and after, when Michael tried to look understanding but failed, when Gabe drove him four hours to Minneapolis and snuck him into his first gay club and then lost him, traumatizing them both, when Anna rolled her eyes and said who cares but woke him at six the next morning and dragged him along to her weekly self defense class because South Dakota in 2017 was still South Dakota, now shut up and show me how you make a fist. When Luke said nothing at all, because Castiel waited too long to share that particular truth, because he didn't say anything, didn't even know until after the brother that hated their father the most turned out to be most like him.

Reality was before Dean Winchester, when everything was simpler. When life was good, even if not great, when shadows were just the absence of light and no mistake was too big to be fixed. When all questions had answers, all dragons could be slain, and there was order to chaos, everything existing within its proper place.

And reality was after Dean Winchester, when nothing was simple at all.

There were times, in the after, there were dark, shameful moments where Castiel wished he could go back to before, where he understood why men cling so desperately to shattered rose-colored glasses even knowing full well they can't be trusted to show them the world.

Where he understood how they could bring themselves to look away from suffering and pretend there was nothing there.

He hated those moments. Hated how they persisted. Hated that they weren't a demon he could exorcise, no matter how he framed them in his mind, altered his perception, tried to shape them into something else.

Because even if man is created in God's image, even if he shares some power of creation, some ability to shape how he views the world, man is not God. There are limits to that power. There's only so far reality can be bent to man's will.

Perception may be reality, but underneath it all, reality simply is.

On the eve of his first day of junior year in high school, in the last minutes before Dean Winchester, Castiel Novak's biggest problem was his terrible taste in friends.

No, truly. It was horrible. He wondered if his family were hiding some great childhood trauma from him, something to explain the brain damage he must have been suffering from ten years ago when he picked these idiots to be his greatest companions in life.

"Come on, Cas," Jo Harvelle whined, pulling at his hand. Her feet were planted in the dirt as she squatted, ass jutting out behind her, tugging him with all her strength. But while the blond's personality was best described as a force of nature, her small frame was still a good six inches shorter than his and physics were what they were. He wasn't stupid enough to point that out, however.

He briefly contemplated mentioning how unattractive her position was, because he wasn't actually a genius either, just a nerd who studied hard. But that would likely just lead to her saying something like "The day I need a gay guy to rate my attractive quotient, I'll queef a smoke signal, thanks, Cas." Or at least, that tended to be how it usually went and he'd never had the same fondness for ritualistic banter some of his friends had.

So instead he settled for simplicity.

"No."

"Caaaaaaas."

"Stretching out my name doesn't actually make your argument more compelling."

"Castiel!"

"Nor does adding syllables. You using my full name just sounds bizarre."

"What are you two nerds doing?" Max Banes asked as he climbed the embankment leading up from where they'd all spent the last few hours enjoying the last night of summer, down by the river. He flicked the beam of his flashlight obnoxiously across their faces, prompting Cas to raise a hand to shield his eyes. At least it forced Jo to let go of him to do the same.

Behind him, Max's twin sister Alicia gripped the back of his jacket, using it to pull herself up. Charlie made her way up on all fours with her usual lack of grace, while at the river's edge below them, Garth and Kevin were still pelting each other with mud.

"Nothing that warrants the label nerd," Castiel said. Just because he applied it in his head didn't mean everyone else needed to be as comfortable doing the same. Thanks ever so much.

"It's you two. You exist, therefor you're nerds," Max said in that languid way he said everything. He waved a hand lazily. "Descartes said it so it must be true."

"That's not remotely what Descartes said."

"It could have been. You weren't there. You don't know."

"Ahem. Back to the question," Alicia interrupted. Probably for the best. Max could keep a conversation happily derailed for hours and Castiel had a bad habit of enabling him. "Why are you two reenacting the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?"

"Jo wants me to go with her to the rest stop over there to see if there are gay hookers giving truckers fellatio," Castiel said blandly. Really, for as much as the others poked playful fun at his speech mannerisms, their choking, wide-eyed reactions whenever he delivered a line like that didn't provide much incentive for him to change them.

"Umm, Jo, sweetie? I say this with much love and adoration, but uh. What?" Charlie asked.

The tiny blond straightened upright with a casual hair toss and a shrug. "Well he won't let me show him porn and with college only two years away, we have to get him educated somehow," she said, not a hint of apology to be found. As if the words she'd just spoken were somehow reasonable. And not just off the walls crazy.

"Okay, but again I must ask," Charlie began. He decided her look was best described as 'agog.' "Seriously?"

Jo rolled her eyes. "I overheard some truckers joking about this place the other night at my parents' bar. I couldn't tell if they were full of shit or not, and we're right here, so I'm kinda curious if its for real and I didn't want to go alone."

"There's something very wrong with you," Charlie proclaimed. Castiel silently agreed, having been making that case for well nigh a decade now, but he was in no hurry to jump back into the center of attention.

"I'm in," Max said, bouncing slightly. "Everyone should see a hooker at least once, right? One of those life experiences no one should go without."

"Your logic hurts my brain," Alicia sighed. "How did we share a womb?"

"Yeah I'm pretty sure my life can be plenty fulfilled without that," Kevin said. He and Garth scrambled up to the trail, joining them. "Sides, we have school tomorrow and its almost midnight. There's probably not even anyone there right now, let's go home."

"What, like they keep normal business hours?" Jo rolled her eyes again. Castiel started keeping a mental tally.

"You do realize you're talking about actual people here, right? Not animals at a zoo?" Charlie said. Aggression levels were visibly rising and everyone else took a step back. The two girls were normally the best of friends, but given that their actual common ground began and ended with their mutual volatility and stubbornness, when they failed to see eye to eye it was like being at ground zero, followed by a nuclear winter that could last for decades. In teenage years, anyway.

Thankfully, Jo was in the mood to pick her battles and opted for de-escalation. She rolled her eyes again. Castiel added another mental hash mark.

"Yeah, yeah, I have no tact and could have worded that better. Like that's anything new. I'm sorry. But its not like I said, hey guys, let's go drive out to the highway and look for hookers, we just happen to be right here and I thought about it. C'mon, aren't you the tiniest bit curious if its true?"

Well. It contained the words 'I'm sorry' at least. As far as Jo apologies went, that put it in the top ten, easy.

"No. Because I'm not a total freak with boundary issues," Charlie said, albeit with slightly less forcefulness. The others all relaxed.

Max shrugged. "I'm still in. I mean, she's right. We're right here."

"Ugh." Charlie blew out an aggravated breath, having accepted that the rest of them were more than willing to leave any objections in her capable hands. Castiel would have felt bad but well, she was better at it. "You're going to make this a thing if we don't go now, aren't you?"

Then again, maybe she wasn't. Disappointment swelled like a violin quartet.

Jo shrugged. "Does that sound like something I'd do?"

"Yes."

"Then yeah, probably."

Which was how the seven of them ended up stumbling a half mile through the woods towards the rest stop, with just their flashlights and the moon to light their way.

"In case we all die horribly in the next few minutes, I want you all to know how much I hate you. May that be your last thought," Cas grumbled. He tripped over a tree root and plowed into Kevin.

"We love you too, Cas," Jo chirped from up ahead. Kevin shoved Castiel off him with a glower he could feel, even if he couldn't quite see it in the dark.

"Not me. I blame you for this too, dude. Without your total non-knowledge of all things Gay to use as a scapegoat, Horny Harvelle would never have figured out a way to bring up this little excursion gracefully. Why can't you just watch porn like the rest of us?"

"That was graceful?" Garth asked, bemused. Alicia laughed and latched onto Kevin.

"Well since you brought it up, what porn have you been watching lately, Tran?"

"Everyone shut up," Max hissed then. He'd been leading the way, scouting almost out of sight ahead of them, but now he spun around and brought up his flashlight to show his finger at his lips, eyes wide. "I think there actually is someone out there."

They all clammed up in unison and picked their way carefully through the underbrush as they stepped off the trail to join Max. In hindsight, Castiel couldn't say why he didn't protest more. Or why Kevin or Charlie didn't either. This whole thing felt weird. And wrong somehow, though there wasn't any single reason why. But maybe Jo's morbid curiosity wasn't quite so unfathomable after all. Cas could feel his pulse racing slightly as they all crept towards an opening in the brush up ahead, looking out upon the small rest area beside the highway, with a single, one story building housing bathrooms and an eighteen wheeler parked alongside. Whatever this emotion thrumming through him, flitting across each of his friends' faces as they all crouched and switched off their flashlights, it felt a lot like excitement.

Sioux Falls wasn't a place where exciting things happened. Sure, life is what you make of it, he supposed, but they didn't make all that much of theirs. They went to school, they studied hard, they hung out at each others' houses and played video games and watched movies, gossiped about classmates and complained about teachers. It wasn't boring so much as it was average. They were good kids, or tried to be, at least. Comfortable in their own little clique and never feeling much desire to crash the parties the more popular kids threw, no real urge to mix up monotony by getting into trouble. They all talked about life after high school, about going to college and getting out of their small town and seeing what the rest of the world had to offer, but it was in vague, general terms, not having much of a frame of reference to base their imaginings on beyond what they saw on TV.

So maybe he could understand why Jo wanted to come out here, why they'd all let themselves be talked into coming along. Maybe they all were a little restless, not discontent with the status quo so much as ready for more than what their usual routines had to offer. He was talking it up, Cas was aware, making this moment into something bigger than it actually was, like a rite of passage rather than just some dumb teenagers seeking out the forbidden. He knew that, objectively. That this wasn't bringing them closer to adulthood, was in fact the essence of immaturity. That they weren't going to be forever altered by whatever they saw past those bushes. But they never really did anything they weren't supposed to. They never really saw anything their average, small town lives didn't offer up in abundance. They were all either sixteen or seventeen years old, two years away from graduating and moving out on their own, and there wasn't really a single moment any of them could point to and look back on and say that's where they did something unexpected.

Their lives were pretty sad, Castiel reflected, that this was all it took to take them out of their comfort zones. And then Jo gasped softly. They all shifted closer for a better vantage point, bumping into each other with harsh, aborted whispers, practically on top of each other. Almost collectively holding their breaths, they peered out into the small rest area.

And Cas forgot how to breathe entirely.

"Holy shit," Garth whispered and Cas wasn't one for epithets but he was tempted to agree. There was someone out there, two someones, spotlighted in the dim illumination provided by a small fluorescent mounted on the wall of the facilities. Sickly yellow light washed over the two figures as the bulb buzzed and flickered. One, a burly mountain of a man that pretty much embodied every cliche ever invented about truckers, was standing with his back against the wall, leaning into it, using it as support. His jeans were around his ankles, a heavy flannel still buttoned up over a not inconsiderable belly and intimidatingly large shoulders and barrel chest. He looked to be in his late forties, the face revealed in the light being weathered and grizzled with graying facial hair that seemed like a five o'clock shadow that had stuck around a couple days too long. His eyes were closed and lips parted, and his hands were fisted through the hair of the man kneeling in front of him. Sucking him.

Cas thought his eyes couldn't get any wider, and those panicked feelings of wrong, wrong, wrong flooded back with a vengeance. For a moment he wondered if he wasn't so secure in his sexuality as he'd always figured, if he'd absorbed more than he'd realized of the small-mindedness that kept him and Charlie the only members of their school's chapter of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance. His family and friends had always been supportive, to the point where he'd never really felt this pit in his stomach before, this guilt like a rock in his gut.

But then his brain caught up and he realized it had nothing to do with being gay or seeing gay sex and everything to do with watching something he had no business seeing. Charlie's words about them being people, not animals at a zoo popped into his brain and he wished suddenly that he'd paid them more mind, because this was, this was wrong. He hadn't been invited to witness this, the fact that they were out in the open notwithstanding. And the unmistakable swelling in his groin, the way his jeans were growing tighter as his dick grew bigger, well. That wasn't helping with the guilt. There was no voyeuristic thrill here, just voyeurism.

And yet in spite of all that, he couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away from where they'd locked on to the second man, the one kneeling. The one…sucking, he thought, unable to play it off with a blandly clinical label in the privacy of his own head. The second man was much smaller than the other, much younger too. From this angle, he could just make out the edge of the man's profile, a glimpse of high, delicate cheekbones that only accentuated the way his cheeks hollowed in and out as he sucked. His eyes were open, unlike the trucker's, he could tell that much though Cas couldn't really see more of them than that, and his lips were stretched wide around the cock buried in his mouth. His hands were on either side of the trucker's thighs, braced for support. He wasn't so much bobbing up and down on the shaft in his mouth as he was being yanked forward and back again by the hands tightened in a stranglehold on his hair. It didn't look comfortable, it didn't look sexy. It didn't look anything like Cas had imagined it would, not that he really knew what he'd pictured, and it all just felt…wrong.

Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but here, but he felt frozen. Like his muscles were locked in place, leaving him with no choice but to watch and listen. In the still quiet of the late summer night, sounds carried easily across the rest stop grounds. The trucker was making strained, grunting noises, his rapid breathing clearly audible, while the younger man made sloppy, gagging sounds as he was manhandled around the older man's cock. Cas felt like he should be doing something, but he didn't know what. There was no real sense of danger to the scene in front of him, it didn't seem like the younger man was trying to resist or fight him off. Rather it was almost robotic, just motions without substance to them. Wrong, but not in any way Cas could put a label to, couldn't make himself feel comfortable acting, revealing himself. Maybe not even wrong, so much as…not right.

And then it was over. The trucker made strangled, shuddering noises, heaving above the smaller man and finally Cas was able to look away, avert his gaze as the man climaxed with a hoarse shout. He wasn't the only one to do so, but they were all having trouble meeting each other's eyes. Too afraid to move though, to make a sound that might reveal them to the pair of men composing themselves on the other side of the bushes from them. The smaller man had climbed to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Though he wasn't actually small, Castiel realized now, he was probably a good six feet, well built too. It was only when compared to the burly trucker still buckling his jeans back up that he seemed less imposing than he probably was when up close.

The trucker pulled his wallet out and tossed a couple of crumpled bills at the younger man. Cas flushed and felt the urge to turn away again, but the trucker was already putting back his wallet and turning to leave by the time he did so. It was nothing that they hadn't already suspected, it was the whole reason they'd come on this perverted little field trip after at all, but there was no validation to be had in seeing it confirmed. Just one more thing they shouldn't be witnessing. Their jokes from earlier all felt crass and childish. He shouldn't have come. He hadn't wanted to, but he still followed along all the same. He should have said no and gone to wait at the car or something. Or better yet, spoken up and helped Charlie shoot this whole stupid idea down from the start.

"Hey hang on, man." The voice cut across the background drone of crickets, rising over the slight breeze that rustled through the trees. It was the younger man, speaking in a deeper baritone than Cas had expected. Which…he wasn't sure why he'd expected otherwise, if it was because he'd been the one doing the sucking, if it was because he was a prostitute - and Cas nipped that thought in the bud and judged himself appropriately. He'd already been enough of an asshole just by being here, he didn't need to make it worse.

"We agreed on fifty," the younger man - the prostitute, an inner voice whispered - continued. He strolled casually across the distance the trucker had put between the two of them. His boots crunched on gravel; his pace was slow and unhurried, but all of a sudden the air was crackling with tension. Castiel knew he wasn't the only one to feel it. Charlie had his arm pinched in a death grip and he could feel Garth vibrating on the other side of him.

"You gave me twenty upfront, was supposed to be another thirty after we were done, but this is only another ten. You trying to cheat me here, or are you just really fucking bad at math?"

"If anyone's a cheat here, kid, it's you," the trucker sneered, and Castiel had never before wanted to do violence based just on one overheard sentence. It felt so vile and wrong to hear such a hateful tone from a man who'd just minutes earlier had the younger man in such a vulnerable position, engaged in…sex with him. Something that Cas knew, objectively, wasn't inherently pure or beautiful, that could encompass any range of emotions and aesthetics, but still surely deserved better than this. Charlie's grip on his arm tightened, and he belatedly realized he was leaning forward, almost like he'd been about to do something and that was crazy, he'd never been in a fight in his life, what had he thought he was about to do?

"You overcharged. Thirty's a fair enough price. You weren't that good."

"Still better than your wife, I'm betting," the younger guy shot back and Cas felt dread pool deep in his stomach. A chill crept through his bones when the trucker's face turned purple in the moonlight, stepping back towards the younger guy with fists clenching at his sides.

"Careful boy. That's a smart mouth you got there," he warned, and Jo gasped. Charlie was trembling on Castiel's right side, fingernails digging through his jacket.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," someone was chanting under their breath, maybe Alicia, he thought, and Kevin had his phone out, finger hovering above it like he realized there was nobody they could possibly call who could make a difference right now but lacking any better ideas. In the open space before them though, the younger man seemed poised and without a care. Cas made out the traces of a smile in the faint moonlight, his lips curved upwards.

"Hey, it's what you paid for," the guy said easily, rocking back on his heels. "Don't go getting buyer's remorse now."

"Or what? Gonna call the cops? Report me for stiffing a whore?" The trucker laughed, showing just how little he thought of that idea. If anything, the younger man's smile only grew.

"Nah, you're right," he said. "They wouldn't care. Which is why I'm just gonna help myself to this other twenty here, and you can have the rest back because unlike you, I'm good for my word."

He pulled a wallet out of his jacket pocket and held it up. Context wise, it was pretty clear he'd somehow picked it out of the older man's pocket before he'd walked away, though Cas couldn't picture how or when. The guy made a show of opening it up and pulling out a single twenty. He slipped the bill back in his pocket and then tossed the wallet to the ground at the other man's feet.

"You little shit," the giant trucker swore, and he started towards the smaller man, fists coming up. Max rose to his feet, shaking and uncertain. Cas realized he was standing too, but they both hesitated when the younger guy simply took a single calm step back and wagged his finger at the older man.

"Nuh uh uh," he said. His low voice rumbled with amusement and Cas couldn't figure out how in the fuck he was so calm because they were freaking out here, how was this not freaky shit, and he never swore but holy hell was this really happening? "Only way you're getting this back is if you beat the shit out of me to do it. And cops might not care about a hooker getting stiffed but if say, I were to report you for assault, give them your license plate number and say this is the dude who beat the crap out of me and left me on the side of the road officers…well. They might care a little more about that. Don't you think?"

The trucker froze, uncertainty working its way through his fury.

"I'll tell them you robbed me. Nobody's gonna blame me for teaching some punk kid a lesson for stealing from me," he said at last.

"Maybe," Young Guy shrugged. "Or maybe you robbed me. Maybe I can tell the cops exactly how much money is in that wallet, all couple hundred bucks, and I can show them where I put a mark on all the bills I carry, for exactly this kinda reason. Me being a young hitchhiker all on my lonesome after all. Maybe you gave me a lift and then took my money and beat the crap out of me, left me here. They might believe me, don't you think? I mean, unless you told them I was a hooker I guess, but then you might not look too great there either, huh?"

"You're crazy," the trucker said after a minute. Cas was tempted to agree. "It's just twenty bucks."

"Exactly," Young Guy beamed. "It's just twenty bucks dude. Is it really worth all that? I mean, fuck, I guess you could pretty much kill me right now and dump my body in the river and have your money back and I couldn't call the cops at all. But then they got all that CSI shit these days, so you never know, and really dude. For twenty bucks? That's kinda nuts, don't you think? I think you're a stingy bastard, but nuts? Nah."

"Fuck this. You're fucking psycho, kid," the trucker breathed. He picked up his wallet and backed away, almost like it was the guy a good three inches and a hundred pounds smaller than him that was the threat.

"I'm not disagreeing with you," Young Guy spread his arms wide and yelled after the other man as he climbed into the cab of his truck, revved it up and pulled away as quick as a gargantuan eighteen wheeler could manage. The younger man watched it go, tension gradually leaking out of his stance. He almost seemed to deflate, becoming smaller and even younger still as the casual calm he'd cloaked himself in evaporated until it was no more than the cloud of dust the truck left behind. He waited until the vehicle disappeared around a curve in the road and then he kicked some gravel in its direction and hollered:

"And its not twenty bucks, its the goddamn principle, you cheap motherfucker!"

Absurdly, Jo let out a hysterical giggle. She clapped a hand over her mouth in horror the second it slipped free. Too late, because the guy was already whirling on the balls of his feet like a cat, wild eyes searching the woods before landing right on their hiding spot. There was a moment then when he was fully bathed in moonlight, perfectly visible, face open and expressive beneath a piercing green gaze. A statue carved from silver, immortalized in the space between Castiel's thudding heartbeats. Time stretched out, lingered, whether in reality or just in Castiel's perception, impossible to say. But then the moment ended like all moments do and a mask slammed into place. A cold smile etched in granite, aimed like a dagger.

"Enjoy the show?" The man called out, and it was like his words were the starting gun to a race. They panicked like rabbits, all seven of them falling over each other as they scrambled back through the underbrush to the trail. Garth and Alicia both tripping and stumbling before Max remembered to snap his flashlight back on. Desperately panting and wheezing, they raced through the dark without stopping, without pausing for breath, not until they had half a mile behind them and nothing but crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl as far as they could hear. They slowed but still didn't stop. Still jogging, still out of breath, even moreso when Jo erupted again in giggles edged in hysteria. It was catching, contagious, all of them doing it then as they hurried back to her SUV. Exhilarated like they'd just escaped from something, though none of them could say precisely what.

It wasn't like they'd been the ones in any danger back there. Not really, at least Cas didn't think. He wasn't sure what to think. Wasn't sure what any of his friends were thinking, and he kept waiting for one of them to break the silence, for Max to make a joke, for Kevin to say I told you so, for someone to freak the fuck out and put words to how completely upside down everything had been turned in less than an hour. But no one said anything, not until they reached the car, and when they all piled in it was Garth of all people who spoke up.

"I didn't see any other cars back there, did you guys? How do you think he's gonna get…wherever he's going?"

Cas didn't know what to say to that. Apparently nobody else did either because the car stayed dead quiet while Jo turned onto the highway. It wasn't like Garth had been making a suggestion, wasn't like it was a good idea if he had been, but nobody said a word when Jo made a U-turn and drove back the opposite direction from home, heading past the rest stop. Just to see, probably. Right. But there was no sign of the guy, not even when they drove a couple miles further, all of them with their eyes peeled, peering out either side of the car without actually saying what they were doing. Because then they'd have to acknowledge it, have to admit it was crazy, that all of this was just…so not what the last night before school was supposed to be about. And they weren't going to do that, it seemed. Not yet at least.

He couldn't tell if he was relieved or disappointed when Jo finally pulled the car into another U-Turn and headed home. He wanted to be home, that much he knew for sure right now, wanted it with an intensity he hadn't felt since the first time he'd spent a week away from it at summer camp. Wanted to crawl into his safe, warm bed secure in the knowledge his aunt was in her room down the hall, that Anna was coming to visit next weekend and Michael the weekend after that, wanted to not feel so pathetic about how out of sorts and insecure he suddenly felt. We can't always get what we want though, someone was singing in his head, which was weird because he didn't even like the Beatles. But it wasn't like it was the weirdest part of the night, so whatever.

It was almost one in the morning when Jo dropped him off in front of his house. The lights were all off, Aunt Amara no doubt having gone to bed hours ago. She wouldn't have felt the need to stay up waiting for him, even knowing he had his first day of school tomorrow. She knew him. She trusted him. She could count on him to make smart, sensible choices, to be responsible, to not give her any reason to worry or think that he couldn't be relied on to make good decisions. Decisions rooted in the way he'd been raised, been taught, not in peer pressure or reckless boredom or the naive certainty that he was grown up enough to handle any surprise the universe might throw his way.

He didn't feel grown up at the moment. He crawled into bed, clutched his blankets around him tight, and in the dark of one o'clock in the morning, eyes locked onto the glowing LED lights of the alarm clock set for six hours from now, he didn't feel grown up at all.

Sleep was a long time coming.

The morning of Castiel Novak's first day of junior year passed in a blur. He kept waiting for that familiar rush of first day excitement to kick in - he wasn't enough of a nerd that he normally looked forward to school, but he was nerd enough that the first day back still tended to bring a rush of endorphins. There was a sense of newness, of beginnings, of potential. New teachers, new classes, new chances for this year to be…different.

Except this year was already different, no doubt about it, and different wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Cas overslept and was late leaving the house, so he'd had no chance to meet up with any of his friends before homeroom. Charlie and Kevin were in ridiculously advanced classes all across the board, so he wasn't surprised not to share any of his morning courses with them, but there was no sign of Jo or the twins either. Garth was in History with him, but the teacher assigned them seats. After the first six times she barked that there was no reason for Garth to be twisting around in his seat every five seconds to look three rows back at Castiel, the other boy gave up on trying to broadcast a message in Morse code with just his facial expressions.

So for Cas, the morning passed in a haze of faux-normalcy. The hours ticked by, masquerading as business as usual with no regard for the fact that nothing about today was usual. Maybe if he'd gotten more sleep, things would have had time to settle. Maybe he could have put some distance between his mind and his memories of last night. Gotten some clarity, some perspective. But instead he was just jittery and anxious, full of restless energy that had half his classmates ticked off by the incessant drumming of his pencil. He'd made more enemies by third period than he had the entire rest of his high school career thus far. It was probably a good thing his family weren't big coffee drinkers, even if his aunt's herbal teas tasted like crap.

By the time the bell rang for lunch, he felt like he was about to explode. He tore off through the hallways at a pace that had more than a few teachers raising eyebrows, given his usual reputation as a wallflower. Even with that, once he'd made it through the lunch line and hunted down the table they'd staked out as theirs since freshman year, he was still the last to arrive. The others were all already there, arguing animatedly as he slid between Max and Kevin.

"Have you seen him yet?" Jo pounced the second he sat down. She seemed to think he had a clue what she was talking about.

"Seen who?" Surely she couldn't mean…

"Him," she hissed, over-enunciating, like that had been the problem. "The guy from last night."

"Wait. He's here? Do you mean the trucker?" Castiel asked inanely. He knew that wasn't who she meant, he was just having a little trouble processing how she could mean anything else. She gave him the eye roll that deserved. He didn't even add it to his mental tally.

"No, the other guy," Max said. The normally composed boy looked as frazzled as the rest of them. Cas was betting he wasn't the only one who'd had trouble sleeping last night. "He's our age, man. Like, he goes here now, he's a new student. He had homeroom with Charlie."

"Are you serious?"

He didn't think his mind could get more blown than it already was, but what little he'd managed to wrap his head around after last night did not prepare for this revelation. For the guy, the…the prostitute or whatever, to not be older or in his twenties like he'd imagined or convinced himself but to actually be their age, to be a classmate. And every time he said the word prostitute in his head, he felt terrible, even if objectively he knew and had even argued with Michael that prostitution shouldn't be considered inherently immoral or those engaging in it should be treated as lesser. But it still felt wrong here, it felt like the guy they'd seen last night - that they'd spied on last night - deserved better than to just be labeled 'the prostitute' in his head.

"Dead serious," Charlie said, nodding, or head-bobbing, or some mix of the two. "His name's Dean Winchester, he just moved to town like a month ago apparently."

Dean. Okay, so he had a name to work with at least. Dean. Dean. That was something.

"Did he recognize you? I mean, do you think he got a good look at us?"

"Umm, definitely," Charlie said with certainty.

"We're not sure yet," Jo said with equal certainty. They glared at each other. Alicia sighed. Garth face planted on the table. Apparently this was the argument he'd walked into the middle of.

"I'm telling you, he looked straight at me and he winked."

"Maybe he was just, I don't know, flirting with you."

"First off, my gayness can be seen from orbit. How dare you. Secondly, it wasn't like a flirty wink, it was an angry wink."

Jo threw up her hands, exasperated. "How do you wink angrily? That's not even possible."

"Umm yuh huh. It was like this." Charlie demonstrated. Or well, she did something with her eye that Castiel supposed was her attempt to demonstrate. Max frowned and tilted his head, as though to get a better angle.

"That doesn't look like an angry wink, it just looks like you're angry because you have an eye twitch."

"Okay, so just because I am not practiced in the art of winking angrily, that doesn't mean that he isn't. I'm telling you, he knew who I was and he wanted me to know."

"Guys?" Alicia tried to wrangle their table's attention but their little crew did enjoy a good conflict. Hands were waving wildly, voices were rising and drawing eyes to their corner of the cafeteria, and then Alicia pounded her palm on the table until everyone shut up. "Guys!"

She nodded towards the door, and almost as one, they all turned to see Dean Winchester lounging casually. That piercing green gaze swept across the room, clearly looking for someone. Or someones, and the question of whether or not he'd recognized Charlie was pretty definitively answered as a cocky smirk spread across his face without reaching his eyes. There was dead silence while they watched him make his way across the cafeteria to them, in no obvious rush. Castiel couldn't help but think back to the slow, calm way he'd strolled across the rest stop towards a man bigger than him and much, much older. And then proceeded to threaten, or bluff, or blackmail him? Cas still wasn't one hundred percent positive just what the hell had happened there, but he had a clear enough image of it that he could hardly blame Kevin for gulping beside him.

No one bothered to protest when he dropped himself onto the bench next to Garth, seeming to feel no need to wait on an invitation. Not that anyone could have given it even if he had waited. It felt like they were all holding their breath again. Just like the night before.

"Nice weather we had last night," Dean said, as cool and collected as if he was actually talking about the weather. Cas chanced a glance around the table. Nobody thought he was actually talking about the weather. "Bit of a breeze, but still plenty warm even well into the morning. Perfect for a night out. You guys do anything fun last night?"

There was a chaotic chorus as several of them tried stammering an answer, but it wasn't really a question, and their voices ultimately all trailed off in vague, unfinished declarations. Castiel's heart hammered rapidly. He wasn't scared, not really. Not in the middle of the cafeteria. He didn't think Dean intended any harm, though to be honest that was more a gut instinct than anything concrete. But he couldn't tear away from the memories looping on repeat through his brain, replaying everything they'd witnessed. The way Dean had seemed so casual, so calm while still so clearly prepared for violence. The way tension had leaked out of him only once the trucker was gone, a tension Cas hadn't had any idea was there until it was dismissed. He couldn't help but infer that same potential for violence in Dean's casual calm now. It was there. He was sure of it. He just couldn't see it, and that was completely unnerving.

More to the point, judging from Dean's smile and the way he took his time with this…whatever it was, he knew exactly how unnerving it was. Last night hadn't been a first time bluff, Cas was certain. He was practiced with this. Confident in it. What kind of sixteen year old was practiced at using silence as a weapon?

"Awesome," he said at last, looking around from one face to the next slowly, deliberately. "So we're all on the same page here, huh? Nobody wants to do the 'I don't know what you're talking about' song and dance? Cool, cool."

He snagged an apple from Garth's tray and bit into it with a crunch. There were a couple of flinches around the table and Castiel wanted to laugh in that 'none of this is remotely funny' kind of way. Their hooker classmate was threatening them with an apple. He wasn't sure how anything Dean had done so far constituted an actual threat, but it did. There was a current running through the air, a vibration, an intensity that couldn't be described with physical terms but was there all the same. Realization crashed over him like a wave as he put a name to that intensity, a label to the emotion thickening the air at the table, congealing around them all like amber.

Dean was angry. No, more than angry. He was furious

It wasn't anything Cas could read into his posture, even knowing it was there. He hid it as well as he hid the tension that kept him coiled and ready to pounce. There wasn't a trace of it on his face, and how he did that, Cas really wanted to know. He looked like he was enjoying himself, like he was in the middle of a good joke, like his skin wasn't humming with it, and it was no wonder Charlie thought he winked angrily. He thought that maybe Dean did everything angrily. He wondered how many other people could actually tell. But there was nothing vague or aimless about this anger, it had a source, it had a direction, and both of those things were them.

And Castiel honestly couldn't blame him. It wasn't like he liked being on the receiving end. Wasn't like it was comfortable, like it wasn't freaking him out. But he couldn't say he didn't understand it either. They hadn't meant any harm, not even Jo. It was just curiosity. It wasn't supposed to mean anything, reveal anything. Wasn't supposed to be real. But it had revealed something, had revealed Dean, had shown him in the middle of something he probably never wanted anyone to see, to know. And there were no takebacks for something like this. They couldn't unsee what they'd already seen.

He was 'the prostitute' in Castiel's head before he ever got a chance to be Dean Winchester, and that thought honestly made Cas feel a little sick.

So yeah. He could understand the anger.

"There are three types of people in the world," Dean said at last. He ticked them off on his finger, looking around the table again. "First there are the people who think hey, new kid trades blowjobs for Benjamins, I should tell everyone I know. Or maybe not everyone. Maybe just one friend. Who tells another friend. Who tells another. It happens. Course, I don't think I need to tell you that if it happens here, with this particular thing, well, it's going to make my life kinda miserable. I hate when my life is miserable. It sucks. And then it inspires me to do things like make other peoples' lives miserable, because well, I'm a petty bitch like that. Nobody's perfect, right? But I mean yeah, you make my life miserable, I make yours miserable, nobody goes home happy, you know?"

Well. That would be the threat part, then.

Dean took another bite of his apple. Garth's apple. Whatever. "Then there are the second type of people. These are the people who mean well, I guess, but are also kinda assholes if you ask me. See, these are the people who see a thing and then think hey, I should tell someone, but like, a teacher, or the Sheriff, or someone who knows what to do here. Which sounds good, right? What's wrong with that? Except, thing is, those people kinda have to think I'm pretty fucking stupid if its just that easy and that's never occurred to me before. Those people might mean well, but not having a clue why I haven't done that myself and just running along and doing it anyway like that's gonna fix everything and I'm a moron for not doing it sooner, well, those people can eat a bag of dicks. All it accomplishes is again, making my life miserable, which again, makes me want to spread the joy. And again, nobody goes home happy. Sucks, but them's the breaks."

By the tight, pinched look on Charlie's face, she wasn't happy where this encounter was going. Knowing her, Cas was pretty sure she'd been mapping out a twelve step plan for exactly who to talk to and in what order from the moment she met Dean in homeroom and realized the guy they'd seen last night was sixteen years old. Charlie hated being thwarted. Particularly when she was thwarted in the pursuit of Doing Good.

"And the third type of people?"

Dean nodded at her and grinned, all teeth and no warmth. It was a little painful to witness. Partly because Cas couldn't help but wonder what a real smile would look like on that face. Partly because it was aimed at Charlie, who was pretty much the most genuine soul he knew. Nobody wanted what was right, for the right reasons, more than she did. She could be the best friend Dean never knew he was missing, and Castiel wasn't sure this angry, jaded boy would ever let himself find that out.

"Glad you asked. See the third type of people, they're my kind of people. These are the ones who know how to mind their own fucking business. Who don't butt into other peoples' problems when they don't know what's going on, who trust they can handle it themselves and don't go sniffing around where they're not welcome because they're convinced they know best and their shit doesn't stink. These are the people who know to let sleeping dogs lie, who don't fuck up my life and tell me its for my own good, and in return, don't inspire me to be a petty bitch. And this time, everyone goes home happy."

"Do you?"

Dean cocked his head at Jo, curious. "Excuse me?"

"I asked if you go home happy," she said, and Cas winced. It was said the way Jo said everything when she was angry or on edge. Like a hammer, like an accusation wielded as a blunt instrument, even if that's not the way she meant it. Probably wasn't the right approach just at the moment. "Didn't seem like you went home happy last night. So do you?"

If anything, Dean's smile got even more painful to watch as it stretched wider, practically a rictus to anyone who'd caught on to how fake it was. To anyone else, it probably looked photogenic. He made a small laughing sound, more just a short exhalation than actual humor.

"You asking because you actually care, or is that just your idea of a comeback?

Jo narrowed her eyes. "I care.

"Convincing," Dean drawled. "Careful sweetheart. I'm getting dangerously close to liking you, and that's never ended well for anyone."

"Look, we're just concerned is all," Charlie jumped in before Jo had a chance to parry and riposte. "Can you really blame us?"

Dean sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was nursing a massive headache. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Okay. Let me spell it out for you so there's no confusion. This isn't an afterschool special. You're not the plucky gang of misfits who are going to save me from myself. And I'm not a little lost soul who needs some small-town Angels in America theater troupe to lift me out of perdition or whatever."

"No, you're an asshole," Jo all but spat and Castiel wasn't the only one to sigh. Dean just kept grinning his smug, fake little grin.

"I know," he said. "It keeps me up at night. Really, it does."

Jo shook her head, sharp and furious. "She just wants to help, you dick."

Dean spread his hands beatifically, an expression of mock amazement on his face. "Great, that's fantastic. I want her to. And here's how you do that. Forget you saw anything last night, stay out of my way, and mind your own business. Three little steps. One, two and three. Uno, dos, tres. Shouldn't be too hard. I'm not even going to be here that long, I'll be gone by the end of the semester. And then you can all go about your lives and a few years from now, I'll just be a fun little anecdote for your college friends. Like hey, did I ever tell you about the dirty street whore I went to school with for a semester, like how worldly am I? See?"

"Nobody said that," Cas spoke up. It wasn't intentional, wasn't planned at least; it just slipped out. He wasn't even sure anyone else heard him at first, but Dean locked eyes with him and Cas soldiered on. "Nobody called you that, and we wouldn't either. None of us think that you're dirty."

Dean studied him for a minute. Long enough that Cas was tempted to squirm. Then he shrugged again and stood, tossing the remnants of Garth's apple on the table.

"Well then I guess you didn't have as good of a view as I thought last night," he said. "Tell you what, next time you wanna catch a show, book in advance and I'll save you a seat in the front row."

He stretched, arms above his head, fingers interlocked together. The hem of his T-shirt rode up, exposing a strip of his stomach, bare and tan. Castiel froze, not sure if he was better off looking away or not. He was fairly confident the other boy had done it just to see what reaction he'd get. He was still trying to make a decision when Dean dropped his arms back down and winked. It wasn't an angry wink, but it wasn't a flirty wink either, Cas was pretty sure. Probably it was just him still trying to be an asshole.

Not that he wasn't an asshole, or at least, that he couldn't be, it was just Castiel had another of those gut impressions. That there was more to this than met the eye. Like this whole thing had been some kind of performance, though to what end, he couldn't begin to guess.

"Anyway. This has been a blast, but I'm gonna jet," Dean said brightly. "Toodles, kids. Don't do anything I would do. Or if you do, be sure to get the cash first. Rookie mistake."

He gave himself a playful smack upside the head and sauntered off towards the other side of the cafeteria, picking out an empty table and sitting down with his back against the wall and his feet kicked up. He tossed them a jaunty wave as he watched them all stare after him, and then he pulled a small paperback out of his jacket and started to read.

"What," Kevin said once they all remembered to inhale. "The hell was that?"

"That, my friends, was a cry for help," Charlie declared. She'd pulled out her laptop and booted it up as soon as Dean stepped away from the table. Now she cracked her knuckles and launched an attack on her keyboard, an assault being the only way to describe the ferocity of her typing.

Kevin stared.

"Okay, that was meant to be rhetorical, and now I'm worried for your mental health. Did your head spin off into an alternate dimension just now or did you not hear the same shit the rest of us heard? That was a threat."

Charlie shrugged and kept typing. "It was a cry for help disguised as a threat."

"No, it was a threat disguised as a threat."

"Agree to disagree."

"No, no disagree. We are all agreed that dangerous crazy dude is not to be messed with, so that he doesn't kill us. Right?"

"Stop being so melodramatic, Kevin," Charlie sighed from behind her screen. "He's not going to kill us. He threatened to make our lives miserable if we made his miserable, and we can't be miserable if we're dead. Ergo, we are in no danger of dying. Words mean things."

"Charlie, hey, stop girl. Take a beat," Max said hesitantly, because they all knew how to read the signs of Charlie On The Warpath and nobody wanted to draw her fire. Or ire. It was a testament to how freaked out Dean had everyone that they were willing to risk it at all, Cas thought. "That guy was serious as hell. And he does not come across as someone to mess with lightly. He said butt out and I think he meant it."

"So was he right then?" Charlie asked, fingers still flying. "Are there really only three kinds of people in the world? Are we the kind of people who know something is wrong and find a way to talk ourselves into ignoring it? Is that who we are?"

"We don't know that…" Jo started, as gently as Max. Like Charlie was a horse that needed to be talked down. She put the kibosh on that idea fast, shooting Jo a glare that had her tripping over whatever word was about to come out next.

"Oh come on. Don't help if you don't want to, but I swear to god, if any of you try and so much as insinuate that there's a good explanation for anything that we saw last night, I will rabbit punch you in the throat."

Nobody had anything to say to that. She pushed her laptop away at last and shook her head. Gathered herself.

"Look, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't get any sleep last night," she said, staring down at her hands. "Every time I tried, I just kept picturing it over and over again, and like. The weird part is it wasn't the whole…the sex, you know? You'd think it would be, and sure, I think it fucking sucks that for whatever reason Dean was doing that. No sex-work shaming here or whatever but it sure didn't feel like he'd have been doing it if he thought he could avoid it, and that fucking sucks. But that wasn't what I kept seeing. I couldn't stop picturing how he'd faced off with that other guy. I don't know how to say it. It wasn't the way he looked, I don't think, or anything he said, I mean, that was all part of it. But it was just. It was like he didn't care, you know? He was just standing there talking about this giant of an asshole beating the shit out of him and leaving him on the side of the road and it was like it was no big deal to him, you know? Like it could really happen and the thought didn't even phase him at all."

Castiel looked down at his own hands. They were easier to face than the raw vulnerability inscribed on every inch of his friend's expression. Her words paralleled his own thoughts too closely and left him wondering how he looked right now.

"And then he walked into homeroom, and I realized he was our age," Charlie continued. "And it just. I mean. Have you guys thought about it? I mean, have you really, honestly thought about it, about what that means? Because I can't stop. I can't stop picturing how calm he was, how…hard he was. He was just standing there all alone in the middle of fucking nowhere facing off with this guy who looked like he could pound him into the dirt without breaking a sweat and it wasn't the first time, you know? It couldn't have been. Not with how confident he was. And just because it didn't happen this time doesn't mean it won't happen, or that it hasn't happened before and I honestly don't feel like he cared either way. And he was just standing there practically daring that fuck to kill him over twenty dollars, and I can't be the only one who can't stop thinking about that, I can't be. That's not normal, that's not…that's not okay. It's not even about the sex stuff or whatever, its like…how does someone our age end up that, that hard? You know? I don't understand, and I don't - I need to understand, I need to…to…there's no way stuff hasn't been wrong for him for a long time, not for him to be like that, and there's no way we're the first people to ever catch a clue that something was off but obviously nobody else ever actually did anything about it, or it wasn't enough and I just. I can't be like that. Maybe you guys can, but I can't. There's no way I can just forget about this and act like nothing's wrong when its so fucking obvious that it is, I can't do it."

"Charlie," Garth said, looking panicked. He scooted closer to the small girl and tried wrapping his arms around her but she shoved him off and hunched in on herself, trembling with the intensity of her rant. Garth shot desperate looks around at the rest of them, like they had any more of a clue what to do. Castiel sure didn't. Not when she wasn't wrong.

"It's not like I'm trying to be a bitch," Jo said. She reached a hand across the table towards her friend and just left it lying there when Charlie refused to take it. "I'm not saying you're wrong, and its not that I don't think its fucked up, its just…its like you said. We were all there. We all saw the same thing. And that guy…Dean…I mean, think about how he looked. Really think about it. He's dangerous, Charlie. I don't mean to sound like I don't care, but whatever fucked up stuff made him that hard…the guy is dangerous."

Charlie glared at the table and set her jaw. "That doesn't mean he doesn't still need help."

"I'm not saying it does," Jo huffed. She took a breath, visibly trying to calm herself. "But why does it have to be you? This isn't…this is big stuff, Char, this is so out of our league and I'm sorry that I don't want to be caught up in it, that I don't want my friends in the middle of it. You don't owe this guy anything. You don't even know him."

"Why does that matter?" Cas asked quietly. He wasn't sure what was worse when all eyes shifted his way. The hurt accusation in Jo's or the hopeful spark in Charlie's. "We should only look out for our friends? What if it were one of us in his place, is that what you'd want strangers to say? If it had been me last night, doing what Dean was doing?"

"But that's different," Garth said, shaking his head in protest. "You would never - "

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Alicia interrupted him, alarmed. "Don't even go there, Garth. You need to shut that shit down."

Too little, too late. Castiel's temper had already flared. It didn't come out often, but part of him was gratified to know that when it did, it left enough of an impression that Garth shrank back from him now. Another, quieter part worried at the surge of adrenaline that spiked. He wondered if this was how Dean felt, when he was angry. If this was why he stayed angry.

"You don't know what I would do," Cas growled. "None of us do, that's the point. We don't know Dean, we don't know why he did what he did, none of us can even picture why and that means we don't have any idea whether we'd do the same if we were in his situation. So you have no business judging him for - "

"I wasn't trying to! Aw, hell," Garth swore. He buried his head in his hands. His knuckles were white where they threaded through his tangled hair. "I didn't mean for it to come out like that. Hell's belles, I actually agree with Charlie."

"You do?"

It was hard to say who was more shocked. Not like Garth didn't have his own mind, but they'd all gotten pretty used to his eternal crush on Jo ending up with him usually siding with her anytime there was a split in opinions. He flushed, probably guessing where all their thoughts had taken them.

"Sure, I mean. Don't get me wrong, I think Jo's right too, the guy is definitely a badass. I just kinda think maybe he's not as big a badass as he wants everyone to think? Everyone keeps talking about how he looked facing off with that trucker guy, but did y'all see how he looked afterwards? He looked…I dunno, not like he was scared but like he wasn't sure that was gonna go his way, and he seemed pretty darn relieved when it was over. I guess hard is as good a way to describe him as anything 'cause he definitely is, but if he can be that badass but still be worried when its over? Feels to me like he knows best, and that means there's probably reason to be worried."

Jo slumped against the table and shook her head.

"This is so messed up. I'm sorry, but it is. It's our first day of junior year, we should be talking about classes and Homecoming and, and, normal things, we shouldn't be worried about what to do about the new kid…doing what he was doing."

"If you weren't going to like what you found, maybe you shouldn't have gone hunting for hookers then, Jo," Charlie said coldly. "And you should at least be able to say the damn words."

Jo jerked back like she'd been slapped.

"That's not fair," she said, sounding smaller than Cas had ever heard her before. Charlie thawed slightly.

"Maybe not," Charlie sighed. "But its not any more fair for us to just go about our nice, normal, mundane school conversations if last night is what passes for normal for Dean Winchester. Look, I'm doing this. You all can do what you want, but I'm not going to look at him in homeroom every morning and pretend everything is normal and okay when its not. Especially if he's telling the truth about being gone in a semester, because I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend the rest of my life wondering if the guy is lying dead on the side of the road somewhere. If I do that, I'll spend the rest of my time wondering if I could have done something to change that, and I just can't live like that."

"Okay, but what is 'this' anyway?" Alicia asked. "What exactly are we talking about here, do you have any kind of plan? You don't want to be just another person who looks the other way and pretends everything is fine, alright, I get that. I don't either. But what's the alternative here? Being the second type of people he talked about? We could go to Sheriff Mills, but are we sure that's not just going to make things worse for the guy and be exactly what he was talking about? Way he was talking, it sounded like there was a story there, like maybe its not the first time someone tried to help him out after all, but if it only made it worse then, how do we know now is gonna be any better?"

"We don't," Charlie said. She pulled her laptop back in front of her and resumed her frenetic typing. "Which is why first things first, before we do anything at all, we need more information."

Kevin narrowed his eyes. "Charlie? What is it you're doing over there?"

"Hacking his transcripts and any associated records I can find," she said briskly and without remorse. Jo threw up her hands again.

"Oh great, because that's not a felony or anything. And here I was worried you were going to start off small."

"It's not a felony, its a misdemeanor," Kevin said. He pulled out his own laptop, fingers soon dancing across the keys in a mirror image of Charlie.

"Whose side are you on anyway?" Jo asked. She frowned. "And what are you doing, now?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not on anyone's side because there are no sides. I still think the guy is dangerous and we're all nuts for getting involved. But its not like we're going to let Charlie do it alone and you're sure as hell not going to hold her being a bleeding heart against her just like she's not going to hold you prioritizing your friends over someone potentially dangerous against you. And I'm hacking the school database too because I already have a backdoor installed and I'm the better hacker anyway."

"You are not," Charlie snapped.

"Then why am I already inside?" He countered smugly.

"Stop it, both of you!"

They all jumped at Castiel's outburst. He was a little surprised himself, to be honest. Okay, he was a lot surprised. He was starting to forget what his normal reactions to things were.

"Cas? I thought you were onboard with helping," Charlie said. A glint of hurt flickered through her eyes, but he didn't let it phase him. Kevin was wrong about there not being sides. If they were going to do this, there needed to be at least someone on Dean's side. Even if he felt presumptuous for appointing himself to that position.

"I am. But we need to think about what we're doing here." He paused. Took a breath. "We weren't meant to see what we witnessed last night. It was clearly the last thing Dean wanted, especially with a potential fresh start at a new school. We didn't know what we were doing and didn't intend any harm, but I think he was hurt all the same. What you're doing now though is a conscious, deliberate choice. I agree we need to be better informed, but is this really the way to do it? Is this any less a violation, seeking out private information he has not chosen to share with us? Are we excused from hurting him just because we claim to be trying to help?"

"No, we're not," she sighed. "To be honest, if Dean ever finds out what we're doing right now, he's probably going to hate us and I think he'd be completely right to. But I don't see the alternative, and that's not an excuse, its just the truth. If I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell we could convince him to open up to us, I'd say let's do that, but we pissed him off before we ever met him and we kinda have a deadline here. Sorry, but I'm already in his records and he wasn't exaggerating. It doesn't look like he stays in one place longer than six months, like, ever. Him staying through the end of the semester was optimistic from the look of things."

He shook his head. "I still don't like this."

"Neither do I, but this is the only idea I have of where and how to start. If anyone has a better one, I'm all ears, but if not, its either this, or do nothing at all. We established that doing nothing isn't an option, so that leaves this," Charlie said. She spread her hands helplessly.

"Sometimes there are no right choices. Just the choices you can live with," Max said softly. He shrugged at the questioning glances that prompted. "Something I heard my mom say once."

Castiel contemplated that. Pursed his lips. Blew out a frustrated breath.

"We're playing God with this boy's life."

Charlie nodded solemnly.

"Yeah. Yeah, we kinda are."

"We don't have the right."

"No. We don't."

"And yet we're going to do it anyway." He sighed. "Let's hope we don't fuck this up."

They all took a minute to feel the weight of the silence that followed that.

"Okay, I've got some basics," Kevin said at last. "Here we go. Dean Winchester. Born January 24th, 2001, to John and Mary Winchester in Lawrence, Kansas. Has one younger brother, Sam, who's four years younger, looks like he just started seventh grade at the middle school over on Hayworth. Oh. Shit."

Castiel tensed. "What?"

"Umm. Just found when the Winchesters' nomadic ways started, is all." Kevin shifted uncomfortably, flicking his eyes away from whatever he was reading on his screen and making an aborted half turn. Cas had the sense that he was fighting off the urge to look back across the room at Dean. "Found an obituary from 2005. Seems the Winchesters were a white picket fence kind of family until Dean was four and his brother was, I dunno, maybe six months? Then there was a house fire, and Mary died. From the looks of things, John Winchester sold his house and auto shop and packed his kids up less than a month later and they took off. Been moving from town to town pretty much every few months ever since."

Uneasiness roiled in Castiel's belly like a serpent, slow and sluggish but filled with menace. He didn't want to know this. Could only hope that somehow, knowing this would help.

"They moved here a month ago," Charlie said, picking up where Kevin left off with her own findings. "The address listed on Dean's records is right smack in the neighborhood we locals oh so charmingly like to refer to as Satan's Butthole. John Winchester got a job at Howard's Auto Body Repairs a week after they moved here -."

"No he didn't," Jo interrupted. She'd been quiet ever since the rest of them had all made their intentions clear. He honestly hadn't thought she was even paying attention at this point, just sitting with them until they were done. She didn't seem all that pleased to be contributing now, but he supposed it was a start.

Charlie frowned. "How do you know that?"

"Uncle Bobby knows all the mechanics in the area," Jo said reluctantly. "He and a lot of the owners of the other garages in town all get together every couple weeks at The Roadhouse to talk shop and stuff. Including Pete Howard. Just last week they were talking about the uptick in work ever since George Shaw's shop shut down, and they were all bitching about not having enough hands to cover it all because none of them have made any new hires all summer. Nobody's even taken any interviews for like the last three months."

"And he used to own his own auto shop, so he's got plenty of experience and there's plenty of jobs, but the only job listed for him is a fake?" Kevin asked. "That's…not awesome sounding."

"Maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions just yet," Garth said uncertainly.

"And maybe we shouldn't call a spade a pickaxe," Max retorted.

"Okay, cool it guys. Let's…let's see what else they find before we get off track," Alicia said. "What else you got, Charlie?"

"Hospital records," Charlie said. She swallowed, paling slightly. "A lot of them. And some of them are really weird, you guys."

"Weird, how?"

"I was kinda expecting to find a bunch of broken bones, stuff like that. And those things are there, but like. Then there's this other stuff."

"Charlie. Spit it out girl," Max ordered. His leg bounced up and down, fast and consistent enough to keep the bench they were on vibrating. Castiel didn't think he was aware he was doing. "What other stuff?"

She dragged her eyes away from her screen almost gratefully. "Like, a little over three years ago, Dean was admitted to a hospital in Georgia, needing stitches in his right thigh. For teeth marks. Big ones. Apparently he was attacked by some dog, but any dog large enough to leave marks like that and with an established case of assaulting someone is supposed to be put down. But they never filed a report on where it happened or whose dog it was or anything, and they moved towns before the authorities could follow up."

"Okay," Alicia said uneasily. "That's definitely random, but why weird? Dog attacks aren't that common I don't think, but its not like they don't happen."

"True," Charlie said. "Except, not even two years later, when Dean was fourteen, he was admitted to a hospital in California and treated for some gashes on his chest, like big claw marks. His dad said they were out camping and he was attacked by a mountain lion. But I mean. How does one kid get attacked by a giant dog and a mountain lion within a span of two years?"

"What the fuck," Kevin mouthed silently. Castiel agreed, but he tried to stay focused all the same.

"What about his brother, Sam? Does he have similar hospital records?"

Charlie frowned as she ran an additional search. "Yes and no? I'm not sure. He's had his own share of hospital visits, but all for stuff like broken bones, sprains, stuff that's written up as him falling off his bike, that sort of thing. There's not nearly as much as Dean, though, and its all injuries that sound like normal childhood injuries like we've all had, so I mean, I guess its not as suspicious seeming? But then again, Sam's only twelve and Dean's hospital visits didn't really get frequent until he was like eleven or twelve, and the weirder injuries didn't seem to start until then either. So I can't tell if that actually tells us anything or not."

"Sam's a straight A student however," Kevin reported, clicking through several tabs. "Has been since Day One, top marks across the board. Test scores through the roof. But Dean looks like an average student at best, no offense to the guy, I just mean…yeah. He's lucky if he pulls in C's in most of his classes, and that's when he shows up at all. Test scores just below average too, high enough to stay out of remedial courses, but that's about all. Wait. Hang on. That doesn't make sense."

He frowned at his screen as though personally offended by whatever puzzle he'd suddenly been presented with.

"Yes?" Jo prodded him impatiently, after several minutes had ticked by. Nobody pointed out that she was coming perilously close to looking invested. "What doesn't make sense?"

Kevin threw her a half-hearted glare before redirecting it back at his screen. "Well, it looks like Dean has pretty much always been an average student, unlike Sam, going all the way back to middle school and earlier. But, weird thing is while his test scores in high school are all average and below average, in middle school he tested off the charts, right up there with Sam. Top percentile marks, easy."

"So he scored really high on tests despite being an average student," Jo mused, trying to see where Kevin was lost. "What, so do you think he cheated or something?"

Kevin shook his head. "No, nothing like that. That's not actually the weird part, its actually part of the point of standardized testing, which are the test scores I'm talking about. You know, the ones we take every year that we're not supposed to study for because they can't be studied for. They're not designed to test specific information you've learned, they're designed to test how well you retain information, how you process it, how well you apply it. So its totally possible to be an average or even poor student and still test really well, because everyone learns differently and sometimes kids aren't living up to their full potential because the way they're being taught just isn't working with them. Like I said, that's part of the point of the testing, to catch kids who fell through the cracks because of flaws in their education, see whose scores show they're capable of more than their grades reflect so that their teachers can figure out why and how to address that."

"Okay, so what doesn't make sense then?"

He frowned. "There's no reason for his scores to have tanked this badly in high school. You don't study for the tests so its not like he was more prepared in middle school, and since they're testing how your brain works rather than looking for specific information, it's not like his brain suddenly stopped working. Sure, the tests get harder year by year, so there's always gonna be some fluctuation, but this dramatic? There's no logical explanation for this much discrepancy."

"Unless it was deliberate," Charlie said softly.

"Huh?"

She shrugged. "Think about it. Part of the point is to identify where students' grades aren't reflecting the true potential shown by their test scores. Dean's an average student in middle school, nothing remarkable, but then at some point a teacher takes an interest in his test scores, starts to wonder why he's not doing half as well as he could be in school, see what they can do to fix that. Maybe starts asking questions about his home life."

"Which maybe somehow just ends up making things worse," Alicia picked up Charlie's train of thought, exhaling slowly. "So he doesn't want that repeated. And eventually they move again, start over at new schools, and next time testing rolls around, he tanks on purpose, makes sure his scores reflect his grades, no questions asked."

Charlie nodded. "What I want to know is: did his scores in middle school really reveal that he wasn't learning as well as he could be for some reason, or did they just reveal his earlier sabotage?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, was he actually an average student, maybe because he had poor study habits because of whatever was going on at home, and then his test scores showed what he was capable of and he started sabotaging them so he didn't have to deal with any more questions into why his grades are so poor? Or was he already sabotaging all along, deliberately keeping his grades average so as to fly under the radar, but he didn't account for the test scores being that important and that tripped him up until he started sabotaging those as well?"

"Huh," Garth said. He shook his head. "I don't get it. What difference does that make?"

"Sam," Kevin explained. He met Charlie's gaze and she nodded in confirmation. "It's like with the difference in their hospital records. They both live in the same house, with the same father, but there are clear differences. But are those due to their ages, or something else? Sam obviously doesn't feel a need to hide his intelligence from his teachers, even when it gets him singled out. But did Dean only actively start hiding his when he was a little older than Sam, around the same time he started getting the weirder injuries? Or was he already hiding it at Sam's age, and does the fact that Sam isn't doing the same suggest that there's some other difference between the brothers' experiences rather than just Sam being younger?"

"I think its the latter," Castiel said. Kevin raised his eyebrows.

"What makes you say that?"

He shrugged. "It's more of a gut impression than anything else. Dean just seems to be very proactive. The idea that he sabotaged his test scores to avoid attention, its as though its not just that he doesn't want or trust offers of help, but rather he seems to believe it's better if no one sees reason to make those offers at all. Like when he approached us a little while ago. He didn't wait to see what we would do or even try to get a sense of us, he wasted no time in simply approaching us at the first opportunity and using intimidation and unlikable behavior to discourage us from trying to help at all."

"Preemptive strike," Max said. Castiel nodded, and was about to embellish when the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

"Okay, look." Jo stood and planted her palms on the table, leaning over it to pin each of them with her most earnest stare. "I'm going to say this one last time, and then I'll let it go, I promise. I get that you're all going to do this, and so I'm with you. Like Kevin said, no way I'm letting you do it without me. But I have a really bad feeling about all this, and I honestly don't think any of us have a clue what we're getting into here. It's already weird and disturbing and you've barely gotten started. It's not like I hate the guy, I'm not a fucking monster. It's that whatever's going on with him, it feels like some next level shit and I don't care how bad he has it, if his shit puts any of you in danger, its not worth it. I don't care how that makes me sound, like, if we can help him with whatever, great, but if it comes down to a choice, there is no choice. So I want you to promise me that if it starts to look like this is too big for us, if there's even a hint one of us is in danger because of it, we pull the plug. Walk away. You can go tell Aunt Jody then and let the chips fall where they may."

Charlie looked on the verge of protesting, but she must have read something into Jo's expression, something lost on the rest of them, because she swallowed whatever she was about to say and turned away.

"Fine," she said at last, packing up her laptop and slinging the case over her shoulder. "It's a deal."

The others all made various noises of assent then, and Castiel wondered if anyone had noticed that he was the last to add his agreement. It wasn't like he hesitated on purpose. Or like he understood why he hesitated at all. He didn't disagree with anything Jo had said. Her concerns were valid. Why shouldn't she prioritize their well-being over a perfect stranger's? Why shouldn't he?

But when he stood to follow his friends out the cafeteria, tossing one last look over his shoulder as he went, his eyes met the hard green stare of Dean Winchester across the room. He was watching them, watching Cas, his face perfectly expressionless. Still lounging back, in no hurry to gather his own things, as though he couldn't be bothered trying to wade through the streaming masses and was perfectly content to wait until everyone else was gone. Maybe he was. Castiel didn't actually know him. Like Jo said, he certainly didn't owe him anything. Yet that thought did nothing to appease the guilt churning unhappily in his gut.

He wasn't worth them risking their safety or the safety of their friends, they'd all agreed. Objectively, Cas knew that was fair. Emotionally even, he knew that was fair. The seven of them had been friends for over half their lives, had seen each other through their own traumas and tribulations. They owed each other more than they could ever express. Of course they put each other first. He couldn't imagine putting any of them at risk.

Yet he couldn't escape the thought that in doing so, in acknowledging that, they'd judged Dean's own life and safety as worth less than each other's.

He wondered how many other times Dean's life and well-being had been weighed against someone else's, only to be judged as worth less.

He wondered if there had ever been a time when the scale tipped the other way.

He wondered if he could actually keep his promise to Jo, should there come a time when he had to make a choice.

And then he wondered why there was even a question of that at all.

There was a moment then, a moment that would haunt him for years to come. When he stared across the cafeteria into Dean's eyes, green as any serpent, narrowed above a flinty smile made of mockery and challenge. When resentment rose up to wrestle the guilt in his gut. Guilt for judging this boy as less worthy than his friends. Resentment for this boy making him feel guilty for placing his friends above all else.

There was a moment then, just a moment, when resentment briefly won.

It was the first time he hated Dean Winchester for coming to Sioux Falls.

Years later, lying in bed, Castiel confessed this to Dean. Bared his soul, unburdened himself of this final, shameful secret stretching back to the day they met. That he let himself hate Dean before he ever even knew him at all.

Dean laughed in his face.

"Holy shit, dude," he wheezed, propping himself up on his elbow and clutching at his side. "Are you serious? That's what you've been angsting about?"

Castiel frowned. "I just admitted that my teenage self blamed you for his own inability to cope with a little moral complexity. Even while knowing it was in no way your fault or responsibility. That seems fairly significant to me."

"God, you're such a drama queen," Dean groaned affectionately. "Cas, it was a confusing time for you. You needed a scapegoat for a bit. So what? Everyone does once in awhile. I hereby grant you permission to let yourself off the hook, yada yada yada."

He rolled over and aimed a playful swat at his ass before jumping out of bed. "Now get your sexy ass in gear, dude. Sammy and his new lady friend will be here any minute, and I don't wanna hear any shit from him about staying in bed until noon."

Castiel eyed the nearest clock. "It is noon."

"Doesn't count if he can't prove it," Dean hollered from the bathroom.

He lay there awhile longer, staring up at the ceiling fan as it circled lazily through the air.

"It doesn't bother you at all? That I used you as my scapegoat?"

Dean poked his head around the doorframe.

"Why would it?" His forehead was creased with baffled amusement, eyes dancing. "It's not like I didn't have plenty of experience with the role."

He shook his head and ducked back into the bathroom, so carefree, so casual, so oblivious, that all Castiel could do was pull a pillow over his face and spare a minute to wish he could make the world burn.