Tell Me Who I Am
Title: Tell Me Who I Am
Characters: Dean/Cas, Sam, Jo, Pamela, Chuck, Jimmy, OC.
Genre: Slash, high-school AU
Rating: PG 13 for language
Spoilers: N/A
Warning: None so far.
Disclaimer: Not mine. And that makes me a sad panda.
Word Count: 2500
Summary: It was supposed to be a fuzzy high school romance. Raging brother complexes weren't part of the picture.. Natch.
(title taken from "the logical song")
~~~~~~
Cedar Falls, or the land that time remembered. It could be worse though, Dean admitted to the bleak scenery behind the glass pane. The scenery stared back at him with an equal amount of disinterest. And both patiently waited to see in some silent, intense competition who would display the most drab neutrality the longest. It could be much worse; in truth (and this was only between him an the unimpressed skeleton trees), he kind of liked the way things were. Sure he'd sometimes gripe about how he'd never travelled outside the state to discover what other places had to offer before they too fossilised into the same old skeleton trees outside his high-school classroom... but it was reassuring - in some drab and familiar way. And on some days where he'd be functioning at low-level capacity on some humdrum task (mostly hygiene related, oddly enough), he'd receive gratuitous epiphanies where he'd realise how much he liked the status quo and didn't want anything to disturb his bubble. And if that wasn't sad...
He sighed heavily and relinquished victory to the trees' dull persistence once again. Nothing could beat those guys; they'd been around long enough to master the art of boring themselves dead. A tenacious kick jabbed him out of his stupefying metamorphosis, prompting him to turn around and jab back at the culprit with an annoyed glare. Joanna Harvelle: the coquette blonde who, in a manner of speaking, had stuck to pulling his pigtails since primary school in a bid to irritate him just enough so he'd finally give in and go out with her once and for all. And hey, Dean would have been all for that if it weren't for her mother who, as long as Jo was under her roof, was on a holy mission to protect her daughter's innocence - with a sawed-off. Usually, even that wouldn't have been enough to stop him. The problem was he'd been stupid; he'd taken too much time to befriend her mother and her that her face eventually faded into the fixed frame of his background; she'd become too familiar, too close, a pair of cards in a precarious pyramid he strove to preserve.
He smirked and tilted his chair back until it collided with Jo's desk. Spurred by the affront, Jo flicked Dean's ear in warning. It naturally went unheeded. Suddenly, there was nothing more supporting him as he tilted backwards to his short, adrenaline-charged demise.
"Dean, please tell me if my class isn't exciting enough that you need to resort to creating your own thrills with class material," an icy voice made Dean bite down.
He readjusted himself in his seat apologetically. "Don't worry, Mr Gellar; no thrills in this class, I can assure you." He gave an overly meek smile.
Mr Gellar snapped the book he was holding shut and said, "Alright, then, Dean. Since you're so eager for something to distract yourself." He gave a grin that put the Cheshire cat to shame. "I'm assigning you to hand in the first project on Macbeth."
Dean gaped. "But that's not fair," he protested against a backdrop of sniggers and turned around only to see Jo give him an I'm-sorry-but-don't-you-dare-bring-me-into-this glare that cinched his mouth shut.
It was no use arguing with Mr Gellar. He was the kind of teacher who took a sadistic glee in boring his students to tears until one of them snapped so he could leap on the opportunity to sentence the kid to temporary confinement or community service (note: hours of slaving over a shoddy essay that expertly shot down the student's average). He was sure there was undoubtedly more to his teacher than met the eye, possibly something only a psychiatrist could enlighten; either way, he wasn't ready give him a Freudian excuse just yet. He was his teacher and he was a bastard. End of.
Dean trudged the hallways at the end of class in the perfect dramatisation of a dead man walking. Jo trailed right behind him, still whining apologies.
"Oh, come on..." she drawled as he opened his locker in wretched, traumatic shock. "How was I supposed to know you were actually going to topple backwards? I thought I'd done it enough times already, you think you'd remember how that always went."
Dean sobered up and shut the metallic hatch with a little more force than was necessary. "No, Jo. You knew what was gonna happen and you did it anyway. You get off on watching me get in shit. As if my grades weren't suffering enough on their own. Thanks, now my parents are gonna be all over my case."
"Hey," Jo snapped and twirled him around, shoving his shoulder into the row of lockers. Damn, she could really be scary when she wanted to prove a point. "Don't you go pinning all that crap on me, buddy. That's your own doing." People were starting to stare, making her feel suddenly acutely aware of what she must look like. She blushed and let her hand fall back. "Sorry... Didn't mean to... Yeah. Sorry."
Dean brushed it off and gave her one of those smiles that temporarily swept all matters under the bulky carpet. "Nah, it's okay. I mean, Cliff Notes should help."
Jo looked at him from under her carefully placed hair, the corners of her mouth twitching into the beginnings of a smile. "You're so hopeless."
"So hopelessly -"
"Don't." She playfully punched him in the shoulder. "Come on; Pamela's waiting outside with Chuck. If we don't hurry, she'll eat him alive before we get there in the nick of time again."
The autumn air whipped the scent of rotting leaves into their faces as they marched on out into the school lot. Sure enough, Pamela was teasing Chuck again, having pushed him up against his raggedy red 1993 Asüna (a proud Canadian heritage, apparently) and started to make him squirm under her merciless game of coquetry. Pamela and Chuck. It was funny to see the phrase "opposites attract" in live action with those two. The fiery brunette had earned a reputation of the love 'em and leave 'em type - a rock and roll chick who had threatened to sue her parents for emancipation in the heat of the moment (but was eventually talked out of it by friends). Oddly enough, no-one dared call her a whore, unless they wanted to get slashed tires or snakes in their locker. Dean liked her. They had hooked up the year before, but like all things with her, he wasn't enough, and she soon grew bored with him. He wasn't too choked up about it, though. He was kind of relived, to tell the truth. She would have worn him to the bone if they had stayed together any longer; fortunately, they had enough interests in common to keep in touch and maintained a friendly rapport. Why she had her heart set on corrupting poor Chuck was just one of the many things he had yet to figure out about her.
Yes, Chuck: the mousy school newspaper editor who always avoided trouble and handed in his assignments on time. God knows how he dealt with the stress... but something told Dean that the funny smell in his car wasn't plain residual cigarette smoke. Chuck knew just about everything on everyone - it was his job after all. So of course he would know all about Pamela's philandering affairs, and he would have no part in them. Poor, virginal, stressed out Chuck. Dean only really hung out with him because of all the inside information he had, and the beer he always managed to acquire (he never asked how); he would also be a great help when it came to homework and crap. He sighed.
"What's with the PDA? Come on, Pam, lay off the poor guy. Any more and he'll have an aneurysm."
Pamela snorted but eased her hold. "Party pooper always wants to ruin my fun."
"What're you talkin' about? I'm a bundle of fun! I just don't find the appeal in torturing the poor guy."
"Hey," Chuck interrupted, "just who're you patronising?"
"No-one, Chuck, no-one. Pam?"
"Whatever." She shrugged and winked at Chuck who blushed furiously. "I promise to be a good little girl. For now."
"That doesn't sound pervy at all," said Jo who leaned on the car door to Chuck's weary dismay.
"It's about time you embraced the dark side, sister. We have porn."
Chuck cringed as Dean chuckled. "Home made or award winning?"
Chuck moaned as he buried his face in his arms on the car roof, cursing the absence of a filtering device in his ears. "Just get in the car, guys. I promised Becky I'd pick her up from her book club in half an hour,"
"Becky?" Pamela's eyes narrowed to form furrows of surprised suspicion. "Please tell me you're not still pining after that girl who shamelessly shot down your invitation to go with you to the Halloween party."
Chuck bit his lip and said, flustered, "She didn't shoot me down. She just didn't pick up the hints I dropped. And that's as good a sign as any."
"What? You didn't even actually ask her out? Dude, that's sad." Dean shook his head in disappointment.
"Shut up and get in the damn car."
---
Dean lounged in his desk chair as his favourite Led Zeppelin album blared through the radio, attempting to distract him from the eyesore that was Macbeth sitting stoically on his desk.
Dean twirled in his chair two or three times before settling back and giving the book the evil eye. After finally working up enough courage to actually give the topic a glance, he announced with vehement finality:
"Oh, fuck you. You can't be serious!"
Just then, his ten year old brother, Sam, knocked on the door. Talk about a much needed distraction. "Dinner's ready," he yelled over the music. "And Mom wants you to keep it down!"
Dean swatted him away and turned the radio off. He'd talk to Chuck about the assignment tomorrow.
Yup. It was a quiet life in Cedar Falls. And it was all he really needed.
---
The next morning, Dean found the class a little more jittery than usual. He immediately went to see Chuck to find out just what was going on.
"You mean you don't know?" Chuck asked in a flurry of excitement. Dammit. He did this every time. Smug bastard. Of course he wouldn't know if no-one told him squat.
"Chuck..." he drawled his name in weary warning.
Chuck swallowed his smirk and divulged the reason the classroom was aflutter. "Apparently, there's this rich kid who's transferring from California; just moved into town this month."
"Rich kid, huh?"
"Oh yeah. His father owned some sort of electronics company, but then became a user-experience consultant. Made himself quite a name. He was the one who influenced Tribal Co's earliest online efforts and propelled them to fortune. Michael Bellamy is his name."
"Never heard of him. Never mind. What the hell is he doing here then? Shouldn't he be in some private academy or something?"
That was when Chuck leaned in and muttered to him like he was a spy passing on classified information. He was kind of a sucky spy if you asked him: his low voice only made him sound way more suspicious. "I tried doing some research on his kid, Castiel."
"Castiel Bellamy." Dean snorted. "Now there's your outlandish preppy name."
"Yeah, well, I can tell you that the Bellamys know how to keep their private life under tight wraps. My Google-fu crapped out on me after fifteen minutes of jack. You'd have to hack files to get any sort of info. We could ask Ash... I mean, the kid's not even on Myspace or Facebook."
Dean shrugged and sat down in a table behind Chuck, tilting his chair back and setting his feet on his table. "So? Maybe he just has a life."
"Or the lack thereof."
"Hey, since when did you turn from nosy reporter to full on stalker? I'm afraid to think of the stuff you've dug up on me. I'm kinda glad I befriended you, come to think."
"A little knowledge is a powerful thing," Chuck provided pseudo-intellectually, if not a little ominously.
Their biology teacher, Miss. Feldt, finally walked into the class as it settled down into manageable silence. Dean reverted to a position that was acceptable with the indoor classroom conduct policy.
She stood in front of her desk and announced in a delightfully professional tone, "Today we'll be welcoming a transfer student who has come all the way from California." A buzz of murmurs arose. "Castiel?" She turned to the door. "You can come in now."
After a moment's hesitation, a scrawny boy with clinically combed back dark hair made his appearance, his eyes staring out coolly at the rows of students with a vague air of condescension as he clutched dearly onto his hand-crafted, Italian made school bag. He was probably shocked that Daddy dearest had sent him to a far-flung public school filled with no-name commoners.
"There's a free seat next to Dean over there," the teacher helpfully singled him out.
Damn. He should've expected this. No wonder everyone had taken every other seat.
Castiel seated himself by the window next to Dean without wasting an unnecessary glance or word and proceeded to extract his notebooks with dainty, robotic precision. How disgustingly proper and efficient. Dean rolled his eyes and ignored him for the rest of the class. And he was doing a pretty good job of it until the teacher had to ask Castiel if he'd already learnt this lesson in his previous school.
Castiel echoed back, "Have you already gone over this part of the course?"
What the hell was this? Third grade mocking? But he looked so damned serious...
"Yes, I have," the boy answered himself after a pause. Oddly enough, Dean couldn't tell if he was cleverly disguising his mocking in robotic stoicism or just replaying the question out loud instead of in his head, which was just stupid.
The teacher brushed it off and resumed the lesson. Dean would have resumed his own ignoring if it weren't for the way the new student's eyes were now boring into his side. Dean bristled and turned to give him a wilting glare that would discourage any staring - it had certainly worked in the past. But when their eyes met, he felt his stomach suddenly drop ten feet. Ice blue eyes froze his sudden anger and made him turn away. Just something about those eyes made him incredibly queasy.
Something he'd rather not have disturb his perfect bubble.
Part 2
What are payday loans online ?
Characters: Dean/Cas, Sam, Jo, Pamela, Chuck, Jimmy, OC.
Genre: Slash, high-school AU
Rating: PG 13 for language
Spoilers: N/A
Warning: None so far.
Disclaimer: Not mine. And that makes me a sad panda.
Word Count: 2500
Summary: It was supposed to be a fuzzy high school romance. Raging brother complexes weren't part of the picture.. Natch.
(title taken from "the logical song")
~~~~~~
Cedar Falls, or the land that time remembered. It could be worse though, Dean admitted to the bleak scenery behind the glass pane. The scenery stared back at him with an equal amount of disinterest. And both patiently waited to see in some silent, intense competition who would display the most drab neutrality the longest. It could be much worse; in truth (and this was only between him an the unimpressed skeleton trees), he kind of liked the way things were. Sure he'd sometimes gripe about how he'd never travelled outside the state to discover what other places had to offer before they too fossilised into the same old skeleton trees outside his high-school classroom... but it was reassuring - in some drab and familiar way. And on some days where he'd be functioning at low-level capacity on some humdrum task (mostly hygiene related, oddly enough), he'd receive gratuitous epiphanies where he'd realise how much he liked the status quo and didn't want anything to disturb his bubble. And if that wasn't sad...
He sighed heavily and relinquished victory to the trees' dull persistence once again. Nothing could beat those guys; they'd been around long enough to master the art of boring themselves dead. A tenacious kick jabbed him out of his stupefying metamorphosis, prompting him to turn around and jab back at the culprit with an annoyed glare. Joanna Harvelle: the coquette blonde who, in a manner of speaking, had stuck to pulling his pigtails since primary school in a bid to irritate him just enough so he'd finally give in and go out with her once and for all. And hey, Dean would have been all for that if it weren't for her mother who, as long as Jo was under her roof, was on a holy mission to protect her daughter's innocence - with a sawed-off. Usually, even that wouldn't have been enough to stop him. The problem was he'd been stupid; he'd taken too much time to befriend her mother and her that her face eventually faded into the fixed frame of his background; she'd become too familiar, too close, a pair of cards in a precarious pyramid he strove to preserve.
He smirked and tilted his chair back until it collided with Jo's desk. Spurred by the affront, Jo flicked Dean's ear in warning. It naturally went unheeded. Suddenly, there was nothing more supporting him as he tilted backwards to his short, adrenaline-charged demise.
"Dean, please tell me if my class isn't exciting enough that you need to resort to creating your own thrills with class material," an icy voice made Dean bite down.
He readjusted himself in his seat apologetically. "Don't worry, Mr Gellar; no thrills in this class, I can assure you." He gave an overly meek smile.
Mr Gellar snapped the book he was holding shut and said, "Alright, then, Dean. Since you're so eager for something to distract yourself." He gave a grin that put the Cheshire cat to shame. "I'm assigning you to hand in the first project on Macbeth."
Dean gaped. "But that's not fair," he protested against a backdrop of sniggers and turned around only to see Jo give him an I'm-sorry-but-don't-you-dare-bring-me-into-this glare that cinched his mouth shut.
It was no use arguing with Mr Gellar. He was the kind of teacher who took a sadistic glee in boring his students to tears until one of them snapped so he could leap on the opportunity to sentence the kid to temporary confinement or community service (note: hours of slaving over a shoddy essay that expertly shot down the student's average). He was sure there was undoubtedly more to his teacher than met the eye, possibly something only a psychiatrist could enlighten; either way, he wasn't ready give him a Freudian excuse just yet. He was his teacher and he was a bastard. End of.
Dean trudged the hallways at the end of class in the perfect dramatisation of a dead man walking. Jo trailed right behind him, still whining apologies.
"Oh, come on..." she drawled as he opened his locker in wretched, traumatic shock. "How was I supposed to know you were actually going to topple backwards? I thought I'd done it enough times already, you think you'd remember how that always went."
Dean sobered up and shut the metallic hatch with a little more force than was necessary. "No, Jo. You knew what was gonna happen and you did it anyway. You get off on watching me get in shit. As if my grades weren't suffering enough on their own. Thanks, now my parents are gonna be all over my case."
"Hey," Jo snapped and twirled him around, shoving his shoulder into the row of lockers. Damn, she could really be scary when she wanted to prove a point. "Don't you go pinning all that crap on me, buddy. That's your own doing." People were starting to stare, making her feel suddenly acutely aware of what she must look like. She blushed and let her hand fall back. "Sorry... Didn't mean to... Yeah. Sorry."
Dean brushed it off and gave her one of those smiles that temporarily swept all matters under the bulky carpet. "Nah, it's okay. I mean, Cliff Notes should help."
Jo looked at him from under her carefully placed hair, the corners of her mouth twitching into the beginnings of a smile. "You're so hopeless."
"So hopelessly -"
"Don't." She playfully punched him in the shoulder. "Come on; Pamela's waiting outside with Chuck. If we don't hurry, she'll eat him alive before we get there in the nick of time again."
The autumn air whipped the scent of rotting leaves into their faces as they marched on out into the school lot. Sure enough, Pamela was teasing Chuck again, having pushed him up against his raggedy red 1993 Asüna (a proud Canadian heritage, apparently) and started to make him squirm under her merciless game of coquetry. Pamela and Chuck. It was funny to see the phrase "opposites attract" in live action with those two. The fiery brunette had earned a reputation of the love 'em and leave 'em type - a rock and roll chick who had threatened to sue her parents for emancipation in the heat of the moment (but was eventually talked out of it by friends). Oddly enough, no-one dared call her a whore, unless they wanted to get slashed tires or snakes in their locker. Dean liked her. They had hooked up the year before, but like all things with her, he wasn't enough, and she soon grew bored with him. He wasn't too choked up about it, though. He was kind of relived, to tell the truth. She would have worn him to the bone if they had stayed together any longer; fortunately, they had enough interests in common to keep in touch and maintained a friendly rapport. Why she had her heart set on corrupting poor Chuck was just one of the many things he had yet to figure out about her.
Yes, Chuck: the mousy school newspaper editor who always avoided trouble and handed in his assignments on time. God knows how he dealt with the stress... but something told Dean that the funny smell in his car wasn't plain residual cigarette smoke. Chuck knew just about everything on everyone - it was his job after all. So of course he would know all about Pamela's philandering affairs, and he would have no part in them. Poor, virginal, stressed out Chuck. Dean only really hung out with him because of all the inside information he had, and the beer he always managed to acquire (he never asked how); he would also be a great help when it came to homework and crap. He sighed.
"What's with the PDA? Come on, Pam, lay off the poor guy. Any more and he'll have an aneurysm."
Pamela snorted but eased her hold. "Party pooper always wants to ruin my fun."
"What're you talkin' about? I'm a bundle of fun! I just don't find the appeal in torturing the poor guy."
"Hey," Chuck interrupted, "just who're you patronising?"
"No-one, Chuck, no-one. Pam?"
"Whatever." She shrugged and winked at Chuck who blushed furiously. "I promise to be a good little girl. For now."
"That doesn't sound pervy at all," said Jo who leaned on the car door to Chuck's weary dismay.
"It's about time you embraced the dark side, sister. We have porn."
Chuck cringed as Dean chuckled. "Home made or award winning?"
Chuck moaned as he buried his face in his arms on the car roof, cursing the absence of a filtering device in his ears. "Just get in the car, guys. I promised Becky I'd pick her up from her book club in half an hour,"
"Becky?" Pamela's eyes narrowed to form furrows of surprised suspicion. "Please tell me you're not still pining after that girl who shamelessly shot down your invitation to go with you to the Halloween party."
Chuck bit his lip and said, flustered, "She didn't shoot me down. She just didn't pick up the hints I dropped. And that's as good a sign as any."
"What? You didn't even actually ask her out? Dude, that's sad." Dean shook his head in disappointment.
"Shut up and get in the damn car."
---
Dean lounged in his desk chair as his favourite Led Zeppelin album blared through the radio, attempting to distract him from the eyesore that was Macbeth sitting stoically on his desk.
Dean twirled in his chair two or three times before settling back and giving the book the evil eye. After finally working up enough courage to actually give the topic a glance, he announced with vehement finality:
"Oh, fuck you. You can't be serious!"
Just then, his ten year old brother, Sam, knocked on the door. Talk about a much needed distraction. "Dinner's ready," he yelled over the music. "And Mom wants you to keep it down!"
Dean swatted him away and turned the radio off. He'd talk to Chuck about the assignment tomorrow.
Yup. It was a quiet life in Cedar Falls. And it was all he really needed.
---
The next morning, Dean found the class a little more jittery than usual. He immediately went to see Chuck to find out just what was going on.
"You mean you don't know?" Chuck asked in a flurry of excitement. Dammit. He did this every time. Smug bastard. Of course he wouldn't know if no-one told him squat.
"Chuck..." he drawled his name in weary warning.
Chuck swallowed his smirk and divulged the reason the classroom was aflutter. "Apparently, there's this rich kid who's transferring from California; just moved into town this month."
"Rich kid, huh?"
"Oh yeah. His father owned some sort of electronics company, but then became a user-experience consultant. Made himself quite a name. He was the one who influenced Tribal Co's earliest online efforts and propelled them to fortune. Michael Bellamy is his name."
"Never heard of him. Never mind. What the hell is he doing here then? Shouldn't he be in some private academy or something?"
That was when Chuck leaned in and muttered to him like he was a spy passing on classified information. He was kind of a sucky spy if you asked him: his low voice only made him sound way more suspicious. "I tried doing some research on his kid, Castiel."
"Castiel Bellamy." Dean snorted. "Now there's your outlandish preppy name."
"Yeah, well, I can tell you that the Bellamys know how to keep their private life under tight wraps. My Google-fu crapped out on me after fifteen minutes of jack. You'd have to hack files to get any sort of info. We could ask Ash... I mean, the kid's not even on Myspace or Facebook."
Dean shrugged and sat down in a table behind Chuck, tilting his chair back and setting his feet on his table. "So? Maybe he just has a life."
"Or the lack thereof."
"Hey, since when did you turn from nosy reporter to full on stalker? I'm afraid to think of the stuff you've dug up on me. I'm kinda glad I befriended you, come to think."
"A little knowledge is a powerful thing," Chuck provided pseudo-intellectually, if not a little ominously.
Their biology teacher, Miss. Feldt, finally walked into the class as it settled down into manageable silence. Dean reverted to a position that was acceptable with the indoor classroom conduct policy.
She stood in front of her desk and announced in a delightfully professional tone, "Today we'll be welcoming a transfer student who has come all the way from California." A buzz of murmurs arose. "Castiel?" She turned to the door. "You can come in now."
After a moment's hesitation, a scrawny boy with clinically combed back dark hair made his appearance, his eyes staring out coolly at the rows of students with a vague air of condescension as he clutched dearly onto his hand-crafted, Italian made school bag. He was probably shocked that Daddy dearest had sent him to a far-flung public school filled with no-name commoners.
"There's a free seat next to Dean over there," the teacher helpfully singled him out.
Damn. He should've expected this. No wonder everyone had taken every other seat.
Castiel seated himself by the window next to Dean without wasting an unnecessary glance or word and proceeded to extract his notebooks with dainty, robotic precision. How disgustingly proper and efficient. Dean rolled his eyes and ignored him for the rest of the class. And he was doing a pretty good job of it until the teacher had to ask Castiel if he'd already learnt this lesson in his previous school.
Castiel echoed back, "Have you already gone over this part of the course?"
What the hell was this? Third grade mocking? But he looked so damned serious...
"Yes, I have," the boy answered himself after a pause. Oddly enough, Dean couldn't tell if he was cleverly disguising his mocking in robotic stoicism or just replaying the question out loud instead of in his head, which was just stupid.
The teacher brushed it off and resumed the lesson. Dean would have resumed his own ignoring if it weren't for the way the new student's eyes were now boring into his side. Dean bristled and turned to give him a wilting glare that would discourage any staring - it had certainly worked in the past. But when their eyes met, he felt his stomach suddenly drop ten feet. Ice blue eyes froze his sudden anger and made him turn away. Just something about those eyes made him incredibly queasy.
Something he'd rather not have disturb his perfect bubble.
Part 2
What are payday loans online ?