Chapter Text
Wednesday, September 13, 1995
Castiel Novak was once told by someone that he was comparable to the wind on a cold day — unafraid to crash into anything and throw the entire world off balance in a bout of shivers and cloudy breath. And that someone was right. He had the ability to crash into everyone he was avoiding, and avoid everyone he wanted to crash into. And when he crashed, he fell. Often in a flurry of ripped paper, spilt coffee, and a pair of very scratched glasses. Truman High School Varsity Jackets would fade out from the dying breeze as finished summer reports would float to the ground in a new failed grade alongside a wheezy breath let out in finality of energy found in a now-spilled cup of coffee.
Castiel pushed himself off of the waxed floor and rubbed his eyes, blinking into a fuzzy, double-visioned mass of colors. They knocked him to and fro, and he was soon on the floor once again, right beside the dark spill of coffee trickling closer to him. He tightened his hands on the floor around him, scrambling to find his black glasses in a jungle of black leggings and black sneakers. He was useless without them.
‘Hey, Novak.’ A pair of bright red and green shoes appeared at Castiel’s knees. ‘Looking for these?'
Before he could respond, the heavy frame was shoved onto his face, and two hard blinks revealed the two colored shoes to be a pair of converse, sporting the Joker from D.C. — classic comics. Castiel dropped his head, sighed, and nodded.
‘Hey, Charlie.'
A pale hand yanked him up, bringing him to see above her red hair. Charlie clicked her heels together as he straightened his frames and dusted his pants off. The rushing current of students was starting to diminish as the classroom doors started closing one but one. The two ignored the diaspora.
‘You like them? They were on sale for like thirty bucks when I was in Florida on vacation. I think they’re limited —‘
She was cut off by the monotonous blare of the bell: the signal of the official start of first semester. Castiel snapped his gaze around the empty corridor — first day of junior year, and he was already late for class.
‘Aw, shit…’ He rubbed his eyes and fell to his knees for a third time, sweeping his arms around the trampled, stained, and torn papers around him and shuffling them up. ‘First day and I’m already going to have a failing grade… I didn’t get any sleep last night, I’m already late to class, and now I’m going to get an F on a report I worked on for two –' Charlie reached out and steadied his shaking hands. Arctic blue eyes rose to meet ash grey ones and she took the stack of paper from him.
‘Hey, breathe. It’s only the first day of Junior year. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just the beginning of the semester. And these lab reports,’ she fanned through the papers and snapped them straight, ‘Look fine to me. You just gotta… air them out from the coffee stink. You never get any sleep anyway, and you can always get coffee from the cafeteria during your frees–‘
‘I don’t have any free periods this semester.'
‘How is that even… never mind, then during my frees, or whatever. Besides, I don’t see what’s so good about that rare coffee you drown yourself in anyway. It’s too bitter.' She took a piece of graphing paper and mopped the cold coffee trailing on the floor. ‘What’s it even called? Celestial coffee...'
‘Holy Mountain’s Chromatic Coffee.'
‘Yeah, Chromatic Mountain’s too-bitter-for-the-soul coffee.’ She grinned as she took a long-shot of the sullied paper into a trash bin. ‘And who cares if you’re late? It’s the first day of school. So what? Just tell them you got lost or something.’ She held her hand out again to Castiel, smiling, and pulled him back to his feet. ‘Now, keep your things in your bag from now on, and take your inhaler – you’re breathing like Darth Vader.’
She shoved the papers into his chest and held out a stone blue inhaler. It was Castiel’s – it must have been kicked away in his fall when he couldn't see. He took it in gratitude and breathed in a deep puff of the medicine.
‘See? Already better.’
He nodded and reached out his hand to ruffle her short hair. She ducked away, laughing.
‘Alright, not that much!’ He gave a toothless smile.
‘What would I do without you, Charles?’ She shrugged and they started walking down the hall, looking left and right at the large numbers on closed doors.
‘Well, for starters, you’d still be on the floor.’ Castiel laughed aloud at that.
‘Which brings me to another question… How have you not decided to just leave me yet?'
‘Oh come on, I knew you in eighth grade in your ‘dark’ phase. Compared to then, you’re like an angel now.’
Charlie was Castiel’s oldest and (of course) only friend. They had known each other since seventh grade when she moved in as a new student. She was placed in his English class — one of the few classes that he earned an 80 average for his final card, which was much lower than average for a Novak. When they got paired for a character evaluation project, Castiel had no say in the choice of the evaluation of each member of The Fantastic Four. And when he informed her that he in fact didn’t even know who Stan Lee was, he was immediately pulled into the world of Comic Books, Superheroes, and the ever-going battle between Marvel Comics and D.C.. And when he didn’t know who Harvey was, or why Peter Parker was a man of Spiders, he was sat down for lesson after lesson of 'the history of Marvel, D.C., and Image', with theories, pairings, and storylines – the whole nine yards. By the time the last lesson about 'Rogers and Barnes' had [finished], it was the summer before eighth grade, the year that Castiel painted his fingernails black and tried (and failed) to straighten his thick hair. But by then, Charlie had deemed her pop-culture teachings to be satisfactory, and they stayed friends. Years passed, eighth, ninth, tenth grade, and now, on the first day of Junior Year, they were still friends, walking down the empty halls, counting numbers on plates and minutes on the clock.
‘FUCK!'
They had reached the end of the hall when Charlie jumped. 'Room 304… I’m on the bottom floor! That’ll put three more minutes on my record!'
Although she was practiced in coaxing Castiel out of perpetual fear of a D-, Charlie often forgot about her own affairs. She was always too busy helping others, and the next thing she knew, she was going to be ten minutes late for a class she almost failed in Sophomore year, with a teacher she almost put in the hospital in Freshman year – on accident, of course.
‘Bye, Charlie!’ Castiel called, ‘And those shoes really do fit you!' A distant ‘Vulcan' sign was flashed and Charlie rounded the corner. Castiel now stood alone in front of room 304: Chemistry with Ms. Celeste, a strict woman with controlling tendencies. He wiped his glasses on his sweater and traced over the pearl-white rims before fitting them back on his nose with two fingers.
He pushed the door open with a loud creak (courtesy of the rusty hinges), which announced Castiel’s arrival into a room of pure silence. He could feel the entire class drag their eyes to his tense stance, one hand on the door handle and the other gripping the stained papers of his summer report. The door creaked shut at his push, welcoming the pure quiet at his back. He was reluctant to turn to the stern look that presented Ms. Celeste. Her Steel gray eyes sharply pointed a question at him without her even asking it out loud, and he tried not to trip over his tongue to get the answer out.
‘Uhh, I was… I was, uh, In the hallway. Something... spilled…' He scratched the back of his neck and started toward an empty seat, but an overly-calm voice halted him before he could get very far.
‘And what makes you think that excuses you, Mr… Novak?’ She spoke the name as if it were a bitter aftertaste. Castiel instantly connected the expression with his older brother Gabriel, and could only imagine what he put her through to give his younger brother a reputation before an impression.
‘Uhh…’ He squeezed his eyes as Charlie’s voice came back to him in the hallway. ‘Uh, well, I just thought, that since it was the first say and all, and I haven’t ever really explored this part of the school…’ A light tsk hitched his words as Ms. Celeste walked back and forth in front of him, hands behind her back. The entire class’s attention was trained on the two of them, and Castiel nearly winced as he saw two variety jacket hanging on chairs in the back of the room. He was never going to forget this.
‘A student who thinks he can just… ‘get away,’ hmm?'
‘Oh, no–'
‘And talk out of turn? I see...'
‘I– I really think you might be confusing me with my older brother–'
‘You’re not making a very good impression, Mr. Novak, and you know it.'
‘Really–'
‘I strongly suggest you try to amend that by quietly making your way to your seat and keeping that smart mouth of yours closed until you are out of my classroom, Novak.’
Castiel shut his mouth in defeat and tripped his way to his seat, dropping his summer reports on his desk. The dirty bootmarks and coffee stains were now extremely visible to him. His eyes snapped back up to Ms. Celeste at the front of the room, who was now scanning the rows with her arms crossed. All the students had finally brought their unwelcome attention away from Castiel, waiting for Ms. Celeste to give some sort of instruction.
Unfortunately, they weren’t as lucky.
‘It’s such a shame, too, that even our new student to this school came before Mr. Novak – they didn’t properly meet each other.’ Castiel's head shot up with newfound attention. The last time they got a new student in their class was Charlie in sixth grade. And that evidently went far.
He couldn’t help blurting out in excitement.
‘A new–‘ But Ms. Celeste caught him in his words and snapped him back.
‘I thought I told you to keep that mouth closed!’ Damn. Castiel glared at her as he stopped talking, and started to glance silently around.
‘Eyes at the front!’ She picked up a clipboard and started ticking off marks of attendance, most likely. ‘It’s not the new student’s nor my fault that you came late, but we have to move on now…’ She turned to the board at the front with a glance at Castiel, slumped in his seat and looking at her from over his glasses.
The rest of class was silent through a simple biology review worksheet, occasionally interrupted by ‘Eyes on your own paper, Novak!’ and ‘Up at the front, Novak!’ Castiel made a note to ask Gabriel – or ‘Gabe’, as he insisted – what the hell kind of atrocities he committed on this poor teacher for her to inherently hate him so much. He supposed, though, he wasn’t helping his own case by turning around with every chance he thought he could get. The whole ‘new student’ idea had him twisting in restless curiosity.
When there were only five minutes left in class, Castiel got his chance to fulfill his wondering. Ms. Celeste seemed to have gotten bored with her intimidation agenda, and was sitting at her desk, reading a documentary on what seemed to be the "Discipline of The Delinquent Mind". She had her head propped up in her left hand, passive to the business of the class. Castiel scribbled the last problem in and dropped his pen to the desk, letting it clatter on the plastic. Ms. Celeste didn’t look up. He slowly turned in his chair, scanning right, left, behind…
Castiel squinted his eyes. Was she lying to just humiliate him? He swept the room again, just happening to be in the dead center of everybody. Right-front, left-front, immediate-right, immediate-left, back-right, back-left...
And that when he saw him.
Sitting in the far left corner of the room, next to the two Varsity Jackets, was a sight to be seen for Truman High School. There was a broad boy with his legs splayed out from under his desk, bent casually. He had bright red hair flipped up and cropped close, yet his natural hair weaved up into the cherry color. An over-worn, over-sized, dark leather jacket hung on the boy’s Offspring t-shirt, and his entire left sleeve was decorated in pins of many bands, souvenirs, and what Castiel thought was a comic. Ripped jeans hung over wide hips and combat boots with dull, rusty studs down the spines. The boy was playing with two black spider bites on the left side of his bottom lip, which was scabbed and chewed. A full corkscrew ran up his right ear, which, along with any other skin that showed, was the dance floor for hundreds of delicate freckles. His features were big and drew attention, but he looked like the kind of person that didn’t want it. Even so, Castiel glanced up to these apple-green eyes that were fixed on… Castiel himself.
Castiel snapped back to the front at the toneless bell and shoved his things into his bag. He looked around as he joined the crowd of kids with dropped schedules and hall passes, but as soon as he saw the red-haired boy, he mixed into the crowd. Castiel took a deep breath, wiped his eyes under his glasses, and walked straight into Charlie.
‘Easy there, Tiger,’ she laughed as she brushed past him, ‘Blush, much?’ Castiel felt his face heat up even further as he realized his cheeks were probably as red as that boy’s hair. He shook his head and hurried on to History.
The rest of the week was full of Varsity Jackets knocking Castiel to the floor, puffs of his inhaler, and that red-haired boy. By the end of that Wednesday, Castiel realized that there were in almost all the same core classes except Math. On Thursday, he got seated next to red-hair in English. Castiel offered him a word – 'hello' – and the boy didn’t give one back. By Friday, he heard the name ‘Dean Winchester’ three times in the hall and twice in class attendances, and automatically associated such a name with the boy. By the walk home that afternoon with Charlie, she half-jokingly declared that he was in love.
‘Shut up,’ he pushed her lightly, just a bit closer to the curb. ‘I’ve never even talked to him, okay? He’s just a new student.'
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she shoved back, ‘You’re not the only one. By lunch yesterday, every girl with the letter ‘A’ in her name was fixed on him.'
‘What? Really?'
‘Ha! Got ya!’ Castiel rolled his eyes.
‘Oh, so you take a liking to him then, Charlie?'
‘Hah, not a chance,’ she scoffed, ‘Unlike you, I’m comfortable with who I wanna bang. I’m waiting for my Ginger Spice!’ Castiel kicked at a rock in front of him and laughed.
‘Yeah, well...'
‘And, well, you still want to get with Cherry Bomb back there.'
‘I do not! I told you, he’s been around for like a day, I barely know his name and haven’t even talked to him. No way.'
‘’No way’ my ass.'
‘And, if what you said is true about every girl trailing after him, then I wouldn’t have a chance with him, even if I did like him. Which. I. Don’t.’ Charlie slung her arm over his shoulder.
‘Ahhh, the adventures of the hopeful lesbian and the hopeless p…. what is it?'
‘Pansexual Homoromantic.'
‘Yeah, that… what an odd couple we are!’ Castiel shrugged her off and wiped his hands on his pants. ‘Anyway, this is my stop, so I’ll see you, Novak.' She waved and jogged off down a one-way street, leaving Castiel to walk the rest of the way home alone.
After ten more minutes of silent walking, Castiel approached a white house. It had hanging wooden lamps and thin columns in front and he still wasn’t sure if were for support or decoration. The long driveway led directly to the three black marble steps raising a small jade-black door. Castiel tilted the statue of Jesus beside the doormat and kicked the house key out from under it, and let himself in. The interior of the building corresponded cleanly with the exterior –marble floors; white walls; narrow halls and black doors; and at nearly each corner, there were expensive, small sculptures of holy persons that Castiel never cared enough to remember the names of. He jogged up the cold stairs and called out the names of the ones he did know, though: his brothers.
‘Gabe? Michael? Anyone home?’ His voice echoed through the too-grand house. Nobody home. Even so, he went down the narrow hallway to knock on each black door: M.G.N., no answer; G.W.N., no answer. Castiel paused over the third door on the right, labelled A.C.N., for his older sister, Anna. She was 19, second youngest in the family and free as a bird. She graduated from a high-up boarding school she was sent to – as opposed to Gabriel and Castiel, who were dropped at Truman’s Public School – like Michael, who got sent there as well. She was always ‘Daddy’s little girl’, being the only girl out of the four, but after their father took off on a missionary trip and made a point of never coming back, she couldn’t stand being under Michael’s strict instruction. So she grabbed her things when she was 18, and the last Castiel heard, she was in Alaska. Living in a wide-windowed house on a pier, smoking all the pot and having all the sex she wanted. She always told Castiel to ‘live like it was last day on Earth’, and to ‘watch the clock, because a lot can change in a minute’s notice.’ Now, as he ran his thumb over the red-painted ‘A’, he supposed she was right. But almost seventeen years was a long time to watch the clock.
Castiel didn’t bother going down the rest of the hallway, as he knew that each door he knocked would knock back in the echoes of empty rooms. Instead, he turned on his heel to walk to the fourth door on the left wall of the hall, labelled in a shiny blue, ‘C.J.N.’. He twisted the brass knob and slipped into the cool room, the window open and a light summer breeze making the short curtains billow apart.
The room was not big, spacious, or ornate, like the rest of the house. Instead, it was rather cozy and long, with one window and dark, wooden flooring. The doorway extended a bit before opening to the room’s fuller size, and the ceiling reached a height of eight feet, dwarfed compared to the higher twelve feet in the front hall. The walls of the bedroom were a cornflower blue, painted 13 years ago, and the rich chocolate varnish was scratched under the scrapes of chairs and broken desks. A simple cream-colored corner-desk was pushed against the left corner of the room, next to the wide window, and it had a metal-framed gray chair swiveled next to it. The wheels of it often caught on the rough scratches of previous wooden legs. A twin bed stretched out from the right wall, dressed with soft, thick sheets, and next to it was a tall hickory dresser. On top of the drawers were a Bose alarm radio, a dusty debate trophy from the seventh grade, and two disks, two bottles of capsules and sleeping pills, and one inhaler next to a tall glass of water. They were to be taken twice a day, once a day, and whenever needed, always with fluid.
On the small wall opposite the window, next to the door to the hall, was a sliding jade-black door that gave entrance to a small checkered bathroom with a standing shower, a rounded sink and mirror cabinet, and toilet. In the cabinet were the basic things needed in an average asthmatic teenage insomniac’s life: two extra inhalers, for if the others were lost or fell faulty, one package of each medication for when they ran out before the next month’s prescription, and lotion.
Castiel’s room was not grand. It did not display a wall of detention slips like Gabriel’s room did; it was not furnished for presentation like Michael’s was; and it didn’t have a drop-down ladder to sneak out like Anna’s . But it was cozy, warm, and it was enough.
Castiel dropped his backpack beside his desk and fell back onto his bed, blocking his eyes with his forearms from the streaming sunlight. He could feel the impressions that the bags under his eyes made in weight of exhaustion, but couldn’t bring himself to sleep. Instead, he pulled his walkman out from under his bed and spun it on, tapping his foot to the voice of Ginger Spice, and seeing red hair when he closed his eyes.
He couldn’t make out who’s it was.