#thebatsquad

“Wait, no, wait!” a young man shrieks. That grimy bastard Alastair is holding his arm tightly, the pale skin of his delicate forearm clearly visible. “I wasn’t stealing!”

Alastair laughs. “Sure you weren’t. I’ve half a mind to take your hand either way and then it’s a warning for you and a trophy for me.”

“Sir, I’ve no need to steal your wares, I wasn’t stealing. But-but I will pay you for them if it pleases you.” The boy tries to tug his arm away but he can’t, his eyes are wide and terrified.

“If it pleases me,” Alastair mocks him. Then, his eyes move up and down his figure lecherously. Cas can’t really see anything beneath the huge cloak, but he’s clearly a fit young man in his twenties. “Y’know what would please me…”

“Leave him alone.” Cas inserts himself between them, glaring. “Don’t you have better things to do, old man?” He represses a shiver at the way Alastair had been leering.

Alastair just sneers at him. “Mind your own damn business.”

“And you pick on someone your own size. Otherwise, it’s just embarrassing.” Cas scoffs and ushers the stranger away as quickly as he thinks they can escape. After a few steps, he takes the other man’s hand in his and tugs him down a narrow alleyway. When they emerge on the other side, he turns sharply and walks them briskly through another section of the market, not stopping until they reach the fountain. There, he finds them a place to sit on the edge of the basin.

He sits first and finally gets a chance to look at the person he’s just removed from Alastair’s clutches. He’s just a boy, really, can’t be any older than Cas himself. He’s pale with freckled skin and a pair of green eyes, wide and soft, above his perfectly straight nose and rosebud lips. No wonder he’s wearing a hooded cloak in the summer heat, this boy would’ve attracted attention from any of the more nefarious salesmen at the marketplace if more people had seen his beautiful face.

Cas realizes that he’s been staring and he tries not to blush. He gestures to the space next to him and is grateful when the other boy sits there. He seems to be staring right back.

“Hi,” the boy finally says. “Thank you.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Guy’s a creep.”

“Yeah.” His smile might be the prettiest one Cas has ever seen. “I… Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. My name is Cas.”

His nose scrunches with what Cas thinks might be confusion. “Cas, huh? Is that a nickname?”

“No, not as far as I know, anyway. Just been Cas my whole life.”

The boy grins at him. “Well, I believe it suits you.”

Cas returns the smile, feeling warm in the summer sunshine sitting next to the cutest boy in the kingdom. “So, will you tell me your name and what brings you to these parts?” he asks. “I feel like I would remember having met you before.”

“O-oh,” the boy stammers, looking shocked. “I’m…Dean.”

“Are you sure?” Cas laughs at his hesitation. It just earns him another crooked grin.

“Yes, I’m Dean. Pleased to meet you.” He extends his hand to Cas, who takes it, shaking it vigorously between his own. “And I live…a ways away, I don’t often get the opportunity to visit the market.”

“Really?” Cas says. “That’s a shame. I insist on showing you all of the best vendors, then, if this is to be our only meeting.”

“I hope that it is not,” Dean says softly, shyly, and Cas feels overwhelmed with joy. Beaming, he stands and takes Dean’s hand back.

“Come on then, there’s a lot to see!”

:     :     :     :     :

Dean hoists himself over the railing of his balcony, panting with the effort. This damned cloak was far too hot to wear outside today, but there’s no way to avoid wearing it. If he were to be caught…

“So.” The voice startles him badly and Dean almost hits his head on the hard stone. His little brother Sam is leaning against the huge glass door with a stormy expression on his face. “Had fun today, did you?”

“Sammy.” Dean rushes to his side, looking past him into his chambers. “What’s going on?”

“You snuck out again!” He hits Dean in the shoulder with all of the force a scrawny fourteen-year-old can muster. “If Mom saw you, she’d be so mad.”

“And that’s why we’re not going to tell her, isn’t that right, string bean?”

“Ugh!” Sam pushes him away and stomps into the room, knocking one of Dean’s books off of the couch in order to throw himself down on it dramatically. “You never let me come with you but you always want me to lie for you and it isn’t fair!”

Dean winces. “Look short stuff, you can come with me when you’re older. When I’m king, you can do whatever the hell you want. But right now we’re both a little trapped here. And I gotta watch my own back out there. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Sam pouts some more but Dean knows he just needs time. He knows that Sam doesn’t like being cooped up any more than he does.

“What do you say we go riding tomorrow?” he says, watching Sam fight the oncoming smile at his words.

“Just you and me?”

“Bobby’s allowed it before. We could ask him to go to the Western Wood again.”

“Let’s do that.” Sam nods decisively. “Did you see anything interesting today?”

Dean thinks about a gorgeous boy with blue eyes who held his hand all morning and he says no.