#sassmastermoose

The week went by slowly, Castiel and Dean refusing to make eye contact with each other, and, thus, causing tension between the whole class. A few of them were making bets on what had happened (“I bet Winchester said something stupid”/”Did you hear the rumor about Mr. Novak?”), but there was no guess of what had actually happened.

Sam Winchester, however, little brother, and always ready to get in his brother’s business when he knew that Dean needed it, was not about to let this go on unaddressed. He knew the tension was there just as much as anyone else, but he also knew Dean to be someone who would dwell on his problems to the point that he basically self-destructed, and, believe it or not, Sam was not the kid that Dean was convinced he had to defend from all of the bullies at school, and he just wanted to make sure that Dean was careful with whatever mess he had gotten himself into this time.

On the way home from school on Friday, Jess came back to their house with them, Sam and Jess in the backseat, excitedly babbling between each other about their week’s adventure, and Dean just ignored them, sleeve pulled up over his wrist. Jess had not been told about the soul mate issue (and Dean had to remind himself that he owed his little brother who would usually blab about just about anything something big for keeping his mouth shut this time), but Sam? Sam was curious.

Every night, the younger of the two begged for information from Dean, even went so far as to point it out to Bobby, a close family friend and basically second father, that Dean’s clock had run out. Dean had sent his brother a glare to rival any face that Sam had ever tried against him, but it was no use. They were both curious now, and even if Jess didn’t know, Bobby knowing meant that anyone else who was important knew.

To be perfectly honest, Dean was pretty sure that Jess knew too. Sam may have been trying to keep his curiosity and excitement under a wrap, but he knew his little brother. When something worked him up to this sort of a point, it was no surprise that he was going to end up getting too excited and letting it slip, even if he wasn’t meant to say it. Either way, Dean had never actually told Sam that he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.

It shouldn’t be something that was going to be a secret forever! Goddammit, this was a moment in which Dean Winchester was supposed to be happier than he had ever been before, but instead he was terrified and upset, because of the fact that he was never going to really be able to know his soul mate. Out of all of the people who could have possibly ended up as Dean’s soul mate, it was his new English teacher.

His new English teacher who had fled from class the day after the clock stopped, presumably because of the fact that Dean Winchester was his soul mate. A student who didn’t try, and didn’t care. A student who he’d had to save on his very first day of work! Someone who was obviously way out of the league of a man who could deal with giggling teenage girls and classical literature at the same time. Dean Winchester. He wasn’t right for anyone, not really. But he had someone, and he couldn’t do anything about that.

Castiel (Mr. Novak? What was Dean even supposed to call his soul mate, considering he was also his English teacher?) had fled from class that day. He hadn’t given an explanation to the students, but the eye contact had been enough for Dean to know. He had realized what had happened, and he was not going to deal with it. He was running, like Dean wanted to. But Dean couldn’t. Unluckily for Mr. Novak, he was stuck in the class.

Dean hadn’t realized Sam’s worried look or the fact that they got home until he felt himself pulling the key from the car in such a routine motion that he couldn’t have possibly messed it up. Sam, who had his whole life together now and never had to worry about his soul mate not working out (well, as far as they knew at that point, there was so much to come in the life of the young Winchester), waved Jessica into the house before turning to Dean with a worried frown.

“Dean, do you want to talk about it?” He inclined his head toward his brother’s wrist, and Dean just narrowed his eyes, standing up and pulling his sleeve down, as if the numbers weren’t hidden already.

“Sam, I’m fine. I didn’t meet my soul mate. Whatever. If we’re really meant for each other, or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean, we’ll run into each other again. It’s not the end of the world that the time that we met for the first time I didn’t actually meet him. Or her. Or whatever. They probably were busy too,” He shrugged, grabbing his backpack, but his arm was grabbed by Sam.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what, Sam? Just telling me to stop can have all sorts of implications. Stop doing my homework, stop driving you home, stop doing the things that I do when I know that you’re li-“

“Dean, don’t you dare go on with that sentence,” Sam’s look turned scandalized, and Dean laughed at his brother, ruffling his hair and (mostly) pulling himself out of his funk.

“Sammy, if I needed your help, I’d ask for it. If I needed advice for it, I know you’re right there to go to. But I’m not worried about it. It’ll work out how it’s supposed to work out. Maybe my soul mate’s an ass anyway. You know, there was that new girl in class,” Dean turned on his brother with a smirk as he started into the room, “Damn, if you didn’t have Jess, you would’ve been staring too.”

“Dean!” Sam’s voice was a whine, shoving his older brother, and Dean laughed to him, opening up the door, knowing that Jess had been listening the whole time, soft footsteps disappearing into the house, to Sam’s room, where they’d ‘work on homework’ (except who was Dean kidding: Sam and Jess were probably actually working on homework. No insinuation necessary). The older walked into the house and kicked the door closed behind his brother.

“You know it’s true!” Dean winked, shoving past, rubbing at one of his arms that had a bruise left on it from the day that Mr. Novak had… No. he didn’t want to think about that. That was the past, and he was no longer going to think about Mr. Novak ever ever. Ever. Mr. Novak was his English teacher.

The day went on how every day did, Dean sitting on the couch, his notebook in his lap, but it was Friday, so why would he really do his homework? He laughed at the thought of it, watching TV until he heard his phone ring, groping over to grab it and then glancing down at the ID. Benny.

He groaned and rolled over so that he could mute the TV to actually be able to hear what his friend was saying and put the phone to his ear.

“Yeah?”

“You doing anything tonight,” Right to the point, of course. Dean didn’t expect anything else from his friend. Not that he minded all that much. He loved Charlie and Jo, but sometimes Jo would go on and on about her day (mostly just because she knew it annoyed him), and Charlie was prone to go on rants about whatever ‘fandom news’ she had (“Did you hear about the new episode of…?!”). They both knew that it annoyed Dean, and found it hilarious to hear him try to get them to stop with their babbling. Though, Charlie was just as passionate about her shows as she spoke to Dean, but she still followed the same patterns that Jo did with her talking on the phone. Benny, on the other hand, was not a babbler. Thank god. Dean didn’t know how many more girlfriends he could handle.

But that was okay – he didn’t have many friends in general. Other than the ones that he shared with his little brother, and Benny, Charlie, and Jo, most of the people in the school pretty much avoided Dean. He didn’t care, except for about the bullies. The bullies were assholes and Dean knew that he couldn’t stop them if he tried, and he didn’t really want to. Let them have their fun. They’d be stupid if they wanted to be stupid – it wasn’t going to affect Dean other than the physical.

Or so he told himself. He caught the pitying looks, the worried stares. He didn’t care.

“Of course not, Benny. What would I even be doing that you didn’t know about?” He rolled his eyes, sitting up and grabbing his shoes almost immediately. That meant that Benny had plans. Thank god for plans. That was some of the best news Dean had heard all day. As long as they avoided the whole ‘soul mate’ issue.

“Then come by my place. I know Sam’s got Jess over, and I won’t fuss you about your soul mate if you don’t talk about it, because I know you’ve been freaked all week. C’mon. It’s not too bad!”

Dean made a face, looking up toward the ceiling before he nodded his head, glancing back toward the wall. “What are we doing?”

“Just hangin’ out! Do we need to have a purpose?”

Dean sighed, knowing it wasn’t worth the fighting, so he went to Benny’s.

True to his word, the soul mate was not brought up, and Dean was immensely relieved about that.

But it was only a matter of time until someone got curious, until someone realized that his clock was at zero and that he hadn’t mentioned a thing about his soul mate, barely even given Sam any information when usually he’d tell his brother everything. He was avoiding it, and it was working out pretty well.

So, if they could make it through the year without having to address the whole ‘soul mate’ thing, Dean would be all the more pleased.

Too bad that Dean knew he had Castiel’s (Mr. Novak’s? What do you even do there?) class every day next week.