This is a prequel/side story to my story You Can Fly and helps to explain Castiel's troubles.

The only warnings are that there is mentions of bullying, homophobia and suicide but if you read You Can Fly you would probably have guessed that.

I hope you enjoy.

I have always been a loner. I liked it at first. I learned to read at a very young age and was racing through novels while the other children in my class were reading the very minimum they had to from the books they were provided with. They would race out the classroom doors the second they heard the bell ring and would come back to class late while I opted to stay in over lunchtime. I would read or write; I thoroughly enjoyed creating my own fantasy worlds. I was never the star in any of my stories, I simply provided a place and a voice for my characters and sat back and watched the action unfold. You could say that my imagination ran away with me rather often but I just saw myself as creative.

As I grew up I began to realise just how different I really was. People would make a point to avoid me in the hallways or, even worse, they would step intentionally in my way. The latter was something that began to happen increasingly often as I moved through my school years. I hadn't made any close friends at a young age and had no idea how to make any as a teenager. Instead of trying, though, I lost myself in the worlds of my reading and writing whenever I could. I liked to carry all of my notebooks around wherever I went just in case I had another idea and had to write it down so I would never forget.

I remember the first time I was actually pushed. I hit my head off a wall as I stumbled backwards but, of course, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't think anyone would care. I didn't know it at the time but I had just told them that they could treat me as they wished and could get away with it. And they did. For years afterwards.

I didn't even tell my parents. The only other person in the world I feel close to is my father but I don't even tell him everything that's on my mind. My mother would constantly tell me that I should stop daydreaming and be a normal boy. I had no idea how to do that and so consistently felt like I had let my mother down. When I retreated to my room after dinner each night she would get angry and tell me to do something useful with my time. My mother knew more about the social activities of my peers than I did and was always asking me why I wasn't going to a party or some other gathering where they would supply copious amounts of alcohol and make fools of themselves.

I once tried going to one of those parties to please my mother but I felt unbelievably self conscious the entire time and the next week at school was even more unbearable than all the rest before it. I was ridiculed and hit and I secluded myself once more.

I remember when I first discovered that I was attracted, not to the girls who would date the boys on the school's various sports teams, but to the boys themselves. I hated that I found myself looking at them in class or curiously thinking about them. I hated them, why would I find myself attracted to them? I didn't understand it and kept it a secret.

That was until the teasing and name calling got worse. I would hear words such as, "Queer", "Fag" and "Gayboy" hurled at me with malicious intent. The smirks and sneers on all of their faces when I finally reacted how they wanted just made me even angrier.

My parents were called into the school so that the Prinicipal could discuss my outburst in the hallway. I remember sitting outside the office with my head in my hands thinking only of how I have once again let my mother down. The car journey home after that meeting was endured in stony silence; I was too scared to make any kind of noise and so the tears fell down my face but my sobs were subsided. When we arrived home I was escorted into the living room and my mother sat me on the couch. She stood over me as my father sat far off to the side in his armchair with a pensieve look on his face.

When I looked into my mother's face all I saw was anger and disappointment. She appeared to be shaking with what I assumed was suppressed rage but when she opened her mouth, her voice was steady.

"Is it true?" I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I had no idea what she meant. What did she want to know?

"Is what true, mother?" I asked with a shaky, quiet voice.

"You know what?" Her voice was getting stronger and louder.

"I do not." I protested. She heaved a great sigh and the next words out of her mouth were louder than ever before.

"Are you a fag?" and I felt like I had been slapped. I wanted to jump up and recreate my performance in school but feared that it would only make things worse. Instead I calmly said,

"I am attracted to boys and not girls, yes, mother." My mother looked as though she was going to cry. She covered her mouth with her hand and I saw a tear fall. I almost felt sorry for her until she told me to leave.

It was then that my father interjected. He stood up and told my mother she was out of line and she should apologise and a shouting match ensued. I slipped away in the middle of it all and hid in my room. I heard the shouting stop a few minutes later and my father entered my room. He opened my wardrobe and removed a bag. He told me to pack my clothes and that we were leaving.

That was 6 months ago. We spent the next two weeks after that in a horrible motel room searching for a place to live. My father finally moved us halfway across the country. Every day I felt more guilty than I had the day before. My father had left behind his entire life for me. He had abandoned his wife, quit his job and moved across the country for my benefit. He couldn't get a job even though he spent the majority of his time looking for one and I spent the majority of my time in my room. I felt unable to function most days. I felt tired always and just...broken.

A change in school hadn't helped me in the slightest. I wasn't bullied here, of course, no one knew me yet and I didn't seem to be worth anyone's time. There was only one thing that seemed to keep me going and that was the wild fantasy that one day I would graduate high school on my way to university and I could look out into the crowd and see my father and my boyfriend smiling back at me. But that was never going to happen.

One Sunday I spent the entire night perfecting my note. I had to apologise to my father but explain to him that he could go back to my mother and they could start over. He wouldn't have to worry about money or me. I had to explain that he had done all he could and that none of it was his fault. A few tears fell onto the paper but that was unavoidable. They weren't regret or fear. They were a strange kind of relief. I folded the note up and put it in my pocket on Monday morning.

I had to brave one last day at school to pick up all my things and to empty my locker. I couldn't leave the note at home in case my father found it during the day. I doubted he would go into my room but I couldn't take the risk. If he found it, he would try to talk me out of it.

That was the day that someone spoke to me for the first time. Dean Winchester. I could not pick out a single flaw in his appearance and had felt a certain attraction to him since the beginning of the year but he was part of a very popular group and there was no way he would take an interest in me. Yet, here he was, sitting beside me in History and asking if I would meet him after school. I was stunned and unbelievably excited.

There was no way this beautiful boy could possible be interested in me. Was there? Well, apparently there was. I had no idea what I was doing when I went with him after school. This was completely out of character for me but I just couldn't seem to say no to him. I couldn't believe what was happening while we ate and we talked and I felt my stomach flutter and my heart beat faster and my head feel lighter.

I slept that night. I slept for a solid 8 hours with a smile on my face and only dreaming of one face.